NEW ON MEDIUM: “Under Pressure”: An Anthem for Empathy in an Age of Polarization

I’ve just published a new essay on Medium: it’s a lightly reworked version of a piece I originally published on this blog in September 2024, revisited in light of how relevant these questions still feel.

If you live in the United States, as I do, you run into political and cultural polarization almost everywhere. But polarization is not unique to this country. If anything, one could argue that as the world becomes more interconnected, it is also becoming more divided, with rifts within and between countries deepening over time.

Polarization is the opposite of connection, and connection has been a central theme in my scholarship and writing for nearly a decade. I keep returning to a basic question: What would it look like to emphasize connection—seriously, consistently—while people struggle with the problems of today’s world?

Back in 2020, as I was finishing my book Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Blame, I found a song that seemed to encapsulate (albeit cryptically) many of my thoughts about polarization, connection, the human condition, empathy, and self-awareness. I am referring to “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie.

My goal here is not to argue that my interpretation is the correct one. We will probably never know exactly what Queen and Bowie meant, and perhaps it is not even essential to pin down what they consciously intended. Some would say that real masterpieces emerge when artists let something larger than the individual speak through them. My goal is simpler: to explain why, in an age of intensifying polarization, “Under Pressure” feels like an anthem for empathy.

Continue reading here.
[This essay is not going to be included in the newsletter.]