I rarely proclaim to know “what’s wrong with this country.”

I have long been a disbeliever in the idea that any issue is a clear “us vs. them” or “there are two sides” situation.

Studying journalism in college approximately {REDACTED} years ago, and working as a community reporter for the first couple of years of my career, there was a clear temptation/trend/pressure to characterize nearly every story as a binary Party A vs. Party B story, or distill a complex issue down to a singular cause.

But because of my particular training, personality, lived experience, family position as the youngest of 3 siblings, or whatever other reason, I could rarely see any issue as having a simple cause or two-sided tension at its root.

So it is with some hesitation, but also a sense of possibly earned confidence, that I declare to anyone who will listen that so many of the problems we are currently staring in the face are attributable to a fairly singular cause:

The United States of America is simply too large.

I feel like this opinion immediately requires a few disclaimers:

• I have done little (ZERO) research on this topic.

• I do not mean this to suggest that I have a clear plan for fixing the problem I claim to profess.

• I am drinking (very good) bourbon while writing this.

However.

I’ve read enough about communities, technological advancements, and social problems to know that an ideal (maximum?) community size is around 150 members, technology doesn’t necessarily improve things as it advances, and a societal group with some capital can absolutely make things miserable, oppressive, and deadly for other groups.

So with the U.S. population approaching 342,500,000 as of this writing, it seems like we might be too large to have meaningful connections by a factor of over 2 million.

And with so many people who don’t know each other, we will continue designing and implementing technology and tools that miss the mark in terms of inclusivity, utility, and true connection.

With so many people in this nation, the tribalism and “us vs. them” mentality that has already firmly planted itself will only deepen divides and cause further fractures in large communities.

This all sounds pretty rough. And it is. And as stated earlier, I have no evidence-based solutions to offer. But that doesn’t mean I won’t plant a seed in your head.

Though I am now firmly agnostic, I was raised Catholic and had wonderful godparents. My godmother happened to be a nun. Not just any nun, but a community pillar in my town. She started a “pantry” at one point that was a literal storehouse of nonperishable food for less fortunate members of our community. Eventually, it grew to accept financial donations that helped folks needing food and housing assistance.

Knowing that the staggering number of causes in the world could cause decision paralysis, my godmother always advised people to pick a cause they cared about and donate to (and/or volunteer with) it regularly.

Similarly, former President Jimmy Carter, who I had the privilege of hearing speak at Google many years ago, talked about adopting a corner of the world in which you can affect some change.

Maybe your corner/cause is your family. Maybe it’s a local charity. Maybe it’s your town or county or state. Whatever it is, there’s no way you’re going to fix the entire country. None of us are alone. But if we go to work on the problems and opportunities that are around us, and we bond together and find other people who can help, and “we” includes people all around this extremely large country, perhaps we’ll chip away at some of the nonsense and awfulness.