Episode 49: From Common Ground to Higher Ground: A Profoundly Hopeful Moment for America

We convene this Friday night at a moment of liminality in America: We’re on the verge of a new administration, but with as much polarization as ever. Our democracy survived (so far) an election in the midst of a social media storm and a pandemic… but our challenges are as great as any time in history.

Tonight were joined by American History scholar Cordell Carter from the Aspen Institute to consider how we govern, seek compromise, and build going forward. What can we learn about how our institutions worked and what’s profoundly different in America. How might this be a moment of rebirth and reimagining rather than a repeat the partisan and conspiratorial livestream we’ve been living through. 

We’ll have Dr. Kat (Karen) Schrier, Director of Games and Emerging Media at Marist College and author of an important new book on how we help the next generation learn about ethics, civics, and empathy. She has spent her career exploring the role of play can help us solve problems, grow, discover insights, and make change happen. She’ll share her findings and insights about how we move forward together in a way that builds a more hopeful and inclusive society.

And then Rabbi Irwin Kula returns to Quarantime! to ask, “How we might establish not common ground, but higher ground?” Perhaps, he suggests, polarization is actually healthy at a time when we are arguing about serious issues. Rather it is splitting and dissociating that is the problem. Our political class and media business models have exploited the polarization and “forced” the splitting.

“We the people”– who voted enmasse even in the midst of a deadly pandemic, who ensured there was no violence in the thousands of polling places where people lined up for hours, and who sorted and counted and guarded and protected every ballot –now need to find a way back to each other. We have never had the technological capacity to have these sorts of conversations and to learn about each other the way we do today. It requires us to lean in and try to understand our fellow citizens’ fears and hopes, to help each other manage the loss that always comes with change, and most importantly to protect and ensure the dignity of fellow citizens.

A Fascinating moment. Tonight on Quarantime!