Dear Joe,
I enjoy reading your posts. They make me feel good and I get some good insights. But it’s hard to believe that the things you propose will actually work or make things better. I don’t mean to be rude, but I think it’s worth saying.
Skeptical
Hey Skeptical,
I love this! Thanks for speaking your truth! This is how real dialogue begins; and with real dialogue, comes the possibility for real, lasting solutions. I see it the same way: on their own, the perspectives and solutions I offer will not necessarily solve our societal problems. But what I also truly believe is that, no matter how many millions of dollars and years we invest in solutions to our personal and cultural problems, none of them will actually be successfully implemented if we don’t also include these skills and strategies of the heart.
Identifying the root cause of any problem makes it easier to establish concrete and targeted strategies to mitigate it. “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in,” advised South African theologian and civil rights activist Bishop Desmond Tutu.
The fundamental causes of our current dilemma won’t be found or solved in only numbers and statistics. If that were the case, we would have already solved them. Before we can begin to course-correct ourselves, we must address two underlying core reasons for our inability to realize the emergence of new and lasting solutions: Because of the debilitating effects of our chronic personal and collective trauma, our nervous systems keep us in a constant state of fight-flight-freeze, perceiving anything that is different as a threat. This has, over time, shut down our hearts. Until these issues are addressed and resolved, we will continue to lock horns, deluding ourselves that we are actually making progress.
The current global uncertainty and dysregulation have created deeper levels of fear and imbalances in our world system. This increases anxiety, confusion and burn out. We see indicators of this in national health statistics. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that the percentage of Americans suffering from severe depression and despair rose from 36.4 percent in 2020 to 41.5 percent in 2021. Nearly one in five adult Americans (21 percent) experienced mental illness in 2020, according to the U.S. National Alliance for Mental Illness—roughly 52.9 million people, which led to $193.2 billion in lost earnings. Add to that the reality that hate crimes and other acts of violence have been on the rise around the world.
We see acute examples of this chronic, impulsive survival response playing out politically and culturally today. For instance, some of us have taken a “fight” stance and are actively trying to tear down the system, forcing the process of change to happen before it’s ready to shift. We threaten the lives and safety of public servants and their families who hold different views, or we “cancel” those who can’t seem to keep up with us.
Others resort to a “flight” response, running as fast as we can away from the inevitability of progress. Holding onto a way of life in the past that felt safe and trustworthy, we create policies that don’t seem to meet the needs of our time. We ban books from schools and claim the right to believe whatever facts suit us. Other groups of us fall into the reactive response of “freeze”, burying our heads in the sand. Even though we can see the pain and suffering of others, we choose to not get engaged for fear of losing the things that currently bring us safety and security. We see the injustices of our time, but don’t seem to know how to be part of the solution.
Looking around, I think it is safe to say that our current ways of engaging and communicating are not effective enough to successfully address these primal biological, cultural and personal dysregulated impulses of survival—the fight-flight-freeze response—that lead to the breakdown of cooperation, “civil” civic engagement, personal agency and independent, critical thinking.
Therefore, whether we like it or not, we need to cultivate a revised and upgraded way of communicating that fosters trust and collaboration, and lessens the extremes of division, fear and mistrust – an approach that is not just civil or fierce, but a synthesis of both civil and fierce. We must move through the mental constructs that create separation, get back into our hearts and remember who we all are at our best.
That’s where my Fierce Civility Approach (which I’ve referenced many times) comes in. Its integral, human-centered strategies and tools help us cultivate resilience, meeting challenges with compassion, and deescalating tensions before they rise to conflict. For me, being in one’s heart is not some saccharine-sweet greeting card sentiment. It is a strategic way of being, supported by a comprehensive set of skills, that challenges us to embody courage, wisdom and patience in order to artfully and respectfully engage with those who are different from us.
So, Skeptical, I recommend you continue to question – in a healthy, balanced way – any information you receive. Trust your own intellect and wisdom. And perhaps consider that adding the conscious strategy to appeal to the hearts of others may actually increase the effectiveness of your goals and mission.
From the heart,
Joe
Learn more about Joe Weston and his work here. Make sure to c heck out Joe’s bestselling book Fierce Civility: Transforming our Global Culture from Polarization to Lasting Peace, published March 2023.
Have a question for Joe? Send an email to AskJoe@fulcrum.us.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.