You’ve got your principles. I know. I’ve got mine too. They guide your beliefs about how the world works. Mine guide mine. But guess what?
There are many intelligent, reasonable people who disagree with us.
Are you tracking with me? Read it again. I need you to fully digest the above sentence.
They live and work among us. Their kids go to school with our kids. They might even cheer for the same sports team you do, or have the same hobbies.
And—horror of horrors—they’re crazy. They’re tree-hugging liberal nut cases. Or they’re knuckle-dragging conservative rednecks. Imagine!
Except they’re not. They’re our friends and neighbors. And, though there are certainly minority and more extreme views at either end of the spectrum, I find that most of the time the world we all want looks pretty similar. We’ve just reached different conclusions on how to get there.
So much of the discourse in this country is so poisoned. It started getting noticeably worse in the late ’90s, around the time Clinton was impeached and we were running up to the 2000 election. (That’s right about the time the web really matured. Coincidence? Hardly.) Sometimes we can muster a cry for civility, or even (gasp) understanding. But demonstrably, far too few of us mean it. It’s easy to throw rocks out the car window at each other, so we do. It’s hard to stop and talk, so we don’t.
What do we do about it? Well, I think we must start with sustained effort to comprehend the thinking of those who disagree with us. And getting underneath that involves, most saliently, information acquisition.
If you’re interested in genuine engagement on the way to actually crossing bridges, then I have a challenge for you. I want you to start reading three web sites. (Note I’m saying read, not look at.) Read the rest of this post first:
Add Reuters to your news feed. Spend as much time with it as you spend with any other news site. If you read CNN or Fox News for ten minutes a day, add ten minutes of Reuters to your consumption.
Pay close attention to what you see. What is the lead story on Reuters? Is it the same as the lead story on your other news site? What is present in Reuters’ reporting of an event that is absent from the reporting on your favorite site, and vice versa? Do the sites use different words to describe the same thing? Is there a photo with the story? Are the photos different on the sites? Do you read or see anything that seems like it’s designed to provoke a response and not merely inform?
Add The Nation and National Review Online to your viewpoint reading. Now if you readily identify as a liberal or a conservative, you’re going to find one of these sites pretty agreeable and the other pretty wrong-headed. It’s important that you read them both. Why?
- Remember those intelligent, reasonable people who disagree with you we talked about earlier? You’re going to encounter some of the most eloquent and informed of them on these sites. If you’ve ever claimed to be interested in finding resolution on issue X, go to the one of these sites that you don’t like and find someone talking about issue X. Chances are excellent you’ll find inroads into the conversation therein. What are you going to have to address if there is to be common ground?
- Would you like a reasonable measure of protection from digesting and forwarding nonsense? You’ll find it at these sites. The content at The Nation and National Review Online is nearly exclusively opinion journalism, but editorial standards are high. You won’t find a slapdash pile of crap either place, and if there are claims that need to be cited, they generally will be. If you want to discuss or argue a point on social media, starting with something you saw on The Nation or National Review Online is much more solid ground than something fly-by-night that’s circulating on Facebook.
Add another ten minutes daily for each of these sites. One great approach would be to take whatever story is leading the news and look at it at your favorite news site, at Reuters, at The Nation, and at National Review Online.
Come on Bo, that’s 30 minutes a day! (And I want you to do it for a whole month!) Where am I going to find that? (How much time do you spend on Facebook again?) Take a break from slapping your friends in the face with red meat and spend the time pensively instead.
Change your mind on something? You might. You might not. But I guarantee that if you undertake this pursuit sincerely, you’ll at least better understand where your opponents are coming from—and therefore more productive places from which to begin discussion.
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Ironically enough, I remember being interviewed by Mrs Chili and her asking how she and I – being as diametrically opposed as we are politically – could be such good friends.
“Well,” I said, “we both want the same things in the end, really. A world that’s safe, happy, and prosperous. We just disagree on how to achieve that. We have the same destination, but we’re each taking a different road, and we each believe that our road is the high road.”
Excellent way to put it. You did well for yourself. 🙂
Too much out there plays to tribalism. It has helped to shape everything about how we consume information.