How We Live and Think: The We vs The Me

How We Live and Think: The “We” vs The “Me”

Our politicians and social media platforms have been pitting us against each other in the name of capturing our attention and making money. Our technology habits and our individual outrage and isolation has led our society toward "The Me" and away from "The We."

Over the last few years, the last vestiges of a we society have given way to a me society. There are no headlines now. No lines at all. Everything comes at us. All at once. In an unending scroll. The Me scrolls. The Me shakes its head. Maybe the Me shares the headline. The Me moves on. The We are inundated. Empathy becomes a curse word in certain circles. Empathy becomes a tool wielded against the We. Collective gas-lighting and narcissism rule the day. 

  As inflation rises and we cannot afford everyday life, the stock market of me has freed itself from the economic reality of the we. Propped up not by the construction of homes or healthy employment numbers, but by big tech and the investment of infrastructure like AI data center warehouses. Propped up by the massive pharmaceutical industry and the increasing need for medical care among the elderly. Propped up by corporate profits and stock buybacks.

The powerful, the wealthy have concluded that the We is most useful when they are evangelically committed to their technologies…if they buy, if they click or passively consume the culture of the Me. The titans of tech encourage all of us to prefer what they prefer – that we stop interacting with each other and stop finding shared communities of support, and instead interact with nameless, faceless, at-your-service bots, more than willing to give summaries and suggestions for how we should work, how we should live and even how we should love. This has become our new collective religion. Seeking refuge away from others and into technology. 

The question of what is real and what is not becomes an ever-present plague on the information-stream of our consciousness. As if we’ve all been talking to a longtime friend who we've just found out never said their real name and never mentioned a heinous crime they committed years earlier. Still seemingly friendly in the moment, but now an unreliable narrator. That is our information ecosystem, already polluted by emotionally-charged content, now camouflaged by AI-created content. Original thinking is now becoming endangered.

The Me and the We collide in political discussions, which means they collide either on the surface or underneath the surface of most discussions. 

The Me demands: “Protect self. Keep money. People are threats.” 

The We demands: “Protect self and others. Give money to those who need it.” 

The Me demands: “Take and hold and lock the door.” 

The We demands: “Give and find hands to hold. Unlock the door.” 

The Me laughs at the we after closing the door.  The We fears the increasing power of the me, but the We also knows that we are greater than me, if we could only see each other and know our power.

The internet turns up the anger, fear and alienation.

The dance between self and the collective may be timeless, but never more urgent. Each day

brings possibilities while each day also brings the news headlines that sink us further into

resignation and despair, the future clouded with growing obstacles.  

The Questions: 

How do we remain optimistic?  

How do we retain a fundamental belief in the collective?  

How do we not succumb to the Me?

How do we restore hope for the future of The We?

For a healthier, more equitable, more united America and world?  

Authors/TV personalities/activists/politically-focused media

Jon Stewart (Daily Show, Weekly Show Podcast)

Ezra Klein (Ezra Klein Show, Abundance, Why We Are Polarized)

Stephen Colbert (TV )

W. Kamau Bell (comedian, CNN show, various podcasts)

Robert Reich (books, podcasts)

Heather Cox Richardson (historian, Letters From an American, podcasts)

Lulu Garcia-Navarro (NPR, NY Times, interviewer, podcasts)

David Hogg (activist groups: Leaders We Deserve, March for Our Lives)

Charlie Warzel (The Atlantic, Galaxy Brain pod)

Kara Swisher (podcasts)

George Packer (New Yorker, Atlantic, Great Unwinding -on decline of middle class)

Rebecca Solnit (Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me)

Tristan Harris (Center for Humane Technology, Your Undivided Attention)

Yuvel Noah Harari (Sapiens, other books, TED Talks)

Trevor Noah (Daily Show, stand-up, podcast)

Malcolm Gladwell (books and Revisionist History pod)

Katie Heindl (Basketball Feelings)

Heather McGee (The Sum of Us)

Benjamin Walker (Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything)

Roman Mars (99% Invisible)

Dan Harris (10% Happier Podcast)