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On this many of us would agree: Our politics have become more partisan than ever before, and people with opposing views see each other as mad foreigners.
Intense anger scares me, and not just in other people’s anger: I have strong opinions myself, and can hyperventilate when I read opinions that clash with my own.
I have two questions: Why am I overreacting so much? And how can I humanize people?
I started thinking about this more seriously after the 2016 election, when the hatred between the opposing candidates reached an extreme. In an effort to do something about it, I tried to get red and blue voters to sit down together in my living room over wine and cheese, with a professional host, to understand each other. The goal wasn’t to change opinions, but just to humanize them.
My friends saw my idea as a failed, painful experiment: they feared panic and tried to squeeze out opposition voters, while red voters feared being attacked.
My first attempt
Out of options, I decided to talk to my sister-in-law, Ronnie. I figured I wouldn’t learn anything from just talking to one person, but I cornered her at a family gathering. Ronnie readily agreed to my suggestions and the ground rules – explanations only, no arguments. Her perspective was clear in her first response:
Elizabeth: What do you think of Blue Party supporters? Are they loyal or pathetic losers?
Ronnie: They are deluded. They believe things that are not true.
Soon we had stepped through the looking glass into a world where almost everything was inverted. Ronnie I believed What I believed was not true.
We talked for about an hour and didn’t agree on anything. But I came away with a much better impression of Ronnie, and by extension, other Republicans. I was impressed by her willingness to engage in dialogue and her quick withdrawal when she found herself arguing. I could see the logic of her opinions, given that they were based on completely different facts.
That experience encouraged me not to give up, and around that time I started reading about grassroots organizations that were running workshops to ease the red-blue divide. Braver Angels seemed to be successful. It relied on volunteers to organize locally: Two people, one red and one blue, would each recruit seven participants of their own beliefs and find a venue together. The organization would provide a coordinator to mentor the two volunteers and run the workshop. I participated.
The town where my husband and I have a weekend home is a semi-rural coastal area an hour from Boston. Not a resort town, but a real town, and politically it’s evenly split 50/50 between red and blue. Perfect.
Second attempt
A friend of a friend agreed to be my Republican partner, and a workshop coordinator and date were arranged. My partner and I met every Saturday morning to get to know each other and make plans. Like Ronnie, we were polar opposites politically, but we followed the rules and I quickly grew to like him.
But I was beginning to get nervous. He was stalling. I quickly found seven participants, but he hadn’t started recruiting yet. The local library declined our request to host the workshop, but we were lucky to host it at a Quaker meetinghouse.
Finally, my partner called me and said he couldn’t go through with it because “coming out” politically would have damaged his reputation back home. He was genuinely remorseful and explained why he’d had such worries. I couldn’t be mad at him.
Following his suggestion, I called local Republican representatives, and the results were a near perfect repeat: the woman accepted, we met, I did all the work, and she couldn’t recruit a single person. As the workshop date approached, I made calls all day, every day, for weeks, and managed to get two red participants. I’d never tried so hard in my life to do something, and I failed. There couldn’t be a workshop unless there were an equal number of reds and blues.
Still, despite the frustration, I found answers to two questions.
What I learned
First, I think we are driven to the brink of insanity when faced with objections based on alternatives. fact The two views are mutually exclusive. They are correct, we That is 100% wrong and vice versa.
Most of the issues on which people disagree are complex, involve differences in priorities and understandings, and are not the “all or nothing” choice that current politics offers. As a result, not only our ideas but our sense of reality is called into question. It is the dispute over the distinction between real and unreal that pushes us beyond our tolerance zone. This is the definition of sanity. When someone mentions another fact, we want to scream: “You’re not a real person.” crazyHow can you believe that?
But if we use the same words with a few changes to give them a different meaning, we can come back to reality. What led you to believe what you believe? The key is to temporarily quell your anger by stimulating your curiosity.
We all form our opinions through a variety of influences: the political atmosphere we grew up in, our experiences at school and work, our personal misfortunes, all the events in our lives that have led us to this moment. If we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we may empathize with their views. If we can activate our inner detective, we may be able to understand why people have arrived at their current belief systems.
Strangely, every time I’ve worked with someone to bridge a gap, I’ve felt a surge of love for them. Listening to them and being listened to brings out the best in each of us. Fitting yourself into their life is a loving effort.
My first interaction with Ronnie was a lot like my subsequent interactions: our political passions remained intact, but I had a change of heart.
