Centered, Not Centrist: The Middle Way Out Of Tribalism

A countercultural movement that only begins when you do.

Demands that I “take a side” have long felt wrong to me. In high school, I recall being asked to choose a side and make an argument for nature or nurture, not for both. Is who we are based on our genetics and what we come into this world with? Or are we a product of our experiences?

I was shy and introverted, and at the time, I didn’t know how to voice my perplexity at the assignment. Looking back, I can see that what I wanted to ask was something like: Why is such a complex phenomena as human personality treated as though it has a single origin? If we agree there’s an interplay of both nature and nurture, wouldn’t we learn more from approaching this as an exploration rather than a debate?

Some 20 years later, I better understand just how deep our tendency to pigeonhole complex issues into simplistic dichotomies runs. It’s woven into the fabric of our political systems, our media, our language, and thus, our psyches. It may also stem from our evolutionary history and our tribal roots, w…