Plumping up in Community

Recovering our Humanity Together

We are flattening one another.

Not physically, but socially, emotionally, and morally—and we’re doing it so often it’s starting to feel normal.

Do you remember Saturday morning cartoons?

As a child of the 70s and 80s my Saturday mornings were often spent watching cartoon characters get flattened, squashed, steam-rolled, dropped from great heights, or smashed into the ground. A character would be reduced to a pancake, an accordion, a smear on the road—only to shake it off, inflate back into shape, and chase again. No lasting harm done.

It always felt like the character being squashed had it coming. He (and it was almost always “he”) earned his flattening due to his chasing, scheming, and plotting harm while the “good” character got a moment of relief, even triumph. And a laugh.

It’s funny in cartoons.

It’s not funny in real life.

Because real human beings don’t snap back so easily.

What I think social media, screens, and digital technology are doing to us is flattening us—squashing us into two-dimensional versions of ourselves. They distort our shape. They strip away depth, context, tone, and complexity. They turn living, breathing people into profiles, positions, talking points, and avatars.

Flattened people are easier to dismiss. Easier to mock, dehumanize, disrespect.

When someone is reduced to a caricature, it becomes tempting—even satisfying—to steam-roll them. To drop an anvil on their argument. To feel righteous in our victory. And because we aren’t face-to-face, because we don’t see bodies or hear breath or feel the weight of another person’s presence, it can feel like no real harm is being done.

But harm is being done.

What works as slapstick in a cartoon becomes cruelty in human relationships. Flattening stops being funny when the subjects are flesh-and-blood people who don’t magically reinflate when the scene ends.

So the question becomes: how do we resist flattening one another?

How do we create the conditions for people—including ourselves—to regain dimension, depth, and dignity?

Monica Guzmán, in her book I Never Thought of It That Way, offers a helpful framework. She describes the conditions necessary for bridge-building conversations—conditions that allow people to reconnect as humans and reweave the relational fabric we’re wired for as a species. She imagines these conditions as dials on an old-fashioned controller or walkie-talkie.

There are five dials, and the quality of a conversation depends on finding the right balance among them. When enough of these dials are turned up—not perfectly, but sufficiently—the chances that a conversation will deepen understanding or build connection rise dramatically.

The five dials are:

• Time

• Attention

• Parity

• Containment

• Embodiment

When we give a conversation time, and offer real attention; when we meet one another on relatively equal footing; when the exchange is contained—private, not performative, bounded by shared agreements; and when we are embodied—ideally in the same room, or at least looking into one another’s faces—something shifts.

People start to regain their shape.

If too many of these conditions are missing, flattening becomes almost inevitable. We jump to talking points. We push agendas. We score points for an imagined audience. We stomp on boundaries. We drop boulders in the road and call it debate.

This is not how we find our way forward—as a nation, as families, as neighbors, or as friends.

What I am committing to in my own life is this: choosing to plump up in community. Choosing depth over distortion. Choosing presence over performance. Backing away from the temptation to squash others just to feel right, justified, or victorious.

Here is my invitation to you.

What is one conversation that deserves more dimension?
What is one relationship that needs space to stretch back into fullness?
Who is worthy of your time and your attention—even if it feels uncomfortable?
How might you create a container where an honest, equal exchange can happen?
What room could you enter—literally or figuratively—where real people are gathered, not flattened versions of them?

As so much falls around us, this work matters. We need one another’s full humanity—not caricatures, not avatars, not enemies made of paper.

I am depending on all of us.
We are depending on each other.

It will take all of us—together—to build a world worthy of our children, our grandchildren, and the seven generations still to come.

I hope you’ll join me in the stretch and plump!

Tisha

Photo by youssef naddam on Unsplash

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