Greg McKeown

But even a simpler way of saying it is as soon as you see somebody else as threat, then your own psychology reduces into that lizard brain, into the term I like the most is primal panic, right?

And that's what happens when people feel themselves misunderstood.

Well, what else can it be?

when you feel someone, if they see you, will kill you, then the most extreme form of being misunderstood, devalued, unseen, unimportant, dehumanized, what else could that be?

Of course, that's what people are experiencing.

Of course, people experience primal panic.

And so in that state, it's very easy to stop seeing other people.

Just biologically, we move into that different mode.

Now, your broader point is, I think, exactly spot on, which is what happens when what I would describe as an artificial process generates the sense that we need to see each other as threat.

because the same functionality takes place, the same primal panic, the same exaggeration of positions.

And we haven't used the word so far, but I do think that, I think that the polarization, what we would mean, what could be covered by that word

is in its richest sense, is the, is the single, it is the primary threat that we face.

I believe that I believe it's more important than any other political difference.

So however disagree, however much I might disagree with somebody about some policy, some issue, however important that is, it is not as important as this, as this,

the growing level of distorting contention that is infecting us.

And because in the simplest sense, what is happening is that we're approaching a noise threshold and the difference between noise being loud and then you pass a point where the decibel level, a very small incremental increase of noise makes,

it impossible to understand the meaning.

Anyone who's experienced that with a radio ever in their life, one degree more on the dial, you can still hear words, but you don't know what's being said.

And so it's very subtle difference.

And I think that we are approaching that point.