Epistemic Secession: Can Democracy Survive Without a Shared Reality?

In a recent Outrage Overload live Q&A, Jake Mackey of the Connors Institute offered a powerful insight into one of the most pressing challenges facing American democracy today: epistemic secession.

“It’s not that we’re in a post-truth era or that people don’t care about truth,” Mackey said. “It’s that people have radically different concepts of whom they should trust—who has the authority to pronounce truths.”

As a result, ideological camps are splitting off into what he described as “epistemological silos,” where each side operates with its own set of trusted sources, assumptions, and realities. This growing separation means Americans increasingly fail to recognize each other’s understanding of the world. We are, in essence, seceding from one another—not geographically, but epistemically.

This divide makes democratic deliberation nearly impossible. “Democracy can’t survive under such conditions,” Mackey warned. “There has to be some broad consensus reality.”

At our partner, the Connors Institute, Mackey and his team work to bridge this divide—not by picking sides, but by calmly identifying problems on all fronts. They present evidence and context with the goal of nudging people away from extreme, distorted viewpoints and toward a more grounded, shared understanding of reality.

The hope is that, by fostering a nonpartisan consensus reality, Americans can once again engage in meaningful dialogue, make democratic decisions together, and move toward that ever-elusive more perfect union.

This conversation is just one example of the kind of deep, reflective dialogue we aim to amplify on the Outrage Overload podcast—because only by understanding the roots of our divisions can we begin to heal them.

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