I’m generally a very optimistic person. I have faith in humanity and I believe that the future is bright. However, observing how people have been acting over the last decade and a half, in person and especially online, I cannot get rid of the feeling that our modern civilization is suffering from a strong case of collective insanity. This is an imperfect observation, but it reflects a pattern I keep running into. Conflicts are brewing everywhere. From widely covered geopolitical tensions all the way down to our very homes. Nation against nation. Race against race. Rich against the poor. Left against right. Domicile against immigrant populations. Men against women. You get the gist. And it’s all so exhausting. I miss the world in which we could sit together, crack open a cold one, tipsily discuss our differences, laugh over and forget about them, and easily move on. Now everything is so needlessly complicated. We have to walk on eggshells in every conversation. Yet the antidote to this collective insanity is quite simple. Get educated on topics you’re discussing, owe what you’re saying, consider the possibility that your interlocutors can teach you something, take responsibility for your reactions to what they are saying, and don’t take yourself or your opinions too seriously. It isn’t easy, especially with people we strongly disagree with. But the alternative is worse, for our collective sanity and for our own.