I think this is exactly correct and why I've pushed very hard within Braver Angels to oppose adopting particular stances, especially within my program. Everyone wants Congress to "do something" but we staunchly disagree about what that something should be. People have vastly different views even of what policies are "depolarizing." The moment you step into endorsing a policy is the moment you stop playing the role of a neutral counselor trying to help people see each other and become an advocate for something other than that.
My one compromise here is that I think we are advocates-- we're just advocates for the extremely narrow cause of neutral cross-partisan spaces, or attitudinally moderate engagement, or the practice of personal transformation instead of transformation by personal or political coercion.
I think sometimes within the depolarization space, people either want us to be too activist or forget that it's okay and even good to engage in personal activism. The point is not to make partisans think they have to be less civically engaged. The point is to demonstrate healthy conflict in civic engagement.
I spoke tonight at a rally against property taxes and I decried progressives in Washington state denying economic science. I didn't call them names or attack the entire party opposed to mine. I did call out what I see as hypocrisy among the far left in the WA legislature. I even think I used that phrasing once-- progressives in the state legislature. I want people to know that it's good and right to have strong political opinions and advocate for them and it's important to express those opinions fairly and describe your opponents accurately.
This is a terrific post. During my two-plus decades of work in the civility space, it is hampered by too many well-meaning people, mainly on the left, who focus more on shifting political beliefs and ideologies instead of interpersonal attitudes and approaches. The former has hampered my efforts to bring more people from "the right" into discussions, as they feel the real purpose is to co-opt and neutralize them. Sadly, that's more often true than not. Thanks for your clarity.
Good things to think on, I’ve been searching for advice on how to write about my own experiences with certain politics without demonizing another group. It’s difficult.
I used to use “extreme” as a way to clarify I’m not lumping all of one party into the same bucket, but I feel like that might not be serving me if I’m hoping to reach a broader audience.
It might be obvious from what I wrote but: I think it's fine to have opinions and criticize ideas you think are bad and such. I do that myself. For example, I have an episode of my podcast criticizing gender theory as an illogical theory that itself actually creates gender dysphoria; many would find that angering and polarizing, and I get that. But me talking about that is something separate from my depolarization work, because someone with very different views on gender theory could work on depolarization efforts, in much the same ways as I do. (That's just one example amongst many, when it comes to how I've expressed opinions.)
But then, as I express opinions on various things ("doing activism", in a sense) I can also speak in ways that are empathetic, that seek to acknowledge that rational, compassionate people can arrive at different views, that seek to minimize amplifying tensions/anger/contempt, and so on. So we can "do activism" while seeking to embrace depolarization concepts, and I think that is more in line with what you may be talking about: you want to get out opinions, and that's great, and then as you do that you can also strive to keep in mind conflict/conflict-resolution principles. And actually, despite many people's perceptions, I think doing that makes one a more effective advocate for one's beliefs; makes one more persuasive; so the goals of activism and depolarization align, in my mind.
This precise distinction re: extreme and not lumping folks together, is something I noticed in 2010s era Islamophobia discussions. Racist/harmful ideas about Islam writ large would get cabined down into 'not all Muslims, just the extremists' and the different terms we concocted for the 'extreme' ends - like 'Islamist.'
But as someone who spent years of my life brushing up against studying Islam and specifically Islam in China, it became clear that these 'but just the extreme ones' 'not the 'good ones'' caveats were basically as harmful as the openly racist 'all Muslims.' No one except scholars and the people living out the conflicts could really treat the issue with the nuance the terms implied. And often the terms were a little made up and served the ends of the rhetoriticians rather than reflecting the people on the ground - Islamist does have some traction as a term in Muslim communities but it's really kind of an external creation that doesn't, say, actually capture how a Turkish citizen might distinguish Erdogan from prior secular Turkish regimes from the almost South American Catholic practicing/non-practicing divide amongst ostensibly Muslim Turkish citizens from the Islam of Saudia Arabia from the Islam of Iran.
As I’m sure you know, I fundamentally disagree. Not because I think my side is right and the other side is wrong, but because 1) the motivation of most people for being involved in politics is advocacy; take that away and they simply have little interest in engaging with others in a polarizing or depolarizing manner at all; 2) it’s not consistent with the democratic (little d) project which is how we resolve disputes through dialogue and discourse (rather than force); and 3) research shows people come up with the best solutions to problems when the are engaged in civil arguments to determine which answer is right. Now, in addition to all of these things, I believe stopping toxic polarization is the best way for progressives to achieve our political goals and I am explicit in arguing that the left needs to change the way we engage to be persuasive. But I say the same thing to people on the right. I would love to see a Smart Politics for conservatives because I believe it would make our democracy work better for all people, not just those I agree with. Finally, with regard to the extremism question. The kind of extremism we are seeing in U.S., whether on the left or right, is a product of an utterly broken political system, no longer capable of getting anything done in a timely fashion or responding to the will of the people. Toxic polarization dovetails with this in terms of who you blame for the breakdown, but the reality is it’s a systemic issue, not a partisan one. We need depolarization to solve this problem, but that depolarization needs to come from every direction: organizations like yours that bring people together across the political spectrum AND organizations like mine that teach people they are undermining their effectiveness by engaging in ways that make the other side hate them even more. Hope we’ll have an opportunity to discuss this more tomorrow on the podcast.
How I see it is: one can do advocacy/activism while also trying to act in depolarizing/bridge-building ways. One can do both (despite many people's instincts that the two things are mutually exclusive and at odds). But if one is trying to depolarize in a "big tent" way (bring in a lot of people and get them to agree on the meta-problem of toxicity and contempt and get them to see the importance of better ways of engaging, etc.) one must try one's best to separate the two concepts so that one can have scalable, reach-anyone arguments.
So we may be speaking at different angles; there is nothing wrong IMO in doing activism while also trying to reduce toxicity; in fact, I wish many more political activists would do that.
(I also want to clarify: I have no organization; I no longer am associated with Builders/Starts With Us; just do things on my own now.)
Put another way: I think there needs to be some people who do the work showing how these ideas can be scalable, no matter one's politics, and that is how I see the work I do. I think without people doing that work, it's easy for people to perceive a landscape where it's just a bunch of activists with assorted different views on polarization, or worse, perceiving depolarization-related ideas as tied to specific forms of activism. I think we need more people making neutral, scalable arguments for polarization-related ideas (our distorted, overly pessimistic views of each other and how that makes things worse; the importance of engaging in mature, persuasive ways even when angry/scared, etc.)
Scalability is important. And in my view there are many organizations working on that project. But there are vanishingly few organizations small or otherwise working on getting integrating depolarization into advocacy. The best are those doing deep canvassing for campaigns.
Hmm. I don’t see it. Here’s why. When I talk with progressives about changing the way we engage, they often agree in that abstract that the way they are behaving is bad (they usually have some intuition that it’s morally wrong), but they have zero motivation to change until I point out that they will be more persuasive if they change. It gets them over the hump (sometimes) from I should to I will. Another thing to keep in mind is human psychology. Change people’s behavior and their beliefs and affect will follow. What do I mean by that? I often tell the people I work with to begin by acting “as if” they don’t hate people they disagree with because I know that once they do, they will begin to see those they disagree with as humans just like them. I think of this as my Abe Lincoln strategy: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
Sounds like folks may have had a good civics education at one point, as what you described is what was learned in basic civics classes by many, back when such was still taught & often role-modeled in society, despite exceptions. It's interesting to me how society lost some of its Civic Grit in striking this kind of practical balance. People are now asking questions about how to strike a balance that previously was mostly both schooled and intuitive. To my observations, as the internet grew toxicity and narrative fracture *and* as civic education & basic volunteerism declined in society, folks lost the first hand knowledge and practice of (&some in younger generations never had opportunities to develop/practice) these skills and related mindsets. We have regressed and in the process forgotten how to utilize civic skills for multiple audiences and contexts. So, it's really good that folks are now sharing their stories on how they are managing the expression of multiple sides of their civic identity on these kinds of forums.
In social studies education in the era in which I was first trained, civic identity formation was something we were taught to teach young people, as we practiced it ourselves on the front lines via non-partisan teaching in public settings. Through such one learns a lot about how to strike such balance within yourself first, so you then can most effectively work and serve in civic capacities. Since so much of this civic wisdom now seems rusty, we need more people sharing their stories on these fronts. Good work!!!
I work with volunteers. Lawyer volunteers. For many years my organization has functioned more or less by taking what it can get. If you were a lawyer that wanted to volunteer, we took you and found space for you. However, we are at a point where 1) we cannot remain competitive on this model, i.e. members will meet their needs elsewhere/take $$$ from the org. if all we do is deliver this baseline, and 2) the state of political discourse means we need to have better understandings and limits on what our volunteers are doing, as it is easy for a volunteer of one political stripe to enrage members of another political stripe.
In this process, I have found that /criticism/ is an important, necessary, and even friendly tool in increasing the quality of work our volunteers produce. Lawyers get very little feedback on their work, ever, and often that feedback is rather disconnected from what the hard work really was. Being direct and honest about what I want and what I think the volunteer needs to do to step up and deliver, has been very simple and effective? An ounce of honest criticism has created deep collaboration and even (professional) friendships and mentorship opportunities. I say this as a bit of a sideways counterpoint to your stances on neutrality. Neutrality can convey disinterest and dishonesty, i.e. I don't care enough about you to share what I really feel. It can prevent the other party from understanding your boundaries and limits and confuses their assessment of whether you are working well together. Speaking clearly that I am acting from a position, that I have a stance and a bias and a political ideology and institutional authority about what my org needs and benefits from, has led to me working more effectively with others and has improved the quality of our volunteer contributions. So I think it is okay to disagree, it is okay to be polar, the polarity drives action and honesty.
Similarly, I end up in conversations about DEI requirements, especially in the continuing education sphere. Looking people in the eye and telling them what I think has demonstrably increased trust and collaboration. I had a conversation with someone complaining about these requirements, he walked through all the talking points, I don't need to see these statistics, I know how to treat people as people, I hired a black employee.... And I was like oh???? A black employee? Tell me more. And it became a discussion about how this employee had chaired her black student association at her university, and I asked the man if he asked her about it and learned about it, and he was like oh yeah I asked her about it, I had to make sure she wasn't some kind of radical. At that point I just told him, well, I wouldn't work for you if you treated me like that in an interview! There's other jobs in this world! These statements did not end our discussion, and I could tell the statements made him think more seriously about the issue than he ever had before. Because someone was willing to stand there and have it as a whole conversation with him.
I don't think I'm disagreeing with your overall point so much as saying that 'conflict resolution' does not have to equal 'wearing kiddie gloves' or 'being silent.' I reject the characterization that activism and conflict resolution are so disjoint. I speak clearly and honestly and give my reasons for my beliefs and I listen to the beliefs of others and say what leads me to disagree. There's real psychology around sunk costs, which I have studied/encountered in the context of religion, of Chinese business transactions, and even these general ideas of 'mirroring' and some therapy basics - people perceive and respond to openness. If you put a bet down on the table, someone will cock their eyebrow and meet you. If someone sees that I have put myself at risk (by being openly bi, nonbinary, progressive, thoughtful, patient, personal, /critical/, in front of them), they have responded not by suing me but by being my most interesting collaborators. FWIW.
Finally, I recently read Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It really impressed upon me this notion, especially pretending to live in our free world of sorts, that everyone has the right to be convinced rather than to be coerced. The process of convincing often requires an open-ended, thoughtful education, that leads both student and teacher away from their original convictions to genuinely new and authentic places. When I find myself in deep disagreement I ask what it is I know that they do not know, and what it is that they know that I do not know, and I try to find the discussion style that enables that knowledge to be exchanged.
You might enjoy this comment I made on what I think is a similar topic: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-taking-stances-and-criticizing/comment/102227563. I would categorize what you are trying to do as activism with perhaps some depolarization/conflict-resolution ideas included in it. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that; I’m just saying that what I see as neutral, scalable conflict resolution work requires trying to remove one’s stances as much as possible from that work. It’s not bad to have stances or even to work towards one’s stances as one also does depolarization-aimed work; I’m just arguing for trying to see them as separate endeavors. I also agree that the goals of persuasive activism and conflict resolution align; why I try to make people see that you can work towards any goals while also injecting conflict-resolution/de-escalating concepts/approaches in that activism.
I guess, in what context do you see this style of neutrality being applied, to what end? What is the 'work' in 'depolarization-aimed work'? I'm curious about the idea in context.
It feels like a feeling different parts of the elephant parable situation.
Giving people the tools and motivation to be able to disagree better, without amplifying toxicity and contempt. In a nutshell. Because so few people care about that at all. We’ve been in a self reinforcing cycle of toxicity for decades (standard conflict cycle imo) and if more people cared to learn about how conflict works we might avoid such things. Humanity is conflict about how conflict works imo and most people’s instincts on how to behave in conflict only amplify it.
So where does your neutrality fit in that? In terms of normal conversations, mediations, personal interventions, social interventions?
Who is ‘entering the chat’ and needing to establish neutrality to build trust and de-escalate policy discussion?
Because in my DEI example I have these conversations neutrally in the sense that I am serving members and need their unfiltered input and perspective to understand how to serve them. I view my role not as convincing anyone for or against the merits of mandatory anti-bias education; I view my role as preparing professionals to make decisions regarding their self-regulation that allow the profession to grow and meet its stated goals.
I think based on my own experience doing the job and being a member of the profession and supporting the profession… that openly discussing issues of bias, culture, the differing experiences of diverse members, is good for the profession. I tell people this because it is a form of expert and on the ground advice that they do not have a chance to see when only approaching the issue with the tools of philosophical free speech analysis.
In my experience I must reveal that I have a stance, and demonstrate the intellectual honesty that it is open to change subject to new evidence, in order to get people to reveal their stances. And that this open-stancedness is what produces the information that makes better decisions.
Is this … neutral? Does your formulation of neutrality suggest I should have these conversations differently? How would they look?
I think this is exactly correct and why I've pushed very hard within Braver Angels to oppose adopting particular stances, especially within my program. Everyone wants Congress to "do something" but we staunchly disagree about what that something should be. People have vastly different views even of what policies are "depolarizing." The moment you step into endorsing a policy is the moment you stop playing the role of a neutral counselor trying to help people see each other and become an advocate for something other than that.
My one compromise here is that I think we are advocates-- we're just advocates for the extremely narrow cause of neutral cross-partisan spaces, or attitudinally moderate engagement, or the practice of personal transformation instead of transformation by personal or political coercion.
I think sometimes within the depolarization space, people either want us to be too activist or forget that it's okay and even good to engage in personal activism. The point is not to make partisans think they have to be less civically engaged. The point is to demonstrate healthy conflict in civic engagement.
I spoke tonight at a rally against property taxes and I decried progressives in Washington state denying economic science. I didn't call them names or attack the entire party opposed to mine. I did call out what I see as hypocrisy among the far left in the WA legislature. I even think I used that phrasing once-- progressives in the state legislature. I want people to know that it's good and right to have strong political opinions and advocate for them and it's important to express those opinions fairly and describe your opponents accurately.
Very well put, thanks for sharing that, Elizabeth!
This is a terrific post. During my two-plus decades of work in the civility space, it is hampered by too many well-meaning people, mainly on the left, who focus more on shifting political beliefs and ideologies instead of interpersonal attitudes and approaches. The former has hampered my efforts to bring more people from "the right" into discussions, as they feel the real purpose is to co-opt and neutralize them. Sadly, that's more often true than not. Thanks for your clarity.
Thanks for saying that about the piece, Kelly; it means a lot.
Good things to think on, I’ve been searching for advice on how to write about my own experiences with certain politics without demonizing another group. It’s difficult.
I used to use “extreme” as a way to clarify I’m not lumping all of one party into the same bucket, but I feel like that might not be serving me if I’m hoping to reach a broader audience.
It might be obvious from what I wrote but: I think it's fine to have opinions and criticize ideas you think are bad and such. I do that myself. For example, I have an episode of my podcast criticizing gender theory as an illogical theory that itself actually creates gender dysphoria; many would find that angering and polarizing, and I get that. But me talking about that is something separate from my depolarization work, because someone with very different views on gender theory could work on depolarization efforts, in much the same ways as I do. (That's just one example amongst many, when it comes to how I've expressed opinions.)
But then, as I express opinions on various things ("doing activism", in a sense) I can also speak in ways that are empathetic, that seek to acknowledge that rational, compassionate people can arrive at different views, that seek to minimize amplifying tensions/anger/contempt, and so on. So we can "do activism" while seeking to embrace depolarization concepts, and I think that is more in line with what you may be talking about: you want to get out opinions, and that's great, and then as you do that you can also strive to keep in mind conflict/conflict-resolution principles. And actually, despite many people's perceptions, I think doing that makes one a more effective advocate for one's beliefs; makes one more persuasive; so the goals of activism and depolarization align, in my mind.
Thanks for the thoughts, that’s helpful!
This precise distinction re: extreme and not lumping folks together, is something I noticed in 2010s era Islamophobia discussions. Racist/harmful ideas about Islam writ large would get cabined down into 'not all Muslims, just the extremists' and the different terms we concocted for the 'extreme' ends - like 'Islamist.'
But as someone who spent years of my life brushing up against studying Islam and specifically Islam in China, it became clear that these 'but just the extreme ones' 'not the 'good ones'' caveats were basically as harmful as the openly racist 'all Muslims.' No one except scholars and the people living out the conflicts could really treat the issue with the nuance the terms implied. And often the terms were a little made up and served the ends of the rhetoriticians rather than reflecting the people on the ground - Islamist does have some traction as a term in Muslim communities but it's really kind of an external creation that doesn't, say, actually capture how a Turkish citizen might distinguish Erdogan from prior secular Turkish regimes from the almost South American Catholic practicing/non-practicing divide amongst ostensibly Muslim Turkish citizens from the Islam of Saudia Arabia from the Islam of Iran.
Thanks for sharing!
As I’m sure you know, I fundamentally disagree. Not because I think my side is right and the other side is wrong, but because 1) the motivation of most people for being involved in politics is advocacy; take that away and they simply have little interest in engaging with others in a polarizing or depolarizing manner at all; 2) it’s not consistent with the democratic (little d) project which is how we resolve disputes through dialogue and discourse (rather than force); and 3) research shows people come up with the best solutions to problems when the are engaged in civil arguments to determine which answer is right. Now, in addition to all of these things, I believe stopping toxic polarization is the best way for progressives to achieve our political goals and I am explicit in arguing that the left needs to change the way we engage to be persuasive. But I say the same thing to people on the right. I would love to see a Smart Politics for conservatives because I believe it would make our democracy work better for all people, not just those I agree with. Finally, with regard to the extremism question. The kind of extremism we are seeing in U.S., whether on the left or right, is a product of an utterly broken political system, no longer capable of getting anything done in a timely fashion or responding to the will of the people. Toxic polarization dovetails with this in terms of who you blame for the breakdown, but the reality is it’s a systemic issue, not a partisan one. We need depolarization to solve this problem, but that depolarization needs to come from every direction: organizations like yours that bring people together across the political spectrum AND organizations like mine that teach people they are undermining their effectiveness by engaging in ways that make the other side hate them even more. Hope we’ll have an opportunity to discuss this more tomorrow on the podcast.
How I see it is: one can do advocacy/activism while also trying to act in depolarizing/bridge-building ways. One can do both (despite many people's instincts that the two things are mutually exclusive and at odds). But if one is trying to depolarize in a "big tent" way (bring in a lot of people and get them to agree on the meta-problem of toxicity and contempt and get them to see the importance of better ways of engaging, etc.) one must try one's best to separate the two concepts so that one can have scalable, reach-anyone arguments.
So we may be speaking at different angles; there is nothing wrong IMO in doing activism while also trying to reduce toxicity; in fact, I wish many more political activists would do that.
(I also want to clarify: I have no organization; I no longer am associated with Builders/Starts With Us; just do things on my own now.)
Put another way: I think there needs to be some people who do the work showing how these ideas can be scalable, no matter one's politics, and that is how I see the work I do. I think without people doing that work, it's easy for people to perceive a landscape where it's just a bunch of activists with assorted different views on polarization, or worse, perceiving depolarization-related ideas as tied to specific forms of activism. I think we need more people making neutral, scalable arguments for polarization-related ideas (our distorted, overly pessimistic views of each other and how that makes things worse; the importance of engaging in mature, persuasive ways even when angry/scared, etc.)
Scalability is important. And in my view there are many organizations working on that project. But there are vanishingly few organizations small or otherwise working on getting integrating depolarization into advocacy. The best are those doing deep canvassing for campaigns.
Hmm. I don’t see it. Here’s why. When I talk with progressives about changing the way we engage, they often agree in that abstract that the way they are behaving is bad (they usually have some intuition that it’s morally wrong), but they have zero motivation to change until I point out that they will be more persuasive if they change. It gets them over the hump (sometimes) from I should to I will. Another thing to keep in mind is human psychology. Change people’s behavior and their beliefs and affect will follow. What do I mean by that? I often tell the people I work with to begin by acting “as if” they don’t hate people they disagree with because I know that once they do, they will begin to see those they disagree with as humans just like them. I think of this as my Abe Lincoln strategy: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
Sounds like folks may have had a good civics education at one point, as what you described is what was learned in basic civics classes by many, back when such was still taught & often role-modeled in society, despite exceptions. It's interesting to me how society lost some of its Civic Grit in striking this kind of practical balance. People are now asking questions about how to strike a balance that previously was mostly both schooled and intuitive. To my observations, as the internet grew toxicity and narrative fracture *and* as civic education & basic volunteerism declined in society, folks lost the first hand knowledge and practice of (&some in younger generations never had opportunities to develop/practice) these skills and related mindsets. We have regressed and in the process forgotten how to utilize civic skills for multiple audiences and contexts. So, it's really good that folks are now sharing their stories on how they are managing the expression of multiple sides of their civic identity on these kinds of forums.
In social studies education in the era in which I was first trained, civic identity formation was something we were taught to teach young people, as we practiced it ourselves on the front lines via non-partisan teaching in public settings. Through such one learns a lot about how to strike such balance within yourself first, so you then can most effectively work and serve in civic capacities. Since so much of this civic wisdom now seems rusty, we need more people sharing their stories on these fronts. Good work!!!
I work with volunteers. Lawyer volunteers. For many years my organization has functioned more or less by taking what it can get. If you were a lawyer that wanted to volunteer, we took you and found space for you. However, we are at a point where 1) we cannot remain competitive on this model, i.e. members will meet their needs elsewhere/take $$$ from the org. if all we do is deliver this baseline, and 2) the state of political discourse means we need to have better understandings and limits on what our volunteers are doing, as it is easy for a volunteer of one political stripe to enrage members of another political stripe.
In this process, I have found that /criticism/ is an important, necessary, and even friendly tool in increasing the quality of work our volunteers produce. Lawyers get very little feedback on their work, ever, and often that feedback is rather disconnected from what the hard work really was. Being direct and honest about what I want and what I think the volunteer needs to do to step up and deliver, has been very simple and effective? An ounce of honest criticism has created deep collaboration and even (professional) friendships and mentorship opportunities. I say this as a bit of a sideways counterpoint to your stances on neutrality. Neutrality can convey disinterest and dishonesty, i.e. I don't care enough about you to share what I really feel. It can prevent the other party from understanding your boundaries and limits and confuses their assessment of whether you are working well together. Speaking clearly that I am acting from a position, that I have a stance and a bias and a political ideology and institutional authority about what my org needs and benefits from, has led to me working more effectively with others and has improved the quality of our volunteer contributions. So I think it is okay to disagree, it is okay to be polar, the polarity drives action and honesty.
Similarly, I end up in conversations about DEI requirements, especially in the continuing education sphere. Looking people in the eye and telling them what I think has demonstrably increased trust and collaboration. I had a conversation with someone complaining about these requirements, he walked through all the talking points, I don't need to see these statistics, I know how to treat people as people, I hired a black employee.... And I was like oh???? A black employee? Tell me more. And it became a discussion about how this employee had chaired her black student association at her university, and I asked the man if he asked her about it and learned about it, and he was like oh yeah I asked her about it, I had to make sure she wasn't some kind of radical. At that point I just told him, well, I wouldn't work for you if you treated me like that in an interview! There's other jobs in this world! These statements did not end our discussion, and I could tell the statements made him think more seriously about the issue than he ever had before. Because someone was willing to stand there and have it as a whole conversation with him.
I don't think I'm disagreeing with your overall point so much as saying that 'conflict resolution' does not have to equal 'wearing kiddie gloves' or 'being silent.' I reject the characterization that activism and conflict resolution are so disjoint. I speak clearly and honestly and give my reasons for my beliefs and I listen to the beliefs of others and say what leads me to disagree. There's real psychology around sunk costs, which I have studied/encountered in the context of religion, of Chinese business transactions, and even these general ideas of 'mirroring' and some therapy basics - people perceive and respond to openness. If you put a bet down on the table, someone will cock their eyebrow and meet you. If someone sees that I have put myself at risk (by being openly bi, nonbinary, progressive, thoughtful, patient, personal, /critical/, in front of them), they have responded not by suing me but by being my most interesting collaborators. FWIW.
Finally, I recently read Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It really impressed upon me this notion, especially pretending to live in our free world of sorts, that everyone has the right to be convinced rather than to be coerced. The process of convincing often requires an open-ended, thoughtful education, that leads both student and teacher away from their original convictions to genuinely new and authentic places. When I find myself in deep disagreement I ask what it is I know that they do not know, and what it is that they know that I do not know, and I try to find the discussion style that enables that knowledge to be exchanged.
You might enjoy this comment I made on what I think is a similar topic: https://defusingamericananger.substack.com/p/how-taking-stances-and-criticizing/comment/102227563. I would categorize what you are trying to do as activism with perhaps some depolarization/conflict-resolution ideas included in it. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that; I’m just saying that what I see as neutral, scalable conflict resolution work requires trying to remove one’s stances as much as possible from that work. It’s not bad to have stances or even to work towards one’s stances as one also does depolarization-aimed work; I’m just arguing for trying to see them as separate endeavors. I also agree that the goals of persuasive activism and conflict resolution align; why I try to make people see that you can work towards any goals while also injecting conflict-resolution/de-escalating concepts/approaches in that activism.
I guess, in what context do you see this style of neutrality being applied, to what end? What is the 'work' in 'depolarization-aimed work'? I'm curious about the idea in context.
It feels like a feeling different parts of the elephant parable situation.
Giving people the tools and motivation to be able to disagree better, without amplifying toxicity and contempt. In a nutshell. Because so few people care about that at all. We’ve been in a self reinforcing cycle of toxicity for decades (standard conflict cycle imo) and if more people cared to learn about how conflict works we might avoid such things. Humanity is conflict about how conflict works imo and most people’s instincts on how to behave in conflict only amplify it.
So where does your neutrality fit in that? In terms of normal conversations, mediations, personal interventions, social interventions?
Who is ‘entering the chat’ and needing to establish neutrality to build trust and de-escalate policy discussion?
Because in my DEI example I have these conversations neutrally in the sense that I am serving members and need their unfiltered input and perspective to understand how to serve them. I view my role not as convincing anyone for or against the merits of mandatory anti-bias education; I view my role as preparing professionals to make decisions regarding their self-regulation that allow the profession to grow and meet its stated goals.
I think based on my own experience doing the job and being a member of the profession and supporting the profession… that openly discussing issues of bias, culture, the differing experiences of diverse members, is good for the profession. I tell people this because it is a form of expert and on the ground advice that they do not have a chance to see when only approaching the issue with the tools of philosophical free speech analysis.
In my experience I must reveal that I have a stance, and demonstrate the intellectual honesty that it is open to change subject to new evidence, in order to get people to reveal their stances. And that this open-stancedness is what produces the information that makes better decisions.
Is this … neutral? Does your formulation of neutrality suggest I should have these conversations differently? How would they look?