Sandpoint is having another identity flare-up.
Locker rooms. Petitions. Outrage posts. People announcing moral positions with the velocity of a sneeze. Others retreating into strategic invisibility. The familiar choreography repeats itself.
But if you pay attention to the physiology—not just the performances—something else emerges:
This isn’t really a debate. It’s actually a town-wide threat response.
Communities fracture the same way individuals do:
under load, with predictable patterns, toward whatever makes them feel even slightly more stable.
Sandpoint isn’t fighting about facts.
It’s fighting for internal regulation.
Right now, three distinct nervous-system strategies are operating at full volume.
Let’s map them.
1. The Social-Justice Intensifiers
(Progressive-leaning, principled, high-output systems)
Women like Susan (name changed) don’t show up as activists because they’re energized. They show up because they’re wired. They’ve also learned to wrap that activation in moral language.
Their physiology tends to:
- run hot
- carry chronic neuroimmune load
- over-function in leadership roles
- depend on external structure to stay coherent
- collapse when that structure is removed
- conflate vigilance with virtue
- see social issues as containers for their chronic internal tension
What looks like conviction is really elevated threat physiology finding its outlet in ideology.
Moral certainty becomes a stabilizer when the nervous system is overloaded.
2. The Conservative Shield-Builders
(Tradition-oriented, safety-seeking, quietly rigid systems)
Women like Mary didn’t move here to debate ideas. They moved here to protect their families, their identity, and their sense of order.
Their physiology tends to:
- run depleted and under-fueled
- collapse into autoimmune patterns
- externalize stability into faith, duty, and role
- avoid confrontation not from passivity but from lack of margin
- frame withdrawal as responsibility
- tolerate depletion as if it were virtue
The ‘family-first’ posture works like armor here: role bracing standing in for capacity that just isn’t there.
Rigid identity becomes a shield when the internal terrain is fragile.
3. The Strategic Silencers
(The large, quiet middle—the stabilizers)
These are the business owners, long-timers, professionals, and parents who manage to operate beneath the radar.
They:
- avoid public stances
- dodge petitions and comment threads
- pretend not to know what’s happening
- keep their heads down
- maintain stability by staying unremarkable
- refuse to amplify conflict
- survive by staying non-targetable
This group isn’t disengaged. They are economizing threat.
Silence becomes a form of boundary-setting when visibility carries a cost.
The Field These Three Create
If you zoom out, you see something striking:
These groups aren’t actually fighting each other.
They’re coexisting with incompatible regulation strategies.
- One discharges tension outward (moral vigilance).
- One compresses tension inward (self-sacrifice).
- One neutralizes tension by lowering their signal (strategic invisibility).
The result?
A community that looks polarized but is actually overwhelmed.
When threat rises, physiology—not ideology—sets the tone.
Where This Leaves Us
We keep treating polarization as if it’s intellectual disagreement.
But disagreement doesn’t destabilize an entire region.
Overloaded nervous systems do.
When a town is under chronic pressure:
- nuance shrinks
- generosity shrinks
- boundary tolerance shrinks
- identity hardens
- projection rises
- certainty becomes addictive
- conflict becomes a way to discharge excess tension
People don’t choose sides because they’ve reasoned their way into them.
They choose the pattern that makes their internal state feel momentarily manageable.
And yes—
the people who most need help (women like Susan and Mary) are the ones least likely to reach for it.
Not because they lack desire.
Because they lack margin.
Collapse often looks like conviction.
Depletion often looks like duty.
Threat load often looks like righteousness.
And exhaustion often looks like silence.
Most people don’t know they’re drowning.
They think they’re coping.
Why I’m Naming This
Not to critique.
Not to unify.
Not to offer a fix.
But because communities, like bodies, stabilize faster when someone names the underlying pattern accurately, and without moralizing it.
Sandpoint isn’t fractured.
It’s over capacity.
When the load decreases and margin returns—individually or collectively—the tone of the entire field changes.
Until then, the split will keep surfacing in different costumes.
TL;DR
Sandpoint’s “polarization” is really a physiological problem floating to the surface as an ideological one.
Three groups are expressing three different threat responses:
- Moral vigilance (hyperactive systems seeking certainty)
- Role rigidity (depleted systems seeking stability)
- Strategic silence (economizing systems seeking safety)
They’re not arguing politics.
They’re regulating overwhelm.
The more thin the margin, the louder the patterns.
Understand the physiology, and the town suddenly makes sense.