This is exactly the sort of book I’m anxious to tell you I deeply appreciated.
It was like a very long version of a Wait But Why blog post with a lot of references and footnotes.
Urban offered a framework for looking at our modern political climate—U.S.-centric but not U.S. exclusive—as more than just a horizontal range of stances. He included a vertical dimension of high-rung (principled, fact-based, collaborative) and low-rung (tribal, authoritarian, unquestioning) behavior that spans the entire spectrum. Many other framing devices and symbols made it easy to follow along as things progressed.
His underlying belief that humility is vital, and we do better listening and arguing and working together rather than fighting each other, is one that resonates with me.
That same notion is often classified as deplorable elitism, bothsidesism, rationalizing inaction or cowardice, or in extreme cases an act of violence—and he fully explores why that is.
I wish the book spent a more time with the more optimistic reflections and suggestions it ended on, because it was a heavy and occasionally gloomy read even though care and a sense of humor were apparent throughout. Some passages felt a bit frothy and redundant to me, but I don’t know how I’d be able to write this book without all-caps passages and/or collapsing into despair.
It was encouraging to see someone else value the idea that we’re more alike than we’re not, and helpful to hear how Urban struggled against his own low-rung nature writing the book. That we each resort to threat-response animal thinking and need to remind ourselves to climb.
I imagine lots of people will despise this book, whether that’s reality or my skewed impression of it. And either way that’s fine. I even look forward to reading responses to it.
It was a useful and faintly heartening read for me. If you feel entitled to lecture me, please don’t. If you’re inclined toward any conversation at all, I’d love to hear from you.