Breakdown In Civil Discourse Weakens Civic Life

The Challenge: Contributors raised concerns that public conversation has lost shared meanings of basic concepts — truth, fact, evidence — and that this erosion makes it harder for people to discuss disagreements productively. What do New Hampshire residents think? Contributors described what one called “truth decay,” a sense that shared understanding of basic concepts has weakened. The most-engaged single statement on this topic was: “We no longer share common meanings of words. Lying has become acceptable. We cannot talk to each other if we disagree on the meaning of concepts such as truth, fact, evidence.” While this issue had fewer separate submissions than many others, the high engagement on the single statement suggests it resonates broadly across contributors as a foundational concern that underlies many other issues raised on the platform.