When my football coach would scream, “Dial it down!” it usually meant we were too caught up in the adrenaline of the moment. We were vibrating at a frequency that invited chaos; we were out of control and risked doing something really stupid. Of course, I heard the expression in other places, though usually with a mechanical literalism. When my mother got into the car with me, her hand would immediately drift toward the dashboard: “Turn it down,” she’d say, referring to the radio. In those days, “down” was a physical direction—a knob turned counter-clockwise to reclaim silence.
Lately, however, the phrase “dial it down” feels less like an instruction and more like wishful thinking. It has become a quiet prayer that our cultural dialogue, political rhetoric, and social media feeds would somehow temper their hateful and caustic tones. I find myself relishing the memory of a day when the phrase was reserved for the volume on a record player, not the baseline temperature of a conversation. I have spent a lot of time recently speculating on what it would actually take to “dial it down.” History often suggests that a common enemy or a foreign conflict is the only thing that unites a fractured house, but going to war or invading other countries will hardly accomplish this end. We cannot bomb our way back to civility.
Instead, I believe the “dial” we are looking for is not found on a battlefield, but in the smaller, quieter corners of our daily lives. Here are some ideas:
- We have become a “real-time” society, where the speed of our response is often mistaken for the quality of our thought. Dialing it down starts with the intentional reintroduction of the “gap”—that space between hearing something that offends and hitting “send” on a retort. If we can widen that gap by even a few seconds, we allow the prefrontal cortex to catch up with the amygdala.
- The “caustic tone” of modern life stems from our habit of categorizing people before we have even met them. When we see a “type” rather than a person, the volume naturally goes up. Dialing it down requires us to replace judgment with a question. Instead of “How can they think that?” we might try, “What experiences led them to that conclusion?” Curiosity is a low-decibel activity; it requires leaning in rather than shouting over.
- There is a massive, multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to keeping our dials turned to full volume. From cable news cycles to algorithmic feeds, anger is the most profitable emotion. To dial down the rhetoric, we must become conscious consumers. We have to recognize when we are being manipulated into a state of high-alert and have the discipline to walk away from the screen.
- It is easy to hate an abstraction on the internet; it is much harder to hate the neighbor whose dog you’ve petted or whose trash cans you’ve pulled up from the curb. When we focus on global grievances, the volume is infinite. When we focus on local service—the school board, the community garden, the soup kitchen—the volume becomes human-sized again.
Perhaps my coach was right all along. When he saw us red-faced and panting, he knew that the game wasn’t won by the team with the most anger, but by the team with the most “poise.” We are currently a society playing the game with too much “heat” and not enough “light.” If we want to return to a world where “turning it down” only refers to the radio, we have to realize that the dial is in our own hands. It isn’t a national policy or a global shift; it is a personal, quiet, and persistent choice to speak at a volume that allows for the possibility of being heard—and more importantly, the possibility of hearing someone else.
Webb! Wow, so insightful and articulate. And the “ideas”… worth turning into some sort of template for positive change, in my opinion. Your closing paragraph is practically worth memorizing. Great work. Thank you.
Well done! I especially like the phrase “ we cannot bomb our way back to civility “.
Thank you for such a well informed and thought out Pew”
Thank you Roz. Hope you are being wrapped in snow and Rainer’s blanket of Love.