Editor’s note: On July 16, 2023, at the launch of How We Differ, Professor Wang Fang and Vistopia editor dy discussed the social fractures that arise from conflicting ideas between groups.

How can we acknowledge difference and find scarce common ground? Do individuals struggling within groups—amid anxiety, depression, “lying flat,” and disappointment—face a shared spiritual crisis? Are today’s popular personality tests tools for self-understanding, or labels that restrict and fix the self?

This conversation may not offer a cure. But by looking again at concrete life through psychology, it may help us see difference, understand others, and affirm the meaning of our own unique existence.