We’re Throwing People Away: A Gen X Perspective on Societal Polarization

Cancel culture used to be confined to celebrities, but now it’s trickled down to the masses and the next sentence that comes out of your mouth might be the one that costs you a friendship.

The repercussions of saying something even slightly controversial are very real, whether it’s running the risk of dismissal from a job, being cast out of a social media space, or losing online income. The speed at which narratives can be shaped and reputations tarnished in the digital age is unprecedented.

However, alongside the potential consequences of publicly sharing an opinion, we’re also siloing ourselves into an ever decreasing echo chamber.

We’re no longer listening, we’re no longer learning. Instead, we’re doubling down extra hard on the beliefs we already hold and we’re insisting that the idea of anything that doesn’t mirror our own thoughts or feelings is unacceptable. Unfriend me. Unfollow me. I’m blocking you.

As someone who deeply believes that boundaries are beautiful, I certainly support creating and maintaining them as part of a true self-care practice. Indeed, our inclination to distance ourselves from those who do not meet a certain criteria is often a means of safeguarding our mental and emotional reserves.

But are we protecting our peace, or are we putting up a plethora of barriers as a Keep Out sign to ward off the opinions of people we don’t agree with?

As a member of Generation X, born in 1974, I had a front-row seat to the evolving landscape of social interactions. We were one of the last generations to have had an entire childhood without social media. In the absence of the technology we have today, we enjoyed a simpler form of connection, one that mostly revolved around face-to-face interactions and telephone calls.

Generally speaking, we didn’t have to deal with an excessive amount of information, or confrontation, and in our then-smaller worlds, we typically surrounded ourselves with people who looked and thought like us. We weren’t overly exposed to much diversity or difference.

Things have changed since then. Considerably. In today’s world, it’s not just our school friends or colleagues that we’re interacting with. Our screens have opened up an extended circle that we have round-the-clock access to. But many of us are struggling to effectively communicate within that circle.

We have apps upon apps stored on a tiny computer we carry around with us everywhere. We sleep with it by our sides. We watch live reporting of disasters across the globe. We absorb instant commentary about who’s right, who’s wrong, or who’s too callous to care. We’re regularly confronted with a whole host of conflicting beliefs, and we might not have honed a skill set remotely capable of helping us navigate our way through any of it.

So we’re shutting down and we’re tuning out. We’re reducing the multitudes of an individual to a handful of comments they might make about any given situation. We’re saying this is non-negotiable and that is unforgivable. We’re criticizing, and canceling, and demonizing, and the circle of those we can count on seemingly gets smaller and smaller every time we log on.

Our tolerance is subsiding and our empathy is eroding. In which case, isn’t the answer to acknowledge our differences, stay open to learning, and above all, keep communicating?

I typically find that sentiment to be one that sounds wonderful in theory, and incredibly difficult, and sometimes damaging, in practice.

After Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016, many of us (myself very much included) struggled with the idea that anyone would willingly vote for someone who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. And that was just the very tip of the offensive iceberg.

My immediate tendency back then was to keep my circle close and tight. Trusted people only. And, in all honesty, as an introvert this isn’t a million miles out of my comfort zone. It wasn’t particularly hard.

At that time, I saw a number of Facebook posts pleading with people to do the very opposite. “This just leads to more division” they cried. “We have to keep talking to one another.”

But why? I wondered. Why did we have to keep open communication with people who apparently had no care or consideration for basic human decency? As a lifelong champion of women’s rights, I found it insulting to be expected to do anything other than protest loudly and pull my trusted people closer.

If someone is actively voting against the very values that we hold dear, if they are vocalizing their support to a person or party that seeks to attack or destroy what we are striving to build and protect, it’s extremely challenging to retain continued contact with them. It simply doesn’t feel safe.

After the 2016 election, we saw millions unite across the globe in what we believed to be solidarity. There were marches galore and the majority of people were firmly in one camp or the other. A clear line had been drawn. We stand for this. We will not stand for that.

Four years later, we were rising up once more to declare that Black Lives Mattered… or Blue Lives, or All Lives, depending on what sentiment you stood behind.

Except the line wasn’t as clear anymore. Unlike 2016, it wasn’t just a single line that had been drawn. Now, there were multiple lines, all with their own intersections. They weren’t new, they’d always been there. But not all of us had the willingness to see them before now.

We’d oversimplified our shared experiences and overlooked our distinct differences so we could feel good about coming together. We wanted the warm, fuzzy feelings of belonging but we didn’t really want to do the work of examining what was still unfair or unequal within our group of chosen people.

From that space, the intersections seemed to multiply, and as some of us tried our best by Maya Angelou to do better when we knew better, others burned out, or simply got bored.

Life carried on in its cruel or kind way, depending on your luck or your privilege.

And then there was an attack led by Hamas against Israel in October 2023. I’d caught a snippet of the news, but it was a post I saw a few times on social media that day that made me realize the impact of what had happened. “Your Jewish friends are not ok” the post said. And it was my Jewish friends who were sharing it.

I immediately remembered how the murder of George Floyd had gutted the Black community. Beyond anything they were able to describe. This act of despicable violence had broken them in a way I could try to empathize with but could never truly know.

I called my Jewish friends or left voice messages for them. I expressed my sadness at what they were experiencing. I thought the very worst thing I could do was to stay silent. It felt less important if I stumbled on my words, and more important that I at least tried to say them.

It was two months later when I posted a picture of myself on Instagram at a protest outside my local representatives office in Queens, NY. I was holding a sign calling for a ceasefire. Shocked and saddened as I was about the events that took place on October 7th, I felt that nothing could justify the decimation of Palestinian civilians.

The woman who took the picture handed me her Palestinian flag to hold alongside my ceasefire sign. There was no time to think about it, but later, in a moment of fear or panic, I cropped the flag out of the picture before posting. I wanted innocent people to stop being bombed, but there I was, afraid of a flag and the ire I thought it might incite.

As it turned out, the photo without the flag was enough to cause a huge reaction. I lost hundreds of followers within the hour and more over the coming days. People who had supported my work for years, specifically citing my core values of truth and courage as a reason for doing so, suddenly removed themselves from my social media circle.

Two brands that I was working with stopped responding to me. I lost Substack subscribers, financial support, and a close friend. I also received the most abusive messages I’ve ever had in 15 years of sharing content publicly.

Other people I knew who were also calling for a ceasefire received a similar response. But then I realized that people who weren’t saying anything at all were far from safe, and were being attacked for their silence.

Those who tried to hold the space for “both sides” were accused of not having the courage to do “the right thing”. Those who tried to “love and light” their way through it all were accused of spiritually bypassing.

Alongside the continued abuse, I received messages from people sharing that their decades-long friendships had hit an impasse because they couldn’t agree on what was fair and just as far as Israel and Palestine were concerned. One woman said that she “simply couldn’t bear to remain in contact” with a childhood friend because they had such opposing beliefs.

Then, the Block Party became a thing, and celebrities and public figures who had refused to speak up about the conflict were blocked en masse as a way of hitting them where it hurt.

I partially understood the frustration. These days I do have a greater expectation that people speak up about the things that require our urgent attention, whether they’re in the public eye or not. It often feels painful to see people turn away and refuse to comment on critical issues saying they “don’t want to get involved with politics”.

I found myself vacillating between sitting in judgement of others, for either their stance or their silence, and feeling increasingly aware that we were fracturing ourselves from one another.

In a conversation with my husband I shared with him that I’d never seen anything as polarizing before, online or offline. Personal circles were shrinking and most of us could only stand to hear the echoes of our own beliefs.

As always, I reflected upon my own actions. What was I doing? How was I helping or harming?

Was I happily following many different people with wildly different beliefs so I could confidently state that I was someone who was well-rounded in my gathering of information?

No, not really. As a sensitive introvert I often find the overwhelm of busy digital spaces too intense to be useful. In the same way that a loud, crowded room practically gives me a panic attack, I tend to find comfort and value in a more intimate setting.

If I felt triggered by what someone was posting, I’d unfollow them. If I noticed that a particular person had unfollowed me, I acted on impulse and unfollowed them too in (somewhat childish) retaliation. I told myself that it was better to cleanse my feed this way. But there was also a little voice inside my head saying “Is that really what you’re doing?”

Of course, it isn’t just Gen X who are discarding people who hold opposing views to ours. As we’ve seen, there are much younger students who are making no bones about who and what they support.

But some of us are saying goodbye to friendships that are older than those students. We’re letting go of relationships we thought we’d have our whole lives because we don’t know how to keep them. We’ve convinced ourselves that it’s all or nothing.

Now, it’s June and we’re heading towards another election here in the U.S. It’s fair to say that in terms of polarization, things are only going to get worse. It’s already happening.

We often see a lot on social media about living our best, messy lives. We’re encouraged to allow ourselves to be in a space of process and imperfection. To show up as we are, regardless.

Yet, in reality, we’re not making space for that. Our memes and quotes aren’t lining up with our behaviors. We’re throwing people away for the slightest perceived misdemeanors, and YES boundaries, and YES safety, but is that always the true intention behind our reflex actions?

We’re punishing one another for not being perfect. We’re holding each other accountable for the decisions our governments make. We’re participating in pile-ons that only serve to polarize us further. We’re unable or unwilling to consider how and where we’re perpetuating harm. We are fractured from one another, and we are failing one another.

And, we need one another.

When I think about the world I want to live in, the world I want to age in, I don’t imagine it to be a place where there’s no redemption, no forgiveness, no space for our human-mess. And this is very relevant to my work on aging and ageism because the values of a society impact everyone and everything.

Most days, I feel as though we’re on the brink of something. But I can’t yet tell if it’s collapse or repair. I don’t know if we’ll forever be in the ruins or if we’re slowly, slowly rising up.

What I do know is that we have to do better. I have to do better. Discarding and canceling people when there’s an opportunity for repair feels a lot like life lessons from the patriarchy. And look where that has led us.

When we banish opinions that aren’t similar to ours, we also banish ideas. We cement a story in our minds about how all things of worth and value, all things good, have to be perfectly aligned in accordance with what we believe to be true.

I’m not going to stop being true to who I am, or sharing what is authentic and meaningful to me. I'm not going to stay silent on important topics, or sign up for the impossible task of people-pleasing. But I'm also not going to stop interrogating my own beliefs, staying open to how and when I can do better, or being honest with myself about how I’m propping up the systems of supremacy that I challenge. This is a life-long journey for me. It won't end until I do.

Accountability and calling out harmful behavior may be crucial aspects of social progress, but it’s equally important to foster a culture that allows for nuance, empathy, and growth.

And that’s what I’m committing to as I muddle my way through these midlife years.