In 2016, it was a blog post about the effects of globalization by economist Russ Roberts. Even as a libertarian, Roberts is great at considering all sides of an issue. Libertarians have a habit of being overly rational, but he is great at understanding the emotional impact of people's lives.
Last year it was this essay by Jonathan Haidt, which is actually a transcription of a speech he gave. It's a great look at the current state of our polarized country, how we got here, and how we can find our way out of the mess we're in.
He lists things that tend to pull people together and things that tend to separate us. I should note that he references a study suggesting that immigration divides people. Since that time, I have read about several additional studies that either show no impact of immigration on what he calls "social capital" and even some studies that show immigration bringing communities closer together.
I think the best part is where he talks about Martin Luther King's concept of an American Civil Religion. Currently, there is a lot of focus from both sides of the political spectrum on what divides us. King cared about what united us.
"The civil rights struggle was indeed identity politics, but it was an effort to fix a mistake, to make us better and stronger as a nation. Martin Luther King’s rhetoric made it clear that this was a campaign to create conditions that would allow national reconciliation. He drew on the moral resources of the American civil religion to activate our shared identity and values."For 2018, I think I already have a winner: Sebastion Junger's essay "The Anthropology of Manhood." For the first time in our country's history, men seem really lost. Junger does a great job of openly talking about why men are the way they are, and the pros and cons they bring to society.
"men are eminently disposable; kill most of the men in a society and it quickly recovers, but kill most of the women and it dies out within generations. Because of all these factors, a common definition of manhood throughout history has been a willingness to put the safety of others above one’s own."He makes some points that seem especially prescient in the aftermath of the incel massacre:
"As these gender-specific jobs disappear, it becomes harder for men to know whether they have anything essential to offer society... But the only way to guarantee membership in a group is to be needed by it, so being unneeded can feel catastrophic... The national suicide rate is known to closely track unemployment, for example, and after the economic collapse of 2008, around 5,000 additional people in 54 countries committed suicide because they had lost their jobs. These were people who no longer felt needed."Like Roberts, Junger doesn't call to return to the way things were. Rather, he looks for new and healthy ways to adapt society to our natural traits.
