Is the Humanity-Based Emergency Beginning to Shrink?

I think I see a small change in how people are treating one another. The current evidence gives us cautious reasons to think the signal may be real—but it is far too early to declare the emergency over.

Current Assessment: STILL ACTIVE — with possible early signs of contraction in everyday human behavior.

I want to report something cautiously hopeful:

I think the Humanity-Based Emergency may be shrinking—not dramatically, not everywhere, and certainly not enough—but perhaps by a small percentage.

By the Humanity-Based Emergency, I mean the erosion of respect for human dignity: hate, dehumanization, cruelty, humiliation, reflexive judgment, attacks on people because of who they are, and the normalization of treating other human beings as enemies instead of people.

Lately, I have noticed something subtle.

People seem a little more respectful.

I am seeing fewer immediate attacks, a little less casual contempt, and more moments where people simply allow one another to exist without turning every difference into a fight.

That is an observation, not a scientific measurement.

So before I called it progress, I wanted to check whether the wider evidence gave me any reason to believe what I was seeing.

It does—cautiously.

The first encouraging signal: everyday kindness is common

A national Gallup survey conducted in March 2026 found that 60% of U.S. adults said they often or very often see people treating others with kindness and respect. Sixty-five percent said they had personally experienced an act of kindness from someone in their community multiple times during the previous seven days, and 73% described Americans as generally kind.

That does not establish a year-over-year decline in hate. Gallup was measuring the current state of kindness, not proving that kindness increased from 2025 to 2026.

But it matters.

Our national information environment can make hostility look universal when the lived experience of many people is very different.

The survey also found an interesting relationship: people who experienced kindness more frequently were more comfortable initiating kindness toward strangers. That is an association, not proof that one caused the other, but it is consistent with something many of us understand intuitively—humane behavior can reinforce humane behavior.

The loudest behavior is not necessarily the most common behavior.

Americans may be less divided than our politics makes us appear

A March 2026 UMass Poll, discussed by Brookings in July, found that 74% of Americans believe their fellow citizens have more in common than what divides them.

Perhaps even more importantly, the result crossed party lines: 79% of Democrats and 76% of Republicans agreed.

That finding matters to the Humanity-Based Emergency because one of the most dangerous stages of social deterioration occurs when disagreement becomes dehumanization—when the person on the other side stops being a neighbor, coworker, parent, stranger, or fellow citizen and becomes only an enemy label.

The UMass findings do not tell us that polarization has disappeared. It plainly has not.

They tell us something more modest and, in some ways, more important:

Beneath the political conflict, a large majority still recognizes a shared human and civic connection.

There are also small improvements in some hard indicators

The crime data gives us another reason for cautious hope—with important limits.

Final FBI data for 2024 showed reported hate crimes decreasing 1.5% from the previous year.

Preliminary FBI figures for 2025, analyzed by Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, suggested a larger overall decline of about 9%, from 11,679 reported incidents in 2024 to 10,634 in 2025.

That is movement in the right direction.

But it cannot be read as a clean victory.

AAJC cautioned that 2025 could still be the fourth-worst year on record, that hate crimes remain significantly underreported, and that the overall decline concealed sharp increases against some communities. Its analysis found anti-Sikh, anti-Hindu, and anti-Buddhist incidents reaching record levels, while anti-Latino hate remained exceptionally high.

So the accurate statement is not:

“Hate is disappearing.”

It is:

Overall reported hate crime may be moving downward while severe and unequal pockets of hate remain.

Humanity can improve in one place while deteriorating in another.

Broader violent crime also fell sharply. The FBI’s preliminary 2025 national data estimated a 9.3% decline in violent crime, including an 18.1% decline in murder and non-negligent manslaughter from 2024.

Crime is not the same thing as kindness, dignity, or respect, and we should not confuse those measures.

Still, a society experiencing less interpersonal violence is preferable to one experiencing more, and the direction deserves notice.

Even mass disagreement is often staying peaceful

There is another signal hidden inside the protest numbers.

The Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton reported that the United States saw almost 20,000 demonstrations in 2025, a 77% increase from 2024 and the highest yearly total since 2020. Yet violent or destructive activity was reported at only about 0.5% of demonstration events.

Think about what that means.

A country can be angry.

It can be frightened.

It can be politically divided and deeply mobilized.

And enormous numbers of people can still choose to express that disagreement without physical violence.

Peaceful protest is not evidence that the Humanity-Based Emergency is over.

But it is evidence that disagreement does not automatically have to become destruction.

But the evidence also warns us not to celebrate too soon

There is substantial counterevidence, and we should face it directly.

A November 2025 Marist Poll found that 91% of Americans believed a lack of respect and courtesy was a growing problem, while 75% believed rude and selfish behavior in places such as highways, stores, and airports had increased.

The Bridging Divides Initiative also found that targeted political violence increased in 2025. Threats and harassment against public officials rose sharply, even while ordinary demonstrations remained overwhelmingly peaceful.

And a large UC Davis study released in June 2026 found that Americans’ personal willingness to engage in political violence remained largely stable from mid-2024 to mid-2025 rather than clearly declining. The percentage saying violence was usually or always justified for at least one political objective actually rose modestly, from 32.3% to 35.6%, although willingness to personally kill someone declined slightly.

Hate is also not declining equally for every community.

That is why I would not publish a headline declaring:

“The Humanity-Based Emergency Is Ending.”

The evidence does not support that conclusion.

What I think we may actually be seeing

My working interpretation is that two realities may be happening at the same time.

At the institutional, political, media, and online level, hostility remains extremely visible.

Threats, dehumanizing rhetoric, ideological conflict, algorithmic outrage, and targeted hate can dominate our attention.

Those dangers are real.

But at the everyday human level—in stores, neighborhoods, workplaces, sidewalks, conversations, communities, and small encounters between strangers—the country may be considerably more humane than the information environment makes it appear.

Gallup’s findings on kindness and the UMass findings on common ground are consistent with that possibility.

Perhaps what I am noticing is not that hate suddenly vanished.

Perhaps I am noticing that ordinary people are getting tired of living inside permanent hostility.

Maybe some people are learning that disagreement does not require disrespect.

Maybe exhaustion with outrage is creating a little more room for restraint.

Maybe the constant pressure of crises has reminded some of us that we need one another.

Or maybe I am seeing a local or personal pattern that has not yet become a national one.

The responsible answer is:

We do not know yet.

But we have enough evidence to keep watching.

A small percentage matters

When an emergency is enormous, a small improvement can look insignificant.

It is not.

If fewer people immediately judge a stranger, that matters.

If fewer disagreements become personal attacks, that matters.

If one person chooses dignity instead of humiliation, that matters.

If a community learns to disagree without dehumanizing, that is resilience being built in real time.

The Humanity-Based Emergency was never going to shrink because everyone suddenly agreed with everyone else.

It shrinks when we recover the ability to disagree while protecting one another’s humanity.

Humanity does not require agreement. It requires that disagreement stop becoming permission to destroy another person’s dignity.

Our job is to strengthen the signal

If this small shift is real, we should not simply observe it.

We should reinforce it.

We can treat people as human beings before treating them as political, cultural, racial, religious, generational, or ideological categories.

We can challenge harmful ideas without automatically attacking the dignity of the person expressing them.

We can reward restraint, curiosity, apology, empathy, and respectful disagreement instead of giving all our attention to outrage.

We can protect people who are targeted by hate even when their identity, politics, religion, culture, or worldview differs from our own.

And we can create communities where cooperation is practiced, not merely discussed.

That is how a small decline becomes a pattern.

A pattern becomes a culture.

And a culture becomes resilience.

So, is the Humanity-Based Emergency shrinking?

My answer today is:

Possibly—a little.

I see signs of it.

The data provides some support for what I am noticing.

But other indicators tell us the danger remains serious, uneven, and capable of worsening quickly.

For now, I would mark the Humanity-Based Emergency this way:

STILL ACTIVE — but showing possible early signs of contraction.

That is not victory.

It is something quieter and more useful:

a reason to keep going.

And if we are seeing even the beginning of a return to dignity, respect, and basic human decency, then our responsibility is to help it grow.

By Mr. Alvarez | Thoughts Enhanced by AI Assistant