Stay civil

Brexit is massively complex and our politicians are grappling with it, and this takes time. It’s a wicked, complex problem that can’t be “solved” by this or that amendment. As we’ve seen this week, any “solution” offered by one faction is condemned by the rest.

All we can do is make progress, bit by bit, until one day it downgrades from a complex problem to a complicated one. It will become more tame, eventually, and when sacred red lines fade into pink, then grey, everyone moves on a bit more.

It will take as long as it takes.

In the social media age, we expect the complex outer world to match our sense of what’s right and we’re encouraged to express indignation when it doesn’t, leading to self-feeding spirals of outrage.

We delegated this Brexit thing to our representatives. Maybe we should tone down the opprobrium and give them space to work through it.

Meanwhile, we can stay civil, appreciate each other, nurture the ties that bind, as well as the norms that make this place still one of the best to live in on earth.

(People’s Vote March, London, 23/03/19. Photograph by John Lubbock/CC BY-SA 2.0)