How to Fix America’s Broken Mind

One of the most devastating truths about modern America is that we are becoming a nation that cannot think clearly, feel deeply, or act courageously. In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt expose the “great untruths” that have hollowed out our culture: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, Always trust your feelings, and Life is a battle between good people and evil people. These lies have eroded our ability to handle discomfort, embrace complexity, or see nuance. Instead, we’ve glorified fragility, demonized dissent, and reduced our political and cultural debates to tribal shouting matches.

If this diagnosis feels harsh, the 2024 election confirms just how far we’ve fallen. This wasn’t just another political battle—it was a wake-up call for a nation in free fall. A society that reelected a leader embodying moral decay and gave full-throated endorsement to depravity and delusion is troubling enough. But perhaps more telling is the widespread apathy, with millions opting out of the process entirely. It’s not just a political failure; it’s a glaring symptom of a society mentally, emotionally, and spiritually adrift. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that fragility and avoidance have crippled individuals. The election shows that these same forces are now defining our collective psyche.

This is bigger than one election. It’s about how we’ve lost the ability to face real problems, wrestle with disagreement, and come together to build solutions. If we want to fix the American mind, we need a radical shift—one that confronts hard truths about who we’ve become and what it will take to change. Let’s break it down and figure out how we reclaim our sanity, our strength, and our future.

Focus on Real Problems

America’s biggest challenge isn’t just broken systems—it’s our distraction from fixing them. While climate change accelerates, healthcare costs spiral, and inequality grows, we let politicians and pundits drag us into endless arguments over symbolic issues. Culture wars over books, bathrooms, or “wokeness” dominate the headlines, not because they matter most, but because they’re designed to keep us divided. These distractions sap our energy and prevent us from addressing the root causes of our most pressing problems.

Demonizing each other isn’t just destructive—it’s a dangerous distraction. When we reduce people with different beliefs to caricatures of evil, we not only shut down dialogue but also divert our focus from the real culprits: corrupt politicians, unaccountable institutions, and greed-driven corporations. These entities thrive on our division, using outrage and fear to deflect attention from their harmful behavior. While we waste time tearing each other apart, they quietly consolidate power, rig systems, and pass policies that deepen inequality and injustice. Demonizing individuals allows the truly destructive forces to operate in the shadows, unchecked. If we want real change, we need to stop directing our anger at one another and start focusing on the systems and power structures that actually shape our lives. Disagreement doesn’t make us enemies—letting ourselves be divided does.

The antidote is obvious but uncomfortable: cultivate intellectual humility and rigorous debate. We need to reintroduce the concept of good faith discourse, where people argue ideas instead of attacking each other’s character. Complex problems like climate change, healthcare, and systemic inequality can’t be solved with bumper-sticker slogans or TikTok soundbites. They require a culture where people take responsibility for seeking out diverse viewpoints, engaging in critical thinking, and being open to uncomfortable truths.

Real change doesn’t start with politicians—it starts with us. If we stop letting them and the media dictate what’s important, we can shift the focus to solving actual problems. That means ignoring distractions, calling out bad-faith arguments, and demanding policies that address the root causes of issues. It also means holding ourselves accountable for seeking understanding before insisting on being understood.

Teach Systems Thinking

Americans have a fatal blind spot: we suck at systems thinking. This means we focus on immediate symptoms of problems while ignoring the underlying systems that create them. Instead of zooming out to see the big picture—the web of interconnected forces driving these issues—we latch onto surface-level explanations that are simpler, more intuitive, and emotionally satisfying. The opposite of systems thinking is linear, blame-based thinking: reducing complex issues to individual choices, catchy slogans, or simplistic cause-and-effect relationships, while missing the structural and historical forces at play.

Here are three clear examples of this dynamic:

Crime

Linear thinking: Blame individuals for bad behavior and push for harsher penalties. Or, on the flip side, call for sweeping actions like “defund the police” without considering how essential public safety systems like emergency response and property protection operate.

Systems thinking: Acknowledge that crime is often a symptom of deeper issues like poverty, housing instability, inadequate education, and the lack of economic opportunities. Effective crime reduction requires investing in social systems that address these root causes while reforming policing to be both fair and effective.

Obesity

Linear thinking: Push individual responsibility with fad diets, gym memberships, and self-discipline narratives. Ignore how the food industry floods grocery stores with ultra-processed, addictive foods that are cheaper and more accessible than healthy alternatives.

Systems thinking: Recognize the role of corporate lobbying, misleading food labels, and government subsidies that make unhealthy food affordable and appealing. Tackle the issue through regulation, better education, and restructured food policies that incentivize healthier choices at a systemic level.

Polarization

Linear thinking: Treat politics like pro wrestling: a battle of good versus evil where “your villain is worse than my villain.” Blame individual politicians or media figures for divisions.

Systems thinking: Understand how the business model of social media platforms profits from outrage by serving up content that maximizes emotional engagement. Recognize the historical and structural factors—like geographic sorting and gerrymandering—that exacerbate ideological divides. Address polarization by reforming algorithms, promoting media literacy, and incentivizing collaboration in political institutions.

The inability to think systemically locks us in a vicious cycle: treating symptoms instead of causes, making short-term fixes that create long-term problems, and reinforcing the very structures we need to dismantle. Systems thinking requires us to ask bigger questions, like “What forces created this problem?” and “What incentives keep it in place?” It’s about moving beyond assigning blame and instead mapping out how policies, institutions, and individual behaviors interact over time.

Without systems thinking, we keep playing whack-a-mole with societal challenges, solving nothing and exhausting ourselves in the process.

The inability to see systems in action leaves us flailing in a culture of quick fixes and scapegoating. To repair the American mind, we need to elevate systems literacy. People must learn how interconnected forces—economic, social, political, and environmental—shape outcomes. Imagine if the average voter understood how redlining in the 20th century still impacts racial wealth gaps today, or how subsidies to Big Oil thwart renewable energy innovation, or how financial support of universities from Islamic theocracies foments anti-Semitism, or how gerrymandering has set up Republicans to have a perpetual electoral college advantage

A systems-literate society asks better questions and demands better answers. It stops pointing fingers and starts dismantling the structural dysfunctions that hold us back.

Personal Choice vs. Public Policy

America loves to fetishize individual choice. It’s baked into our mythology—bootstraps, land of opportunity, rugged individualism. It is why so many of us struggle to think systematically. While an admirable personal trait, the obsession with personal choice comes at a cost: we fail to distinguish between what’s a private matter and what requires collective action. Or worse, we assume that our personal choices should be public policy.

Take healthcare, for instance. The notion that “your health is your problem” ignores how systemic issues—insurance monopolies, pharmaceutical lobbying, and profit-driven hospitals—determine outcomes far more than personal lifestyle choices. Similarly, the climate crisis can’t be solved by “going green” while corporations pump out 71% of global emissions.

Fixing the American mind requires restoring balance between individual liberty and collective accountability. Public policy exists to solve problems that individuals can’t tackle alone. This doesn’t mean sacrificing freedom; it means using the tools of governance to protect the common good. We must embrace the idea that some problems demand public solutions.

Say Yes to Dignity, Say No to Identity Politics

The debates around identity politics and wokeness have poisoned our ability to build a society rooted in fairness and mutual respect. Identity politics, in its ideal form, is about giving a voice to marginalized groups who have been historically ignored or oppressed. But too often, it devolves into a zero-sum game, where grievances are weaponized, and power struggles replace real dialogue. Wokeness, meanwhile, has become a catch-all term, hijacked by both sides: conservatives use it to dismiss legitimate calls for justice, and progressives frequently wield it as a purity test that shuts down debate.

The truth is, the heart of these debates should never have been about left versus right, or “us” versus “them.” Protecting human dignity—whether for LGBTQ+ individuals, racial minorities, women, or anyone else—shouldn’t be political or polarizing. Yet, by framing these issues in partisan terms, we’ve made basic human rights controversial. This benefits no one except those who profit from division.

Fixing the American mind means saying yes to dignity and no to identity politics as a weapon. Dignity transcends identity—it’s about recognizing the inherent worth of every person. It’s about fairness, freedom, and equality, universal values that should unite us rather than divide us. Human rights aren’t “radical,” and they shouldn’t require ideological loyalty to defend.

We need to move beyond the performative battles and build coalitions that prioritize dignity over tribalism. That means rejecting the extremes: the conservatives who use “woke” as a dog whistle to dismiss progress, and the progressives who label every disagreement as oppression. Instead, we should focus on the values that unite us—respect, opportunity, and justice—and work to create systems that uphold those principles for everyone.

Spiritual Dissonance: Values vs. Behaviors

America’s spiritual dissonance is staggering. We claim to be a nation founded on moral principles, yet our collective behavior tells a different story. We tolerate corruption, cruelty, and greed while pretending to care about faith, family, and freedom.

This gap between values and actions breeds cynicism. How can we believe in justice when the justice system disproportionately punishes the poor and protects the powerful? How can we champion freedom while restricting women’s bodily autonomy or banning books? How can we preach “family values” while shredding social safety nets that support struggling families?

To heal this dissonance, we need a spiritual reckoning—not necessarily religious, but deeply moral. We must align our national identity with behaviors that reflect our best selves. This starts with holding leaders accountable, demanding integrity, and practicing what we preach.

Information Overload vs. Emotional Intelligence

We live in an era of infinite information and vanishing wisdom. Thanks to the internet, every American has access to more knowledge than any previous generation. Yet we’re more misinformed, manipulated, and emotionally reactive than ever.

The problem isn’t access to information; it’s a lack of emotional intelligence to process it. People aren’t taught how to discern credible sources, resist propaganda, or manage the emotional impact of constant bad news. Instead, we fall prey to confirmation bias, outrage spirals, and doomscrolling.

Fixing the American mind means prioritizing emotional intelligence in education and media literacy. Teach people to regulate their emotions, engage in constructive dialogue, and filter noise from signal. An emotionally intelligent society isn’t just smarter—it’s more resilient.

The Right to Believe, But Not to Legislate

One of America’s foundational principles is the right to believe whatever you want. It’s a beautiful idea, but it comes with limits. Beliefs that incite violence or violate laws aren’t protected, nor should they be. Similarly, your personal beliefs—religious or otherwise—shouldn’t dictate public policy.

This is where the American mind gets stuck. We confuse the right to hold a belief with the right to impose it on others. For example, you can believe abortion is immoral, but legislating that belief strips others of their autonomy. The same goes for climate denial, anti-vaccine rhetoric, or religious dogma in schools.

A healthy democracy protects individual beliefs but keeps them separate from governance. Fixing the American mind requires reasserting this boundary: faith and morality are private matters, while policy should serve the public interest.

Who Not to Blame

It’s tempting to point fingers at easy villains—the media, cable news talking heads, dead talk show hosts, social media companies, et al. They’re convenient scapegoats, and let’s be honest, they’ve earned some of the criticism. They have profit from division and dysfunction, amplifying the worst aspects of human behavior. They are enablers—monetizers of myopia, malfeasance, and meh. But blaming them entirely lets us off the hook, and that’s the last thing we need.

The real source of the problem isn’t “them.” It’s us. Our unwillingness and inability to confront our own bullshit. Our refusal to sit down and have rigorous, honest conversations with each other, especially with people who see the world differently. It’s not Zuckerberg or Murdoch or whoever’s running CNN this week making us mentally fragile—it’s our collective avoidance of hard truths and inconvenient realities.

Take the algorithms. They only work because we feed them. We click on clickbait, share outrage, and retreat into echo chambers. We choose convenience over curiosity, affirmation over exploration. Social media companies might have built the casino, but we’re the ones pulling the lever for dopamine hits.

Or consider the media. Sure, they lean into fear and drama, but they’re just reflecting what keeps us glued to the screen. If they served us nuance and deep context, we’d probably tune out. The problem isn’t just the supply; it’s the demand. We crave sensationalism, and they’re more than happy to oblige.

Blaming others is easy. Fixing ourselves is hard. But until we start taking responsibility for our own mental habits, our own biases, and our own failure to engage meaningfully with others, nothing will change. We have to stop outsourcing accountability to systems and start asking why those systems thrive in the first place. Spoiler: it’s because we let them.

We are the problem—and that’s the good news. Because it means we’re also the solution. If we can confront our own laziness, fear, and tribal instincts, we can change the culture. But that starts with us, not some distant, faceless “them.”

Dealing with an Identity Crisis—Personally and Collectively

On a personal level, overcoming an identity crisis or a fragile mind begins with stepping back from the labels we cling to. Who you are is more than your political affiliation, your job, your race, or your beliefs. Start by asking yourself: What do I value, and how do my actions align with those values? This kind of self-reflection requires intellectual humility—the willingness to admit you might be wrong and the courage to engage with perspectives that challenge your assumptions. Strengthen your mind by seeking truth, not validation, and focus on what builds dignity—for yourself and others.

Now, imagine America in group therapy. The first step would be admitting our collective fragility: a culture obsessed with winning arguments instead of solving problems. A good therapist might guide us toward a simple truth: identity isn’t the problem; rigidity is. We’d learn to stop treating disagreement as an attack and start building a national identity rooted in shared values like fairness, freedom, and opportunity. We’d confront our toxic behaviors—tribalism, performative outrage, and blame—and commit to good-faith conversations where the goal is understanding, not dominance.

If America went to therapy, we’d stop defining ourselves by what we’re against and start asking what we’re for. It would look like a room full of messy, flawed humans learning to listen, to challenge, and to grow—together.

Can’t We Just “Agree to Disagree”?

If we’re aligned on the problem and only debating solutions, then yes—that’s a productive kind of disagreement. But if we can’t even agree on the problem, then no—that’s just conflict avoidance. Worse, if we’re living in two completely different realities, we’re not disagreeing; we’re talking past each other entirely. And that’s exactly what got us here in the first place.

Disagreement itself isn’t the issue. In fact, it’s vital for growth and progress. The problem is our unwillingness—or inability—to engage with disagreement constructively. We treat disagreement as a personal attack or avoid it altogether, leaving misunderstandings and divides to grow unchecked. If we can agree on the reality of a problem—whether it’s immigration, climate change, healthcare, or inequality—we can have a meaningful debate about solutions. But if we can’t even share a common set of facts or acknowledge the same challenges, there’s no foundation for progress.

Sitting down and hashing things out is the only way forward. That requires courage, patience, and the willingness to confront hard truths together. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s necessary.

Do you and I disagree? Good. Let’s show how it’s done. Disagreement can be the starting point for real change—but only if we face the same reality first. My DMs are open. Let’s have the conversation.