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I Am Afraid to Be Alarmist, But I Think It's Time to Sound the Alarms

October 9, 2026

I increasingly feel that society is heading down a path of self-destruction — not necessarily through one catastrophic event, but through the gradual erosion of the small things that made society prosper for the past few centuries.

I listened to the New York Times interview with David Wallace-Wells about the concept of post-literacy, and it struck me how closely these ideas connect. We are losing not only the habit of reading deeply, but also the ability to engage deeply with ideas and with one another.

I grew up in a different era, I'll admit it. I grew up in an environment where everyone argued about everything and anything. Most of the time it was just regurgitating talking points, but every so often there were real debates — about how society needed to function, what was right and what was wrong, what policy needed to change. All of this happened in coffee shops, on the street, with neighbors. Now things are the opposite. We are lonelier than ever, and we have algorithms to talk to instead, whose only job is to reinforce what we already believe.

We listen to voices that validate our opinions rather than challenge them. Where are the thoughtful, respectful debates in which people genuinely listen, question their own assumptions, and remain open to changing their minds? Disagreement used to be an opportunity to think more deeply. I loved listening to debaters who quoted different authors. Yes, some of it was showing off that they'd read widely — of course it was. But it raised in me the desire to go search more, read more, come up with a better idea of my own. Now, too often, disagreement becomes a reason to dismiss, attack, or disconnect from one another.

Even our entertainment has shrunk to short clips. I'll admit it — I have a hard time reading something from beginning to end without looking at my phone. Low-effort entertainment is simply easier than the work of debate, and it has outcompeted it. And once that happens, it becomes self-reinforcing: I don't particularly want to argue or engage, because it feels like no one around me wants to either. Nobody picks the harder conversation when the quickest form of "fast food" entertainment — a clip, a snippet, a video — is sitting right there.

My biggest concern is that we are losing the very skills that make a functioning society possible: critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, empathy, and the ability to have difficult conversations. I see it at home — my kids want only to watch TV, and reading is a struggle. How do we make reading fun again, instead of a chore? Because a society that loses its capacity for thoughtful dialogue may eventually lose its capacity to correct itself. And that is what worries me most.

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