Douglas Adams fans will know that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the words “Don’t Panic” inscribed on the front cover in large friendly letters. Useful advice in challenging times, because panic implies thoughtless and impulsive action.
In contrast, in a recent substack essay, Sandro Galea offers a thoughtful and philosophically grounded argument for equanimity in times of political and institutional upheaval. His call is for calm, intellectual humility, and measured action—especially in the face of uncertainty, polarisation, and erosion of trust. And his argument is rooted in moral seriousness and philosophical tradition. His invocation of stoicism, pragmatism, and the idea that passion should be channeled, not indulged, is both admirable and deeply needed in many contexts.
There are certainly lessons in the essay for me, because I am not beyond the cathartic tweet and angry rant.
Nonetheless, even while I appreciate his concern about performative outrage, alarm fatigue, and the risks of losing strategic focus, I worry more that equanimity will not fully meet the gravity of the current moment.
Calm is positioned as a centrepiece of a rational response, but in the face of authoritarian drift, this may not be true. Galea rightly warns against seeing every disagreement as existential. But in some cases, that is exactly what they are. And here I must be careful. By “existential” I do not mean that human life will cease to exist. I do mean, however, that political traditions that hold the rights of the individual as core, are at existential risk. The current political landscape—marked by widespread disinformation, open contempt for liberal norms, and attempts to consolidate executive power through legal, rhetorical, and administrative means—is not a policy disagreement. It is a strategic project to transform liberal democracy into a performative, illiberal system.
In such a context, remaining calm (which is different from not panicking) is quite possibly the least rational response. It risks underestimating the nature of the threat—a threat that deliberately weaponises chaos, disorientation, and norm erosion to exhaust democratic opposition. When “everything, everywhere, all at once” (EEAAO) is the strategy for destroying a liberal democracy, false calm doesn’t preserve clarity—it masks danger. We become the poached goldfish cooking in the ever warming water.
Equanimity can blur the line between a policy disagreement and an ethical breech. Galea urges restraint in response to funding cuts, institutional restructuring, and ideological pressure. But what if these are not just isolated matters of administrative efficiency or political difference? What if they are tools in a broader campaign of harming the very system of government best designed to preserve the interests of the people? And that is exactly what the EEAAO strategy would suggest they are—autocracy trumped up as a policy disagreement.
When thousands are dismissed from public health agencies, when HHS disseminates misinformation about vaccines, when the infrastructure for climate science is actively dismantled, when court orders are ignored, when immigration laws a weaponised to silence dissent—this is not a policy disagreement. These are tactics with critical consequences, and they demand a response that acknowledges their moral stakes. Calm analysis may aid clarity, but when calm becomes habitual, it risks normalising that which should provoke action.
Equanimity is not ideologically neutral unless both sides approach an argument with the same calm. And this is one of the structural challenges in Galea’s framing. Equanimity is easier for those with institutional protection, social capital, and professional standing. It can become a posture of the “polite center-left”—technocrats, academics, and professionals committed to liberal norms—even while those norms are being strategically exploited or dismantled by authoritarian actors.
The political right in the U.S. has repeatedly shown a greater willingness to break norms, delegitimise elections, and mobilise extra-institutional power—sometimes violently. The political left, especially its center, remains norm-bound and institutionally deferential. This asymmetry means that equanimity, when over-applied, can function less as a virtue and more as a strategic vulnerability.
The threat of violence is asymmetrical. Before the 2020 election, journalists and political scientists openly worried about the possibility of civil war in the U.S.—largely premised on a Democratic victory being treated as illegitimate by the right. Those fears proved partially correct: Trump lost, and an attempted insurrection followed. In contrast, after Trump’s 2024 victory, those concerns vanished—not because the threat disappeared, but because the side most prone to violent refusal of democratic outcomes had won.
This reveals a deeper point: a center-left government is far more likely to provoke armed reaction than an authoritarian right-wing government is to provoke institutional noncompliance. Equanimity in such a context does not meet the moment. It plays into the imbalance and helps normalise a tilted playing field.
Triage under fire requires more than calm—it requires strategic urgency. “Don’t panic” is the better guide. In a war zone, triage doesn’t require serenity—it requires adrenaline management, urgency, and the ability to act decisively under pressure. Calm may feel virtuous, but if it becomes a default stance, it can dull the moral reflexes at precisely the moment they must be sharpest.
Not every act of protest needs to be loud. The language does not have to be obnoxious. But when the fundamental institutions of public health, science, and democracy are being deliberately undermined, a more direct, even disruptive, form of resistance may not only be justified—it may be morally required.
Sandro Galea is right that equanimity is not the same as inaction. And he is right that outrage alone does not build durable progress. But like any virtue, equanimity must be applied with discernment. When the rules are being rewritten, when the democratic compact is under open threat, and when harm is immediate and lasting, too much calm may serve not wisdom but delay—and delay is its own kind of complicity.
I admire Galea’s clarity of tone and seriousness of thought. My disagreement is with how best to meet a moment shaped not by healthy debate, but by coordinated disruption. In such times, clear-eyed, unpanicked urgency may better serve the cause of justice than calm.
