Ethos

The fragile art of loving in the '20s.

1. Collapse

The last time I ever spoke to Miguel¹, we fought about politics.

It was May 2022, and we had made the 4ish-hour drive down to Southern Utah that Friday and were headed back home on a Sunday evening.

On the drive down, we fought about politics, too, and we spent Saturday’s ride through Bryce Canyon National Park on the Thunder Mountain mtb trail burning through the tension that thickly (and persistently) divided us back then. The physical exertion eventually wore down the edges of our discord, though, and by the time we returned to our rented room on Saturday night, exhaustion had dulled our anger. That night, we found solace in each other’s arms, making love under the dim glow of my laptop playing the movie Sunshine, which we obviously were not watching.

For a moment, the world outside didn’t matter. We were just us again, wrapped in the warmth of each other’s familiarity, feeling connected and in love. Feeling like us.

But as we drove home on Sunday evening, our unresolved differences resurfaced and reminded us of the fragile truce we had built on top of a temporary agreement to stop talking about it.

He was on (again) about how Trump had won over the Hispanic vote. As he saw it, Trump had tapped into the “very real” concerns of “Hispanics in America,” particularly those of Venezuelans—Trump’s hardline stance against socialism resonated with Miguel, who had watched the collapse of his country and seen firsthand the devastation wrought by both the political left and Hugo Chavez’s, then Maduro’s, (socialist? communist? populist?) regimes. He argued that Trump’s rhetoric struck a chord with those who feared that the U.S. might follow a similar path if it veered too far left. He insisted that for Venezuelans, for him, it wasn’t just about immigration or the economy—it was about a visceral fear of losing the freedoms they had sought in America, a visceral fear that America would turn into Venezuela.

This was personal for Miguel, and that mattered to me. Indeed, it was one of the things I valued most about him—his perspective. He had lived through something I had only thought about conceptually and from a distance, and I witnessed his history’s aftermath play out in his day-to-day. His parents, still in Venezuela, were largely dependent on his remittances to get through life in the failed state. And his eyes would widen in fear, or sometimes close in pain, when recounting experiences watching neighbors pulled from their homes in the name of governmental expropriation.

I listened this time, too, as I had listened so many times before—none of what he said was anything I hadn’t already heard from him. And at that point, the only response I could muster was “I understand what you’re saying.”

After some silence, I asked him what he was looking for in conversations like this, with me. What was he hoping to achieve?

“Yeah, I dunno, maybe we just shouldn’t talk about it.”

“No, Miguel, I’m asking earnestly. What are you hoping will come of conversations like this?” I pressed.

“I guess I’m hoping you’ll see it my way.”

“So in order for us to stay connected with each other, I need to agree with you? You need to be right?”

My question was met with loaded silence. I could sense his frustration building, the way it always did when he felt cornered. He turned into a different person in conflict, and my question had hit a nerve. I tried to explain that I wasn’t asking to challenge him, but because I wanted desperately to find some way through this tension, together. But the conversation spiraled quickly after that—one word led to another, each more cutting than the last. I could feel us unraveling, our bond shredded by the outside forces of the pandemic and politics and cultural divides and collective fear and anger.

He accused me of not respecting his experiences, of dismissing his fears as irrational. I shot back that he wasn’t listening to me, that he only cared about winning the argument. I realized then that this wasn’t just another fight—this was the last one. I was too tired to keep looping with him like that.

I was devastated.

I am devastated, still.

---

2. Rupture

The thing is, talking was one of the things Miguel and I did best. From the moment we met, our conversations felt like the kind you read about in history books—those romantic exchanges that happen over drinks in dimly lit taverns. Where big ideas mingle with big minds and deep emotions and fiery convictions. The kinds of conversations that …change things. Change people. Change me.

These intense exchanges led us first into a deep friendship, then ultimately into a love that would take us through a magical summer together in 2019, then a pandemic, then a U.S. election and its aftermath.

There, too, were obvious differences between us. He had never been married or had children, and I was freshly divorced with two small daughters. Our lives were on different trajectories; his marked by the peripatetic freedom of someone who had no nuclear family ties here, mine shaped by the constant demands of motherhood and the lingering wounds of a broken marriage. He lived far from the place he grew up, I still lived within the same 20-mile radius of my childhood home. I don’t recall everything from his dating profile, but I do remember the words "Jack Kerouac" prominently featured.

But this also was part of the appeal—we both had a bit of what the other wanted for ourselves. He wanted a family, roots. I yearned for a less tethered life that would allow for my own On the Road hero’s (heroine’s?) journey. And despite the fact that we grew up in different countries, we shared many generational and cultural references, and our childhoods were shaped by similar music and movies and memes (“memes” in the Richard Dawkins sense, not in the internet sense.)

And we also shared a similar edge to our personalities, one marked by a deep existential seeking and constant sense of discomfort—like our lives were wool jackets that we both wore inside out and in a size too small. There was an excess energy to both of us, a dizzying passion, an itching, an intensity. This facet of our experience felt kindred, and we found solace in each other’s attunement to it.

And my God, the conversations! They were electric, a Venn diagram with enough in the intersection to keep us connected and enough in the complement to keep us interested and engaged. And because we were in a similar period of existential transition (he had recently lost his job as a geologist in Houston and moved to Salt Lake City, unsure whether he’d be able to stay in the country without his company-sponsored visa), we were drawn to a lot of similar voices at the time—voices versed in the skill of transition. Spiritualists like Peter Matthiessen and Alan Watts and Jack Kornfield. Psychedelic mystics like Terrence McKenna. Science writers like Michael Pollan.

But then, sometimes the conversations would veer toward politics.

When we met back in 2018, we shared many concerns about the tone and direction of the U.S. But while Miguel was deeply informed about the complexities of American politics and history, I was largely unaware of the intricate details behind Venezuela’s fall to the communist left—the facts, and more importantly, the lived experience. Miguel’s parents were both advocates of leftist ideals during his childhood. His mother ran in “hippie circles,” as he put it, and his father, a university dean and social scientist, was an intellectual supporter of the communist movement. That was until the leftist ideals gave way to authoritarianism, corruption, economic collapse, and humanitarian crisis.

His experiences, and opinions in response to them, became a counterbalance to the ideals I had maintained (and defended!) my whole life. And our conversations began to shed light on a hidden worldview that I wasn’t yet ready to see in myself. Naomi Klein explains it for me:

“On the democratic socialist left, we favor social policies that are inclusive and caring—universal public health care, well-funded public schools, decarceration, and rights for migrants. But left movements often behave in ways that are neither inclusive nor caring.”²

And in this way, our conversations began to reveal two different manifestations of my political worldview: the one I talked about, and the one I enacted.

During our relationship, I was writing for groups that included Ivy League researchers studying issues like anti-Black bias and the effects of police violence on inner-city students, as well as leading scientists working on mRNA therapies and technology. This was all happening in the midst of a pandemic, when George Floyd was murdered and the Black Lives Matter movement dominated the headlines.

I thought Miguel would appreciate how closely I was involved with these topics as we tried to make sense of the chaotic world of the ‘20s, together. But in reality, my approach—steeped in what he saw as an arrogance stereotypical of liberals—only drove him further away. Every time we disagreed, he would bring up his personal experience with communism and leftist ideals to counter my points. It was clear that at some point, he was no longer as concerned with the rigor and logic of my arguments. Instead, he seemed to experience only how I was making him feel.

At least that’s how I felt at the time. Back then, I viewed his skepticism toward academics, and top-tier academic institutions, as a form of subconscious anti-intellectualism that made him seem illogical and headed toward a full-throated endorsement of populism. But while we didn’t yet have this particular language, he was trying to draw my attention to how some progressive ideas are actually what Rob Henderson has described as luxury beliefs—those self-centered, destructive ideas held by privileged people that seem good but actually harm the marginalized. And he despised the hypocrisy he perceived in the way American progressives were living, and advocating for, their ideals.

And to be fair, I did notice a pattern among several of my friends and colleagues of that persuasion. I watched them loudly advocate for tolerance but refuse to engage civilly with anyone with different viewpoints. They preached inclusion, yet constantly resorted to name-calling and eye-rolling. I began to see it everywhere, because I saw it first between us—Miguel and me. “We defined ourselves against each other and yet were somehow becoming ever more alike, willing to declare each other non-people.” ³

But for every solid point he made, another would follow that took it in an unexpected or strange direction. For every concession between us, there was another point of conflict. It became clear that our conversations were less about reaching mutual understanding and more about defending the worlds we had each constructed in our minds (and algorithms)—worlds that, despite moments of clarity, were drifting further apart with every attempt to bridge them.

The space for lucid disagreement was closing, and that was the turning point for me—the moment I decided to stand grounded in love and try to work through our divide. It felt like my own little revolution, my own way of trying to heal the world’s division by healing the growing distance between us.

If we could make it through this, I thought, maybe the world had a chance, too. The entire ocean in a drop, so to speak.

---

3. Divide

The problem is, this was also the time that his pantheon of influencers expanded to include names that made me less comfortable—Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, and others that were creeping more toward what would later be called the manosphere.

But I had committed to my own little revolution, you see, and I was determined to stay open and engaged. The world depended on it! So, while my impulse was to dismiss these voices—and those of others he followed but I can’t now recall—as “ignorant” or “stupid” or or or… I realized I couldn’t do that without also dismissing Miguel’s voice. These ideas were important to him, and he was important to me. And besides, Miguel wasn’t stupid, Miguel wasn’t ignorant. He was a full human being, complicated and interesting. Miguel wasn’t just one thing—he was many things.

So, maybe, were these people.

It’s a funny business to start to tease apart people from ideas. In the art of persuasion, Aristotle argued that ethos—an appeal to the speaker's character—is one of three key elements, alongside pathos (emotion) and logos (logic). Ethos is not merely about honesty or moral standing; it involves demonstrating intelligence, virtue, and goodwill. These qualities, Aristotle suggested, determine the trustworthiness of the speaker in the eyes of their audience.

And trust, I’ve learned, is a fragile thing—especially when the stakes feel existential, as they did for Miguel and me.

I realized that while I often relied on ethos to strengthen my arguments—citing my proximity to academic work, the credentials of the researchers I worked with, and my perceived alignment with 'virtuous' causes—Miguel ’s ethos was derived from a different kind of credibility: his lived experience. I wanted him to recognize the rigor of my knowledge, the virtue of my intentions, the goodwill in my heart. He wanted me to understand his fear, to acknowledge that his perspective wasn’t a reductive “right-wing take” but the distilled essence of his life experiences.

And he gravitated toward voices who seemed to get that, and these voices seemed to gravitate further to the political right.

But… why should that matter to me? Or rather, shouldn’t that compel me to listen to them even more, given my natural propensity to repel them? Isn’t that how conversations work? A sort of dance, a call-and-response from different positions? Isn’t this how we do the work of letting the world do its work on us?

Even feminist bell hooks wrote about the tension between a person’s persona and their ideas. As Klein notes, “…she did not want the name bell hooks—the persona or the idea in people’s heads—to upstage bell hook’s ideas, and she understood that there is an unavoidable tension between the baggage a name can come to carry—its relative bigness in the world—and the ability of one’s words to reach people and be adopted as their own.”⁴

So, I began to look at all of these people as thinkers, humans who have thoughts. I figured if I could do that, maybe it could be the starting point for a broader way of being—one that allowed me to interact with the world differently, more generously, more openly.

Sure, I thought, Jordan Peterson’s conflation of femininity with chaos is problematic, but I can get on board with some of the other things he’s saying here.

I mean yeah, I continued, Joe Rogan seems to be giving a platform to more and more fringey people, but I do appreciate his openness and how he asks questions.

I looked for it, really I did (do?). I looked for the connective tissue between these influencers and their ideas and me and my ideas and Miguel and me and our hearts and our histories and then our ideas again. And I tried, in kind, to introduce my own influential thinkers into the mix—Jonathan Haidt seems to share some common ground with some of the things you just said, I’d plead. So does Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and [yep!] Naomi Klein.⁵

But ethos is a tricky thing. Aristotle warns that ethos is not merely an intrinsic quality but a relational one, built through the engagement between speaker and audience. It’s a strategy designed to inspire trust between people. It’s not isolated, it’s negotiated. Put simply, it’s something you create together.

---

4. Drift

As time went on, Miguel's ideas began to drift further into the realm of the implausible. Like a smile stretched too wide to seem genuine, his “cartoonishly broad conclusions” started to overshadow his more reasonable points, pushing them into the uncanny valley—Klein’s “Mirror World” where legitimate fears and concerns warp into hallucinatory conspiracy theories, creating for people an entirely new version of reality.

I wonder if he might say the same thing of me, knowing how the Mirror World works.⁶

For a while, I clung to my commitment to this revolution—my Quixotic quest to heal the world by healing the ideological rift between us. But, as you’ve known from the opening, it didn’t work. I lost that fight.

That was in May, 2022, almost two-and-a-half years ago. I haven’t spoken to him since, though we did exchange goodbye letters a few months later in November of that year.

And I guess, folks, that was that.

I’d like to say I’ve moved on since then—and sure, in some ways, I have. I’d like to say it no longer hurts, that I’m no longer confused. But truthfully, I’m still very much caught in the delicate and ongoing work of meaning-making. Which means it does still hurt. Which means I am still confused.

For years now, I’ve replayed our conversations countless times, trying to better understand how we bent and broke. I’ve wondered what I could have done differently to hold on to what we had, to hold on to him. And yet, maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point isn’t to find resolution, but rather to learn how to live within the unrelenting discomfort and uncertainty and not-knowingness that is the true nature of life.

And I’m not sure where all of this leaves me now, either. I’m still trying to glean some lessons in it all, trying to find the balance between conviction and compassion, between standing my ground and meeting others where they are. I’m still learning to navigate the uneasy terrain between holding space for others and filling my own. I’m trying to see beyond easy labels and reflexive dismissals, and I’m staying in conversations when the ideas start to feel threatening.

Well, I’m doing all of this sometimes. But sometimes, I’m just too tired.

And maybe that’s okay. I think it has to be…

…

I forgot to mention that Miguel and I went mountain biking that Sunday morning in Hurricane, before we drove back and entered the belly of the whale that would ultimately separate us for good. At the end of that ride, we sat on his tailgate under the cool, beautiful desert sky—sweaty, shirtless, beers in hand—filled with a sense of what I can only describe as Eudaimonia.

And he said something at that moment that I’ll never forget. He scanned the landscape, then looked into my eyes with a familiar, knowing expression:

“What else, huh?”

An acknowledgement that sometimes things can be that simple. Because he knew right then—and I knew it, too—that nothing else mattered but the feeling we shared in that moment. Nothing else mattered but that place, that dirt, that sky. Our connection. Our love.

Maybe.

Or, maybe there’s a lot else that matters, too.

…

Thank you for reading. Especially this one. It means a lot.

Love,

Danielle

1. Not his real name

2. From Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. This book rocked me.

3. Also from Doppelganger

4. You guessed it, Doppelganger

5. Fun fact, I actually get turned off by both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins at times, though I find tremendous value in much of their work.

6. I cannot fully do this concept justice here—you should really read the book. But, I’ll quote Klein’s summary here of the basic framework of this Mirror World metaphor: “The point is that on either side of the reflective glass, we are not having disagreements about differing interpretations of reality—we are having disagreements about who is in reality and who is in a simulation.”