Third (and final?) post on BRAVER ANGELS: Let us cultivate “relentless optimism”

September 17, 2025

Dignity over Violence was the actual name of the event I attended via zoom Sunday evening, September 14.

I just looked at the photos I took; some I thought I took are not there. Oh well! I do have a photo of the third panel, one of whom I quoted in yesterday’s post, and another I referred to, who lives in Indianapolis, only one hour away.

Which reminds me, the very first national event is being organized to occur in Carmel, a suburb of Indianapolis, September 26-27. Will I go? Yes, IF I can find someone to drive us up there to share a room overnight.

Indiana to Host Inaugural National Civility Summit in Carmel

And IF so, this won’t be the final post!

In any case, here’s the one panel that I did get the one screenshot of:

Notice that Heather Blakeslee is there, as well as the Indianapolis person, Lexi Hudson.

The three panels addressed the same situation at different levels: individual, group and society at large.

This panel was the third and final one, the pie-in-the-sky visionary one: “What should society look like?”

Notes from their dialogue:

 

Jennifer: “My mother always said, when faced with a seemingly unsurmountable problem — grow to be bigger than that mountain.”

“Doing the work has made me less judgmental.”

 

Heather: “We cannot be a country where disagreeing in public is a death sentence. What we pay attention to matters. I too have gone through a transformation over these ten years. People are afraid to speak for fear of offending those in their own tribe.”

 

Lexi: “[This is] a crisis of dehumanization, where we fail to see the imprint of the divine in our fellow humans. . . Remember Michaelangelo: Adam reaches to touch the hand of God.”

 

 

Her book, originally published in 2023, has drawn high praise. Here’s one review:

#BookReview: The Soul Of Civility by Alexandra Hudson

This reviewer did complain, however, that her bibliography wasn’t long enough.

(I can relate to her decision not to frame it in the standard academic way by meticulously referencing absolutely everything she talks about. Indeed, I was commanded to go back and footnote my Ph.D. dissertation, which took to task the entire history of philosophy since Descartes. Turns out it took me only about ten hours in the Boston University library (and this was prior to the internet, 1971). BTW: I found numerous instances of plagiarism, which I gleefully included in the footnotes.)

Lexi again: “Remember the essential difference between civility and politeness.” Politeness has to do with manners; civility involves the heart — respecting the interior worlds of others.

Jeff from Carmel had read her book and was galvanized to organize the upcoming “Project Civility” in Carmel.

 

Many of the panelists in all three panels pointed to our culture of isolation, loneliness, and blame.

One of the panels included Manu Meel, head of bridgeUSA.org, for college students, who said, after Wednesday’s murder, the students’ question was: “What are we going to do about it?” And “We need the right tool for the moment. Now, it’s bridging through conversation.”

And guess what? Today, in my email feed, I see that someone has already taken it upon himself to hold a Bridge meeting at IU!

https://www.ipm.org/news/2025-09-16/in-wake-of-kirk-murder-iu-student-group-promotes-dialogue-over-division

Over and over again, all 12 panelists stressed the idea that what happens next is up to us. That each of us must take the initiative: rather than avoiding uncomfortable subjects, and “staying with what we have in common” (my default position since the covid con), we need to step forward in dialogue with those whose views contrast with ours. Especially if “the other” becomes emotional, and “threatens to go out of control.”

This is my chief fear, instilled in childhood: “How embarrassing! Now what? Do I just sooth their feelings; back down? Don’t want to hit back. But I sure do feel like it!”

Instead of getting revved up ourselves, let us open our hearts to their distress even further; heart-centered openness tends to melt the divide between us.

Opening the heart no matter what is NOT easy to do. It requires the learned capacity to witness: internally observing one’s own disturbed inner state, which then, we realize, is also what “the other” is feeling! No wonder one of the panelists above, Jacob Bernstein, was the head of the long-running Meditators Foundation. 

Over and over again, I remember panelists stressing that “we can’t just be against something, we must be for something.” And “Don’t give up. We must be relentlessly optimistic.” That “loving our enemies is the message of this time.” That “there’s a very great need to be heard — which requires listening rather than being triggered. Instead, take a breath and ask a question.”

One of the panelists called what we’ve encountered in the past few decades as “OIC, the Outrage Industrial Cycle: “Why aren’t we ‘influencers’? Because we don’t want to be outrageous.”

“Today the norm is conflict and violence. But what sells (now) is what isn’t the norm;  now it’s dialogue.”

“We’re living in the tyranny of the loud (virtue-signaling) minority, who say (our) “words are violence.” NO! “We need more talk, not less!”

And the problem is not just political, “it’s in our culture.” We must overcome isolation and outrage by finding each other, in community.”

“For each of us as individuals: how to cultivate curiosity, listening, resisting the whirlwind forces of division.”

And finally, stressed over and over again, “There are far more of us than of them.”

If you’re like me, you’re going to pursue this direction of relentless optimism further, by, for example, checking out the organizations that came together during this galvanizing two-hour event.

And, if I’m really a Braver Angel, I’ll have a story to tell there soon.

 

 

 

BRAVER ANGELS: “We cannot be a country where disagreeing in public is a death sentence.”

September 16, 2025

The above quote is from Heather Blakeslee, one of the panelists at Sunday evening’s event. More from her below.

I just went through my hastily written notes, to pick out quotes that resonated with me. I had told you I would go through each panel, doing this.

But first, I thought I’d take a look at some of the organizations associated with those on the panel.

Oops! After looking at them, I admit, I got roped in, subscribing to a number of them. Will I have time today to do the other? Or will it have to wait?

After some thought. . . yep, it will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

For example, here’s founder Heather Blakeslee of  Root Quarterly magazine again. In response to the CK shock she has chosen some articles from back issues and made them freely available, here:

https://www.rootquarterly.com/founders

I loved the introductory material so much!

“A thousand years from now, the first 500 years of our country will be considered early-American history. That means we are all founders, responsible and accountable for the direction of the United States.”

 

Obviously, Blakeslee assumes the US will still be alive in a 1000 years. Let’s assume that’s true, shall we? In other words, let’s set the direction of our intent, so that the universe may flow in that direction. US. We, The People.

And, when you remember that the U.S. will have it’s 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026; and when you remember that echoes of the very first U.S. Pluto Return (2022-2024, every 248 years) are still resonating now, guaranteeing Death, and possibly Resurrection, depending on how we respond (and not just react), then this moment — which radiates backwards and forwards in ever-increasing loops, is THE MOMENT when we must wake up, all of us, and stop dissing one another, hating one another, righteously calling each other out, pretending our perspective is the only right one, and so on.

BORING!

And especially of course, we must let go of violence. Violence which has been a feature, not a bug, throughout the entire U.S. history. Violence against Native Americans, violence against other countries, other ways of life. Violence against each other. Fueled by callous greed of the few — and fear of scarcity of the many. F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real).

Let’s face it: both the Few and the Many experience loneliness, isolation, lack of trust in each other. The causes of this are legion. We need to both identify them and pull them out by the roots.

This country is like no other. A nation of immigrants since its founding, our ancestors  gathered into a community of odd fellows that, since 1789, guarantees FREEDOM, thanks to the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

But of course, freedom of religion is and always was, an issue. Right now, it appears to be Islam vs. Christianity. And freedom of speech does seem to be constricted; in fact, our entire education system has been skewed in one direction politically and culturally. Freedom of the press? What a joke. MSM is “fake news,” most of us now agree. But so, of course, is much of the alternative news, including social media. And the “right to peaceably assemble?” Well, what just happened to CK?

Here let me quote from Maury Giles, the new head of Braver Angels, at Sunday’s event (which I promise I will get to more in full tomorrow):

“Real life vs. online. One is real, the other is contrived. . . . Why do we even call it social media? One is fueling the rage; the other is fueling the real. Braver Angels: Courageous Citizenship!”

 

He then calls the CK murder “the end of one chapter of BA (Braver Angels) opening to another. We who mourn together can be comforted.”

He, like virtually all the panelists, calls for a return to real life, at home, and with friends and neighbors, within our own small towns. They even have a name for groups that meet up: Porch-ing.

Let’s go hang out on the porch. Let’s each of us speak about whatever is concerning us. And do it without reserve. And then listen, truly listen, to the other person, whom we can see breathing, just as we are breathing; and let us seek each other’s eyes, and yes, truly listen, to their point of view, though it may be diametrically opposite to ours. That’s okay. That’s called free speech. Let’s be outrageously courageous, eh?

And love one another. Just love one another. No matter what another person thinks, know that, like our own mind, theirs has been filled, both voluntarily and involuntarily, with all sorts of ideas that come from the outside, not the inside. That the sources of such “news” are literally infinite and increasing, thanks to the internet. That each of us must remember to listen to our breathing, and our own hearts beating, knowing that we are vulnerable, equally vulnerable, to violence coming from not just the outside but the inside, where our unconscious dwells, often full of awful ideas that we deny consciously, but which then flash out as projections, upon another.

Pay attention to our own inner worlds, and the outer world will take care of itself. 

The universe radiates endlessly, out and in from each of us — our core, our intuitive-right-brain-heart-connection to source.

Yes, the universe radiates out, from YOU.

Whatever you express, will amplify.

 

Just the kind, bright look in your eye;

Just the slight lip curve signaling smile;

speaks volumes.

We relax.

Our culture’s drift

into isolation, loneliness,

dissolves.

Souls engaged. 

 

In my nearly 83 years, I have learned this, over and over and over again.