You’ve felt it. The cashier who won’t make eye contact. The family group chat that’s gone silent after someone shared the “wrong” article. The coworker who used to chat by the coffee maker now just nods and walks past.
It’s not just that people disagree anymore. It’s that we’ve stopped knowing how to be around each other at all.
You can’t win your day if the world around you feels like it’s falling apart. Here’s some ideas to create enough stability to actually function.
David Brooks recently wrote about philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s diagnosis of our fractured culture: we’ve lost any shared sense of what makes a good person or a good life. You don’t need a philosophy degree to see this. You just need to look at your own street.
Here are four ways to push back against the chaos.
1. Stop chasing “your truth” and start looking for “our good”
When everyone retreats into private truth, we lose the ability to solve anything together. It’s like a neighborhood watch where one person thinks safety means Ring cameras on every porch and another thinks it means sage bundles and good intentions. Nobody’s lying about what makes them feel safe, but nothing actually gets protected because there’s no agreement on what safety even is.
The shift: Stop asking “what feels right to me?” and start asking “what’s actually good for everyone involved?”
The move: Next time there’s a disagreement, don’t open with “well, I feel that…” Open with “what would be fair for all of us here?” You’re looking for common ground, not common feelings.
2. Don’t be the boss or the life coach. Be the neighbor.
We’re drowning in two types of people: The Managers who treat every problem like a productivity issue, and The Therapists who validate your journey but never help you move the couch.
What we actually need are neighbors. People who notice the work that needs doing and just do it.
The shift: Don’t just manage people or affirm them. Show up and do the unglamorous work alongside them.
The move: If the break room sink is full of dishes, don’t send a passive-aggressive email and don’t post an Instagram story about how capitalism has alienated us from communal care. Just wash the damn dishes. Doing the work often does more to restore order than talking about the work.
3. Build thin bridges across the rivalry
Everything feels like a rivalry now. We’ve turned politics, parenting styles, even grocery store choices into team sports. If someone’s on the other team, we assume they’re either stupid or evil.
Here’s the thing: You don’t have to agree with someone to treat them like a human being. You don’t have to pretend their views are harmless. But you also don’t have to treat every political disagreement like a moral emergency that justifies cutting off all contact.
The shift: Judge people by how they treat others in front of you, not just by their stated positions.
The move: Grab coffee with that one neighbor whose bumper stickers make you want to scream. Don’t talk politics. Talk about your kids, your dogs, the best taco spot in town. Remind yourself they’re a three-dimensional person, not a Fox News or MSNBC character.
Important caveat: This doesn’t mean “tolerate bigotry for the sake of civility.” If someone’s views actively dehumanize you or people you love, I’m not obligated to break bread with them. The goal is finding people who disagree with you on policy but still share basic commitments to decency.
4. Fix the 50 feet around you
We spend hours doomscrolling about disasters on the other side of the world while ignoring the fact that the park down the street is covered in trash or the elderly neighbor hasn’t had a visitor in two weeks.
The shift: You can’t fix the whole world, but you can fix your street. Focus on the people you can actually touch and the places you actually walk.
The move: Turn off the news for one weekend. Go outside. Paint the community fence that’s peeling. Host a potluck. Help the kid down the street with their math homework. Introduce two neighbors who don’t know each other yet.
If everyone took care of the 50 feet around them, the world would feel a lot less broken.
You can’t control the culture. But you can control your corner of it.
Start there.
