Good morning, John.

Panics are not that unusual, but they do seem to be all stacking up on each other. This is partially the fault of the world, like, there are some really real problems out there, but I think that this is more than just, like, a normal reaction to an imperfect world.

We seem to be finding it easier to get angry and scared on a surface level, but hard to get engaged in deeper, more helpful ways. Now, sometimes this is because of, like, legitimately awful people, who find it useful to manipulate people into being scared, so that they can get them to watch their YouTube videos or follow them on Twitter or vote for them. But also it seems that it's just how communication works on the internet right now. 

It is easier to have simple takes, it is easier to share them. It's easier to make people aware of the definite, obvious, clear problem than it is of the misty, vague and uncertain solutions.

I think that all of these things add together to get a lot of people stuck in a place that I am now naming. It is... the Sad Gap.

Here's how learning about a new problem works: at first, you might know that a problem exists, but you aren't really aware of it - you're not worried about it. But then, as you learn more, you get exposed to the definite, real, concrete, inexcusable, terrible, frightening consequences of that problem. And often you are also exposed to the people who either create the problem or are preventing it from being solved.

And usually, though not always, this is presented in a way that is oversimplified in order to make you more likely to engage with content, because if you don't engage with content, then the idea doesn't spread. And so now you have entered into the Sad Gap.

Here, in the Sad Gap, it seems that there is quite a lot of evil around. Evil is what is creating the problem; evil is what is preventing it from getting solved. And from this perspective, it is very difficult to imagine how you, or anyone else, could ever solve this problem. And so the Sad Gap is the place where you mix together outrage and hopelessness. And that is always a place that is going to be filled with anxiety and depression and panic.

But, this is not the 'Sad Place': this is the Sad Gap.

As you learn more about a topic, you find complexity. Maybe you realize that fossil fuel workers don't imagine themselves as Darth Vader's super villains, but as the people who made it possible for your house to be warm and your refrigerator cold. And maybe you see that the cost of solar power keeps going down, and that we have, for the first time since the industrial revolution, decoupled economic growth from carbon emissions.

You see people working to solve the problem. Maybe you even become a person who is solving a problem. But you can't believe that a problem is solvable when you're in the sad gap, and you certainly can't help solve it.

Here's an incomplete list of things that I'm worried about right now. And it is - I dare say it - too long! But there's also nothing I'd take off of it, and likely quite a lot that should be added, but if I keep adding things, it's very easy to enter the Sad Gap on all of them, but hard to find the time to move through it to the other side on any of them.

Especially because the people who make content and the people who share content - which is all of us - are encouraged by our minds and by the structure of an internet that is designed to always keep us from leaving it, to only add stuff to the list and never go deeper on anything, especially because going deeper is way more work!

And so, we have all been driven into the Sad Gap on a lot of different topics, all at once, and I think that's bad. It makes us depressed, anxious and easy to manipulate.

And so now I have put you into a weird place: potentially into the Sad Gap Sad Gap. You now know about a new problem, and you don't feel like there's any good solutions out there.

And it would've been easy for me to talk about this in simpler ways and to blame more people. Particularly, I could've placed a lot more blame at the feet of social media platforms than I did. But I think that that would just be an oversimplification that would make us feel like this is being caused by evil, rather than by... it just being a problem that should be solved.

All I wanted to do in this video is to outline that this thing exists, that it is too easy to get to the place in knowledge where you are sad and angry and too hard to cross the gap over to being engaged and helpful.

And there are not always ways across the Sad Gap, but usually there are, but I do not have time to talk about them in this video, because I'm up on four minutes here. So John, I need you to tell me yours in your video, when I see you on Tuesday.