Shared Life

Publisher's Note: Trumpism has upended American democracy in large measure by dominating the attention of supporters and opponents alike. It will succeed to the extent that it exhausts our capacity to imagine a new civic future. The intent of this newsletter is to provide an antidote to our exhaustion through a short daily reflection and a space for discussion to reclaim the heart of our democracy and imagine a better future for all. This week's theme is Turning Our Attention.

“The real world is not the world as we see it, but the world as we share it.” — Martin Buber

Democracy begins with the choice to live together despite our differences.

Before banners and ballots, there is the halting decision to yield our individual self interests for something in between. In his 1923 book "I and Thou," the Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber described the "in-between" as the shared space where people meet not as competitors or threats, but as human beings. "The real world is not the world as we see it, but the world as we share it," he said.

Our democracy is suffering from a profound social thinning in which there are fewer sustained encounters between fellow citizens, degrading the habits of attention that make others real. As daily practices of recognition have declined, our politics has become more abstract, divisive and cruel. We no longer recognize the life of our neighbor as part of our own.

Edward Hopper’s "Nighthawks" is a portrait of this contemporary alienation: Four people arrive in the same space at the moment in time, yet remain sealed within themselves. But the American realist painting also asks us a deeper civic question: What is preventing us from turning to each other? We have become conditioned to see others as bystanders to our individual lives rather than partners in belonging.

The long work of building a just democracy for all is often reduced to a contest between policies and identities, but this belies a more consequential political reality. Survey research reveals that more and more Americans are living lives of increasing loneliness, mistrust, and the aching sense that no one is listening.

We will not stop the authoritarian slide in this country with mere persuasion. It will only happen when we cultivate the “in-between” where we meet and see one another and absorb each other's stories into our own.

We will reclaim our democracy when we start living with a sense of shared life.

1. Martin Buber, "I and Thou" (1923).
2. Edward Hopper. "Nighthawks" (1942). Art Institute of Chicago.

COMING TOMORROW: Power to the People