Pronouns: the words we clutch as talismans against our collective unmaking. Once, “we” held the weight of our aspirations, heavy with the promise of community, a word that itself suggests a shared burden, a common breath. Now, the pronouns have shifted, and with them, the rhythm of our lives. The “we” has thinned, hollowed out, and in its place, the sharp, clipped “I” stands. Not a pronoun anymore but a declaration, a boundary, a refusal.
It is heard in boardrooms where the language of profit maximization unspools like a spell, an incantation of personal gain disguised as economic strategy. Gross Domestic Product becomes the altar at which we worship, the metric that tells us we are doing well, though it never asks for whom? Equitable economic development—an idea that once invoked visions of shared prosperity—now gathers dust on the periphery, a quaint notion for those too naïve to understand the game. The "I" thrives here, parasitic, feeding on the collective without acknowledgment of its host.
The shift is subtle until it isn’t. Until the community garden becomes a gated lawn, a place where the grass is tended but the people are unwelcome. Until “our wellbeing” mutates into “my wellbeing,” each syllable cutting ties with the invisible threads that once bound us. You hear it in conversations about self-care, where the noble pursuit of personal health becomes an excuse for disconnection, for turning inward and away. We are told that airplanes crash for lack of oxygen masks, and so we learn to put on our own first, always first, until we forget there is anyone else gasping in the cabin.
And what of empathy, that inconvenient virtue? Empathy has no place in quarterly earnings reports, no return on investment in the ledger of unsustainable growth. It was easier when we believed in “our” problems—poverty, hunger, the climate—but the pronouns have betrayed us here too. It is not “our planet,” it is the fuel for my car, the view from my summer home, the weather forecast for my Saturday picnic. We speak now of carbon footprints like sins to confess and yet cling to the indulgences that absolve nothing.
This is how detachment happens, through a thousand small revisions of pronouns, through the language of separation disguised as progress. We declare autonomy, but it is not freedom. It is loneliness rebranded. We value the hustle, the grind, the entrepreneurial spirit—words that celebrate the “I” and relegate the “we” to a relic of less ambitious times.
I do not mean to suggest that the “we” was ever perfect. It held its own failures, its exclusions and oppressions, its blind spots and hypocrisies. But it offered something the “I” cannot: a sense of belonging, of responsibility, of purpose beyond the self. The shift from “we” to “I” has not liberated us; it has atomized us, left us spinning in orbits of our own design, untethered from the gravitational pull of each other.
The most significant challenge society faces today is not a singular problem, but the pronouns through which we frame them. The “I” insists on its primacy, its right to a spotlight, while the “we” recedes, taking with it the possibility of solutions that demand collaboration, sacrifice, and trust. Until we reclaim the “we,” we will continue to measure success in unsustainable metrics, to prize profit over people, to retreat into detachment masquerading as resilience.
The pronouns tell the story, and the story tells us who we are becoming. If we are to survive—if we are to thrive—it will not be because of the “I.” It will be because we remembered, just in time, how to say “we.”
Reclaiming the Pronoun of Belonging
It starts with the simplest of words. “We.” A pronoun so unassuming it might go unnoticed if we weren’t so desperate for its return. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We are desperate. Though we may not say it aloud, we feel it in the silences between us, in the empty spaces once filled by something shared. The “I” has had its day, long enough to fracture what it touched. Now, it is time to remember what “we” can do.
This reclamation will not come easily. “I” is a jealous pronoun, a relentless force that claims more than its share. It taught us to believe that wellbeing is a private affair, a metric for one’s own body, one’s own mind. But “we” knows better. “We” remembers that health is communal, that the air we breathe and the water we drink connect us as surely as veins and arteries. To heal ourselves, we must heal each other, must place the oxygen masks on both faces before the cabin pressure drops again.
It is not enough to talk about growth anymore—not the kind that bloats and consumes, leaving scorched earth in its wake. Growth for the “I” has no endpoint, no horizon beyond its own profit margin. But “we” is a different kind of economist. It understands that prosperity cannot be hoarded, that equitable development is not a charity but an investment in a future we all share. “We” asks what will happen to our children, not just my child, and refuses to measure success in numbers that cannot account for justice.
The language of business must change as well. “Profit maximization” is a slogan of the “I,” a doctrine that narrows focus until there is no room for faces, for names, for the communities left behind. “We” introduces a new lexicon: community resilience, sustainable innovation, shared prosperity. These are words that acknowledge what the “I” would rather ignore—that none of us thrives alone, that there is no balance sheet for a burned-down forest or a forgotten town.
And empathy—how far we have strayed from it. The “I” told us that empathy was weakness, an inefficiency, something to subdue in the name of detachment. But “we” understands that empathy is strength, a glue that binds us to one another in ways no algorithm or market trend could replicate. To return to “we” is to reawaken the nerve endings we numbed, to feel the pulse of the world beyond our own skin. Empathy becomes policy, becomes infrastructure, becomes the foundation for bridges that no longer divide but connect.
This shift will not happen in headlines or campaign slogans. It will not announce itself with fanfare or fireworks. It will begin quietly, in moments that seem too small to matter. A neighborhood that plants a garden instead of fencing off its lawns. A business that chooses fair wages over stock buybacks. A school that teaches children the power of collective action alongside multiplication tables. These are the seeds of “we,” planted where the soil was thought to be barren.
It is tempting to think the pronouns don’t matter, that this is all semantics. But semantics are the scaffolding of society. How we speak shapes how we think, and how we think shapes what we do. The “I” has shaped a world of silos, where self-interest reigns and the common good is an afterthought. The “we” has the power to change that, to rebuild what was broken, to remind us that the walls between us were never as solid as they seemed.
We will not solve the great challenges of our time by leaning further into the pronoun that divided us. Climate change, inequality, the erosion of trust—these are problems too vast, too interconnected, for the solitary “I” to handle. But the “we”? The “we” has always known how to carry burdens too heavy for one.
So let us begin. Let us reclaim the pronoun of belonging, the one that ties us to each other and to the earth beneath our feet. Let us speak it into existence, let it guide our actions and policies and dreams. Let us remember that “we” is not just a word. It is a choice. It is hope. It is how we begin to heal.
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