Summary: It’s easy to look at the world right now and only see division. Political polarization. Wars. Cultural battles. Anxiety about artificial intelligence. Generations arguing over what matters most. People choosing sides before they’ve even finished listening to each other. We keep asking, “How did things get this bad?” I wonder if there is another question worth asking. Read on to find out.
Note: I am currently recovering from knee surgery, and it has given me time to pause and reflect. After being in a post-surgery rehab center for a week, ready to go home, here are the best of my thoughts when I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself.
What If Something New Is Trying To Be Born?
History offers an intriguing precedent. The Renaissance era did not arrive because everything was peaceful and people suddenly had extra time to paint ceilings. It developed during and after centuries of enormous upheaval. Europe had experienced disease, warfare, economic disruption, and profound challenges to long-established institutions. The Black Death alone radically altered European society, contributing to labor shortages, changing economic relationships, and challenges to traditional authority.
And yet, amid disruption comes extraordinary creativity.
People began revisiting old assumptions about humanity, science, art, education, and authority. Humanism gained influence. Art and science increasingly intersected. Eventually, the printing press accelerated the movement of ideas across Europe in ways previously unimaginable.
Leonardo da Vinci painted and studied anatomy. Michelangelo transformed stone into bodies that still stop us in our tracks. Copernicus challenged humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe.
Old answers were no longer sufficient. Sound familiar?
The Ugly Middle of History
In my work, I talk about something I call the Ugly Middle. It is that uncomfortable space after an old pattern stops working, but before the new way of operating feels natural. At work, it might happen when a leader realizes, I cannot keep controlling everything. In a family, it may happen when someone finally says, We aren’t going to keep doing this just because we’ve always done it this way.
And perhaps societies experience an Ugly Middle too. We are certainly watching old assumptions collide with new realities. How will humans work alongside AI? What does leadership look like when employees no longer automatically trust institutions or authority? What can we do when we disagree without turning the person across from us into an enemy? How do we decide what is true when almost anyone can publish almost anything instantly?
These aren’t small questions. They are Renaissance-sized questions.
Polarization Can Become a Trigger
Polarization itself is not creative. Left unchecked, it can harden people into camps where curiosity disappears, and certainty becomes a weapon. But polarization can also expose something important: the old way is no longer holding us together. That is the trigger. Then comes the pattern.
We default to JUBLA: judge, blame, or attack. The tendency is to look for people who agree with us and dismiss those who don’t. The crucial moment is what happens next.
Trigger → Pattern → Pause → Ugly Middle → Choice
That pause creates the possibility of something different. A GLIMMER.(opens in new tab) Not an answer, a signal.
A small internal recognition that says, There may be another way to see this.
Perhaps Our Next Renaissance Will Be Human
The first Renaissance celebrated, among other things, a renewed fascination with human potential. Our next renaissance may require us to rediscover something equally important: what remains uniquely human in a technological world. AI can produce information in seconds, but information isn’t wisdom. Speed isn’t discernment. And intelligence isn’t automatically compassion.
Our next great advances may therefore come not only from smarter machines, but from more self-aware human beings. Leaders who can hold opposing ideas without immediately choosing a side. Teams that can disagree without destroying trust. Scientists working with artists. Technologists talking with psychologists. Young people questioning assumptions their elders stopped noticing. Older people contributing wisdom without demanding that the future look like the past.
Perhaps the next Leonardo isn’t sitting alone in a studio. Perhaps she is sitting at the intersection of neuroscience, art, technology, and human behavior.
Renaissance Means Rebirth
That may be the most hopeful idea of all. Renaissance literally points us toward rebirth. And rebirth rarely begins with everything neatly organized. Something usually has to become uncomfortable enough that we are willing to see differently. So perhaps the challenge of this moment is not simply to end disagreement, but to become more creative inside it.
Instead of asking: Whose side are you on?
We begin to ask: What haven’t we thought of yet?
That question changes everything. Some of humanity’s most interesting periods have emerged when familiar answers could no longer contain a changing world. We cannot know whether another Renaissance is coming, but we can decide what we contribute to the conditions around us.
Will it be more outrage, certainty, or division? Or more curiosity, courage, imagination, and connection?
The next Renaissance may not begin in Florence. It may begin in a boardroom, classroom, laboratory, or family conversation. Possibly in the quiet moment when one person catches an old pattern, pauses before repeating it, and sees a GLIMMER of another possibility.
Maybe these aren’t just polarized times; maybe we’re just in the Ugly Middle between what was and what could be. And that is exactly where creativity begins.
To your success,
Sylvia Lafair
P.S. Who do you know (maybe it’s you) who is helping to break old chains and bring us into the new? I’d love to hear. Email me at: sylvia@ceoptions.com.
