Nothing Is Unthinkable
Why do I ponder things I can’t control — like Tucker Carlson, Oscar snubs, keyboard warriors, and our inability to just get along?
I have more time now to contemplate things I can’t control. For example, how did Margot Robbie not get Oscar-nominated for her role in Barbie, but Ryan Gosling did? The Internet doesn’t understand, and neither do I.
What about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce? Can “Tayvis” last? Will she write a song about him? I don’t care. But here I am thinking about it.
I think about the Houthis firing on unarmed ships in the Red Sea. This I care about. But no matter how many articles I read, these attacks make no sense to me, and in my heart of hearts, I know the drones I fly in my backyard aren’t the kind that would help. There’s nothing I can do.
I wish that weren’t the case. The Houthis made it personal when I was living in Dubai two years ago. They launched a pair of ballistic missiles in my direction. It turns out the missiles were aimed at a peace conference, not me, and were easily intercepted. It was all treated like a slow news day.
But I still think about the Houthis, their missiles, and what’s happening in the Red Sea and, for that matter, across the Middle East. I understand there is history I don’t understand. Something similar is true with Americans who shoot up schools and churches. I can’t rein in homegrown gunslingers any more than I can get Tucker Carlson to shut up. But I think about it all.
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” — Winston Churchill
I also think about politics. God, do I think about politics, especially in an election year. I can’t make Joe Biden younger. I can’t make Donald Trump younger either. The difference with Trump is that I wouldn’t if I could.
I wonder more than I should about botched executions. That guy in Alabama suffered two of them in two years before the state finally finished him off. This isn’t the 16th century when Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded with a dull blade requiring three blows. Torture isn’t part of the deal. I’ve had three total joint replacements. The moment the drugs kick in and I’m about to go under, even as the bone saw lay in view, is calming if not, dare I say, pleasant. We can do better.
There is no shortage of things I can’t purge from my head. The border crisis. That “He Gets Us” Superbowl ad. The list goes on.
Ruminating over such things isn’t productive. I know that. Philosophers dating to Epictetus in ancient Greece have counseled against giving too much consideration to things beyond our control. It’s stressful and energy-draining. Yet people who dominate the news and the events that shape our lives, and possibly shake our worldview, aren’t easily ignored. I mean, gosh, Margot Robbie killed in Barbie. WTF?
Maybe this is what growing older is (at least partly) about. Futile contemplation. When I was younger, every day was about getting to the next day, head down, building the life I wanted. Shielded as a child, and thus focused as an adult, I cared less about the incongruities of the world. Now, between meetups and card games, I have time to ponder the uncontrollable, and I can’t help but do so.
It’s not that I am idle or aimless. I have writing projects. I serve on the board of a charity. As an American living in Europe, I have an endless frontier to explore. In some ways, my time now is sickeningly cliche. All of that travel? It often leads to even more reflection — like my visit to Dachau. Oh, here I am thinking about that again and still quite unable to do a darn thing about what happened 80 years ago.
I don’t believe older people, much less someone like me in my late 60s should fade away. Some years ago, I co-authored a book about vitality and finding purpose after one’s long career. I know how to do it. Reflection has a useful place. But I concede the transition is not as prescriptive as my younger self had imagined. It’s a process; I am mapping it, sidetracked now and then by the unmanageable cosmic forces that preoccupy me.
What I puzzle over most is how we the people have become so divided and dug in and, selfishly, how the chasms affect my life. Extreme views and the eagerness to voice them exist on both sides of everything: our faith, where we live, our clothes, our notion of family, fairness, and truth. A simple conversation about, say, how to share the bike path, can suddenly feel like being caged with a pack of velociraptors. I feel myself withdrawing. I don’t like withdrawing. I’d rather engage. We need some ground rules.
Dispute has always been a part of human existence. So has compromise, and that is where we have had an epic breakdown. In today’s world, compromise equals weakness. This is the persistent message delivered throughout our attention economy, manifested in the behavior of self-interested politicians and ratings-hungry talking heads. We shout over one another rather than consider another point of view. When did this start?
As recently as the 1950s, fresh from the defeat of Hitler, Americans appeared to be in such harmony that some worried there wouldn’t be enough new ideas to sustain the country. Speaking up was a virtue; discussion bore fruit.
Inevitably, ideas began to clash. Think of the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and gay liberation. Later, the decline of unions and pensions widened the gap between rich and poor, arguably becoming the single greatest source of interpersonal friction. In 18th-century France, a wealth gap brought the guillotine to prominence and spurred the Reign of Terror. Something like that may be gestating now.
Finally, what we now call the culture wars began in earnest in the 1990s when Newt Gingrich encouraged fellow Republicans to use negative attack words such as radical, sick, corrupt, and traitor to describe political opponents. Democrats followed suit. Leaders began to find more currency in being a bully than a role model. The harsh language of partisan put-down had arrived; Donald Trump turned it into an art form and essentially gave everyone hall passes to be as nasty, spiteful, deceitful, and incendiary as they like. Collectively, we the sheep took him up on it.
Let’s return briefly to the Oscar snub. Look, I don’t know beans about great acting, and, full disclosure, I walked out of Barbie before the end. If it were up to me, Tina Fey would win Best Actress every year — even years when she doesn’t make a movie. By my third Barbie reference, though, I had thought about Margot Robbie, which is no one’s definition of a chore, long enough to feel informed and, what’s more, fully invested in my viewpoint. Now I care. I didn’t before. But now I do. I’m dug in. When I’m done with this essay, I may go online and have an opinion.
But wait. No. We’re only two months into the New Year and I am resolved to descend less often into the hellscape of social media, which lawmakers and the U.S. Surgeon General have likened to tobacco — addictive and deadly. Most people pledge to lose weight this time of year; my goal is to find fewer vile insults in my inbox from strangers who disagree with me.
So, I should probably stay out of the comments sections generally and off Nextdoor threads specifically — or, if I simply cannot, at least avoid hot-button issues like politics, movies, and the appropriate size of a candy bar to give trick-or-treaters on Halloween. But then what would I talk about? One day I might find the weather in Florida fascinating. If I may channel Aragorn at the gates of Mordor: “It is not this day.”
Winston Churchill said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Well, most of those folks are online, and often you need far less than five minutes.
I don’t mean to pile on social media, which has many wonderful qualities. We are a mobile society. Families and wider connections become far-flung. I have adult children in Connecticut and in the distant countries of Chile and California. Kim and I have moved around; we have lived in New York, San Francisco, Dubai, and London. Facebook and Instagram help keep us connected with loved ones.
Yet social media is central to the problem. It’s just too easy to go online and assert an intractable and hurtful, painfully naive opinion with no more evidence than the aphorism in a fortune cookie.
I feel blessed to have experienced foreign cultures in a deeper way than is possible as a tourist. I am friendly with people on both sides of the most divisive issues of our day — Gaza, Ukraine, Trump — and have found that objective truth is not as discernable as we might like to believe.
Trump is Looney Tunes, but his supporters have a case. There, I said it. Hamas is horrifically brutal, but Palestinians have a case. Russians? Let’s just say I know a few who fled Moscow, and they are good people.
It should be clear from the preceding sentences where I stand — in Trump’s case, most notably. Since his presidency, family gatherings have been more likely to drive relatives apart than bring them together, one study found. Today, three out of four adults are unwilling to talk politics with a relative who has an opposing view. Along with the rest of his chaos, Trump will leave this legacy: he is driving families apart. We no longer tolerate Drunk Uncle on holidays, which should be amusing if nothing else. We walk away.
I get it. I’m done shouting too, lest I end up back in a pen with velociraptors. But walking away doesn’t feel right. I hope to sustain enough intellectual curiosity to always try to understand the other side, and not break into little pieces when partisans flame me.
While living in the Middle East, I became friendly with people from Lebanon and Yemen. I attended an Iftar in one of their homes. In London, the most diverse city I have ever experienced, I live two blocks from the Central Mosque and regularly enjoy friendly exchanges with my Muslim neighbors. In time, I imagine, some will become friends. Without a shred of uncertainty, they blame Israel for the crisis in the Middle East.
I also have many long and cherished friendships with Jewish people in the U.S., who are deeply committed to the Israeli side. We can all mostly agree on the facts about who attacked whom and when. But in searching for a larger truth, I have found none, except that this conflict has roots older and deeper than the Tree of Souls. The chasm will never be bridged.
There’s nothing I can do about that. So, I will listen, vote my conscience, and try to learn enough not to be angry — and count my blessings that I have that option.
Dan is a former senior writer and columnist at TIME. He lives in London. He is trying harder to focus on things he can control.
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