The Way Forward.

If you woke up feeling helpless, lost, or unable to explain to your kids what just happened, I hope this can help.

The last thing any institution, country, or civilization does before they take an evolutionary step is radicalize. It’s the past, holding on, white-knuckled, to itself. It’s resistance.

What we’ve got here in the United States is conceptually similar to what the Middle East has been dealing with for the last several years. The rise of radicalism isn’t just due to sustained war and conflict, it’s also due to human progress. The glimmers of progressive hope seen in movements like the “Arab Spring,”or in capitalism entering into previously heavily-controlled markets are met with resistance by older generations who are not only averse to change, but are viscerally opposed to it. By definition, change means the status quo is no longer in control. And it’s frightening to the side that feels like they are being unfairly forced to see things differently. We’re lucky that in this country, people generally speak with their votes.

We talk about this in business all the time, but the business application of change aversion seems so trivial at a moment like this, especially if this wasn’t the change you were looking for. Change agents are abrasive and create friction. It’s why they get paid attention to. But one of the main reasons why agents of change don’t find success is because they lack the ability to appeal to an audience that is reluctant to change to begin with. If you’re a change agent, the only way to get your audience to come around is for them to truly believe that you understand what they are feeling — because you feel that way too. Empathy. That you know their problems because you feel them too. That you can help them achieve and be more, because you want to do that too.

Barack Obama did this with aplomb and grace in 2008. Donald Trump did it with brute force in 2016. In an election where nearly 70% of people cited change as their primary vote driver, maybe we should have seen this coming.

But we all know that change takes time. And every President only gets 4–8 years to make what they see as progress, in spite of increasingly difficult obstacles that lie in their way. Yet in a world of increasingly instant gratification, we expect effects way sooner than ever before. I worry that progress is too subjective a concept for too many impatient people.

So the only thing we can do now is learn some very valuable lessons, and then apply the shit out of them.

We must learn how to be more empathetic. We have to be able to see things from other people’s perspectives and reason with them without dismissing them.

We must not give up on facts. While emotions will inevitably lead to a proportional response, we must not throw facts out the window. Acting on pure emotion has very unpredictable consequences, as we’ve just seen. We have to marry facts to emotion if we expect to compel enough people into action. But when faced with a decision between faith and fact, humans can make scientifically irrational decisions. Faith thrives with the unknown. Facts don’t help unless you believe they can.

To that extent, we must let data inform the narrative, but not dictate it. When dealing with human behavior, data has predictive limits. It should be used to inform action, not prescribe it. Never underestimate the power of someone’s emotion and the response that might follow. Humans are rational in hindsight, over time, but unpredictable when faced with a binary choice.

Never stop learning. Educate yourself. Help others get educated.

We must save journalism. Checks and balances will never be as important as they will be in the next several years. Without local journalism, national journalists can’t do their jobs. Without national journalists, government goes unchecked. The constitution was foundationally built upon this, and it is fundamental to the definition of these United States of America. We must also save journalism from an America that has become untrustworthy of it. In some ways it’s not that journalism was the big loser of this election, but that entertainment was the big winner. We have to unblur the lines between commentary and reporting, even at the expense of the almighty ratings and pageviews. When given the choice, people will hear what they want to hear. Maybe we owe it to ourselves to be more responsible with what we give them.

We must continue to fight for what we believe in. But speaking only to each other about it doesn’t expand the reach of the message, just the concentration of it. Social media has connected us all, but has also built walls between what we and others see every day. Respect different points of view and learn how to win arguments and debates through civil discourse.

We must double down on our efforts to remove obstacles and empower women, people of color, and everyone in the LGBTQ community to move humanity forward. They are kinetic energy that has been limited for far too long. It’s time for that positive energy to be unleashed.

We must love each other more. Love does trump hate. But hate is visceral and urgent, while love takes time. We must rise up and make love, support, and tolerance active. These must not be passive, fuzzy concepts. They have to be actions. We have to work harder. We can’t trust someone else to do this for us. We can’t just look to elected leaders; we have to be leaders. We live in a time where everything is being democratized; a world of seemingly infinite choice. But I’ll make it simple; don’t choose choice. Choose action. Don’t wait for someone to solve a problem. Don’t make a statement. Make a change. As our current president said, even the smallest words can make a world of difference. Don’t estimate your ability to make the change you want to see in the world. Get out and freaking do something, and bring as many people along with you as possible.

The best advice I can give you is to treat what just happened as a very weird, painful gift. You’ve been given a massive chip on your shoulder. You’ve been called into service. You have all the tools to make a disproportionately great and positive impact on the world. Use everything at your disposal. No excuses. It starts at home. It continues at work. It lives in our hearts and minds, and is fueled by our souls.

Don’t hide behind anonymous accounts. Be proud of who you are, but more importantly, of who everyone else is. Don’t get even, get disproportionately more empowered. Don’t get angry, make an impact. Don’t boo, and don’t just vote, do something. Build something. You’ve got the next 4 years and everything in you to fix things in ways that a big, slow, bureaucratic organization will seemingly take forever to do on its own.

While it feels like the wind is in your face, the wheels of progress keep turning. And change doesn’t always equal progress. Great progress no longer comes from the government. It comes from its people. It comes from you. You can be the next great generation. You can keep those wheels turning. And you can make them turn faster.

You don’t know what happiness truly feels like unless you’ve felt pain. And you don’t know what success feels like unless you’ve also had failure. The strong ones bounce back even stronger. We are strong.

Set a goal. Work with others. Track your progress. Share it with the world.

And yes, no matter what happens, we are stronger together. Let’s be the strongest and keep moving forward, while bringing along the wisdom of — and respect for — the past. We can and will be better, sometimes we just need a push.

Consider yourselves pushed. The next 4 years won’t define America, but they can define you. Make the most of them. No excuses.