The antidote to all of this, in the broadest terms, is *more reality*, more immersion in the finite here and now: more writing on paper; more gathering in person and in public; more looking strangers in the eye; more scruffy hospitality; more queueing for the supermarket checkout that’s staffed by a human, if there even is one; more feeling the weather on your face and staring into fires; more living as creatures, not machines.
It’s time to double down on reality. Things reliably spin out of control in human affairs whenever we relate primarily to each other, and the world, through abstract conceptual lenses. That’s what’s going on when we see other people mainly as *kinds* of people, as members of demographic groups, nations, parties, or representatives of social forces. (And there’s nowhere on the political spectrum where people haven’t been guilty of that.)
