Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

We have entered the 'After Babel' stage of existence

Jonathan Haidt

On Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 3 pm ET (12 pm PT), Citizen Connect will stream “After Babel: The Fragmentation of Everything,” with special guest Dr. Jonathan Haidt. The program is presented in partnership with Florida Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities and The Village Square, an organization with a mission to build civic trust between people who don’t look or think alike in American hometowns.


Learn more about the program and register here.

Program description: What if, at a pinnacle of our civilization’s technological achievement, everything just broke — the institutions we’ve come to rely upon in navigating a modern complex world, the shared stories that hold a large and diverse democratic republic together, and even a common language through which to navigate the rising tide of crisis. According to renowned social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, this describes our current reality, one that he calls “After Babel.” In this new normal, we are scattered by a digital environment into feuding tribes that are governed by mob dynamics and driven by a minority of ideological outliers, made stupid at warp speed by group think, and — thanks to social media — armed with billions of metaphorical “dart guns” with which to immediately wound “the enemy” in ways that are hardly only metaphorical. What could go wrong?

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

About Dr. Haidt: Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He’s the author of four books, two of which became New York Times best sellers, including “The Happiness Hypothesis,” “The Coddling of the American Mind” and “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” — and the forthcoming “The Anxious Generation.” He’s been named a top 100 global thinker by Foreign Policy magazine and one of the world’s 65 best thinkers of the year by Prospect magazine. His four TED Talks have been viewed more than 7 million times.

Read More

Americans wrapped in a flag
Citizens are united and legislators don’t represent us
SeventyFour

Defining the Democracy Reform Movement: Rev. F. Willis Johnson

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's weekly interviews engage diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This series is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

The second interview of this series took place with Reverend F. Willis Johnson, an entrepreneur and an elder in the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio. Reverend Johnson provided a religious and spiritual perspective on the needs of this moment, which is different from many organizations that often receive outsized attention.

Keep ReadingShow less
Democrats are from Mars, Republicans are from Venus

A simulation of two planets in space.

Getty Images, Jose A. Bernat Bacete

Democrats are from Mars, Republicans are from Venus

As I think about Tuesday’s address by President Donald Trump and the response of Senator Elissa Slotkin from Michigan—a former CIA analyst and a rising star in the Democratic Party—I am reminded of the book “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” by John Gray published in 1992.

A sequel should be written today: “Democrats Are from Mars, Republicans Are from Venus”…..or vice versa since the planet they each are from doesn’t matter.

Keep ReadingShow less
Defining the Democracy Reform Movement: Julia Roig

USA flag on pole during daytime

Photo by Zetong Li on Unsplash

Defining the Democracy Reform Movement: Julia Roig

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's weekly interviews engage diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This series is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

I’m excited to start this series by highlighting an interview with Julia Roig, the Chief Network Weaver for the Horizons Project. Julia brings extensive experience working for democratic change around the world, and her work at the Horizons Project focuses on supporting and building the broader pro-democracy ecosystem.

Keep ReadingShow less
One party worked harder to build a bigger tent in 2024
Getty Images, tadamichi

One party worked harder to build a bigger tent in 2024

Democrats keep pointing fingers for reasons they lost last November. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new role leading the Department of Health and Human Services underscores an important factor deserving more attention: Democrats spent millions trying to bully Kennedy, Jill Stein, and other insurgents off the ballot rather than respect their supporters. They treated it as a strategic masterstroke, but their anti-democratic bet was a miscalculation.

In a change election resulting in the closest popular vote since 2000, hypocrisy was a fatal sin. Democrats would have benefited from embracing competition and building a bigger tent of their own, not fighting against voter choice. It was not enough to stand up for the rule of law and protection of voting rights. To build a majority in today’s America, one must embrace voter choice.

Keep ReadingShow less