I quite like positing a dichotomy in the title of a post, but I’m not really a black or white kind of guy. All things exist on a spectrum and I believe pigeon-holing someone to be a tremendous disservice. That said, I recognise that in evolutionary terms our ability to pattern match – optically, intellectually, and emotionally – has helped the human species in many ways. I wonder if we’ve passed an inflection point though, politically.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Western society feels fractured to me, sitting in the UK as it rolls towards Brexit and looking across the pond to where Donald Trump is giving democracy some kind of unreality makeover. This kind of polarisation cannot be helpful and for recognising this, Joe Biden might see his campaign ending early. I’m not sure I’m looking for the ‘centre ground’, but I would love to see much more effort go into building consensus, giving evidence instead of argument, quoting trusted sources instead of partisan ones.

I’m saddened by how frequently we’re painted a dichotomy, when a delicate landscape of greys lies beneath.