How are you making sense of all this?

The world is falling apart.

And I ask myself why?

Like really, Why?

Why is there so much division?

Why does it feel like more and more topics are off-limits these days?

Why is political correctness creating so much polarization?

Where are all the maps?

What’s standing out to me most is how different positions there are.

There are two dominant maps in any conversation.

The pro vs. anti maps.

The red vs. blue maps.

The for vs. against maps.

It’s all black and white.

We’ve regressed to this “if you’re not with me you’re against me” way of thinking.

Where’s the grayscale?

Where’s the nuanced meaning-making?

Where are the healthy debates at?

Personally, I’m not willing to pick a side.

I’m not willing to go all-in on a for vs. against argument.

My response is always “based on the current amount of information and my current experience with this incredibly complex topic, here is my current perspective, although this perspective will probably change as time progresses.”

And not just sensemaking of the material world.

What if we decided to do collective sensemaking on the interior domains also?

Emotions will always be a part of it.

You can’t decouple emotions from logic.

We are human beings.

We feel emotions.

To try to make sense of any given ecology requires us to work with emotions and phenomenological experience.

What if we focused some of our sensemaking on the reasons there are certain emotional charges behind our arguments and what that means in the context of our position and what we’re trying to understand.

If I say something and you get angry at me for it, why?

Where is that anger coming from? What was triggered when I said that thing?

Let’s dive into the underlying psychological and emotional drivers behind that trigger.

Did I just trigger your core belief that “the world isn’t safe and we must always be in a struggle for survival?” or was it something else.

“Do I not feel like I’m enough so I’m overcompensating by being super loud on social media and seeking approval for my work?”

“Do you have a core wound around being controlled so you’re overcompensating by telling the world that no one will impose on your freedoms?”

What is happening here?

Why are people acting the way that they’re acting?

Maybe we can get further in connecting with others and expressing our viewpoints by practicing radical non-judgementalism in our conversations.

Our Emotions Are Falling Behind our Cognition

How I’m making sense of the increasing polarization and division I’m experiencing on a daily basis is the following.

Either:

Our cognitive capacities are growing at a much faster rate than our emotional capacities.

Or:

Our emotional capacities are regressing while our cognitive capacities are developing.

This is to say that we’ve reached incredible heights in our ability to navigate cognitive complexity in the world.

We’ve developed the (cognitive) capacity to see the value in every single human being no matter what race, gender, sexuality etc.

But our emotional capacities are still stuck in very in-group out-group dynamics.

Even though we’re preaching that everyone is equal we still don’t embody that on an emotional level.

No matter what side we find ourselves standing on it’s likely that we don’t have utter compassion and see the other side as equals.

We’re still stuck in if you’re not for me you’re against me dynamics, especially in our relationships with people who have differing opinions as us.

Our job is to begin stewarding people from this us vs. them stage of emotional development to a more inclusive I see you and respect you for whatever you believe embodied emotional understanding.

And through a more holistic emotional development process, we may be able to create the underlying structures for regenerative global change.

So let’s make some maps together.

Let’s get better at making sense of our lives.

Much Love,

Ethan Nelson