The Buddhist Insight that Explains Our Broken Politics

The Buddha’s parable of the two arrows of suffering helps us understand why our politics seems so broken and harmful, and how we can fix it.

Our politics and political culture feel pretty broken. I don’t think many of us can take in the ways we engage each other on political matters and think it’s healthy. In fact, writing a week before the presidential election, political culture looks like nothing but suffering. We don’t like the government, we don’t like each other, and we especially don’t like the people who join opposing teams, or aren’t sufficiently supportive of our side. We vent on social media, shame mob outcasts and undesirables — and are quick to affix those labels to anyone with whom we have even the most mild disagreement. We “cancel” everyday people, destroying their livelihoods and sometimes lives, over clumsy jokes or insensitive comments — or just ignorance about the rapidly shifting fads of language and elevated terminology. Sometimes we even drive cars through peaceful protestors who just happen to be protesting in ways, and for causes, that make us uncomfortable or cause us to feel like our status is threatened.

There isn’t a single cause for this unfortunate turn, of course. Partisanship has grown. Social media…