We won’t resolve our differences by focusing on our differences.

The point you make here is brilliant.

And ultimately, this is really it, isn’t it?

It all comes down, in the end, to the question: what do we still share?

As globalisation has pushed the world closer and closer together, forcing people everywhere to interact with people very much unlike them, the response has often been to retreat ever deeper into the folds of one’s original tribe.

Driving the worldwide waves of populism is the idea of being surrounded by people who don’t share one’s values and the perceived need, in response, to cohere ever closer to those who do.

Behind it is a psychology of fear and uncertainty that seeks the familiar. It’s this seeking of the familiar that drives not only our increasingly tribal behaviour, but also our increasing nostalgia with the past as our vision for the future. (Never mind that the golden age is always just far back enough that its more negative realities are easily downplayed.)

This schism will not be healed by arguments or soundbites or mockery. They have their place (in preaching to the choir) but they also highlight the otherness of others. It will be healed, if at all, only when we recognise each other in each other.

Only when we focus on our many shared realities, and less on our more obvious differences.

But healing requires at least one side to make the first move.