There's a culture war going on in the United States today that parallels an intrinsic human conflict between communities and the individuals that comprise those communities. Both sides center on essential aspects of the human condition: to the left you'll find teamwork, generocity, hummility; to the right, self-determination, work-ethic, industriousness. Unfortanely, we tend to focus on the divide. We say that things are more polarized now than ever, and this may be true. But, is it helpful? Perhaps, if only to point us in the opposite direction - that we might get our bearings, turn around and meet each other in the middle once again. From there, we can march the march of progress together, rather than letting our path be muddied by an idealogical gap that pulls us in multiple directions at once.

We must strike a balance between self-determination and collective action while drawing from the benefits that both sides' values offer. There are urgent problems to solve, and neither ignorance nor denial will spare our species from the ultimate consequences of those problems and of our actions to address them - be it now or later. It's tragic that we cannot often agree on what the biggest challenges are - we politicize everything. This must stop. Humility and curiosity must be our guides toward truth, rather than an assumed confidence based on information gathered from limited sources or from searches for knowledge, misled by our own biases. It's perhaps easy to forget that both sides point to challenges that must be addressed. Laziness may be as threatening as climate change. Corruption as destructive as a misused firearm.