The empty polis

The polis isn’t politics.

It’s the space where a city — a society — decides things together. Beyond the family. Beyond the job. Beyond personal comfort.

It’s where promises stop being private and start carrying weight for people you don’t know.

For a long time, growing up meant moving outward.

First, you learned to keep promises at home. Then, you learned to keep promises at work. And eventually, you were expected to keep promises in public — to show up, take responsibility, and accept tradeoffs for something larger than yourself.

That step is the one we’ve been skipping.

Not because people don’t care. But because comfort made it optional.

We learned how to protect our private lives. How to optimize our careers. How to curate our opinions.

But we stopped practicing responsibility that doesn’t pay immediately, doesn’t feel safe, and doesn’t come with applause.

So the polis feels empty. Dysfunctional. Someone else’s problem.

The polis doesn’t empty itself.

The polis is empty because people stopped taking responsibility beyond themselves.

It doesn’t come back through outrage. Or opinions. Or voting once every few years.

It comes back the same way it was built:

When enough people decide to carry a promise that doesn’t benefit them immediately.