05/29/2018

Four Rules for Learning How to Talk to Each Other Again

Here’s how to speak in a polity where we loathe each other

You hate me! I know, because you tell me so, over and over again. I’m infuriatingly arrogant, comprehensively mistaken, and blithely unconscious of my good luck. I’m a citizen of Anywhere, but reside Somewhere with you, and share none of your affections and loyalties. I don’t understand the difficulties of ordinary life. Most of all, you resent my sneering contempt. You suspect I think you’re a racist rube, the worst thing a person can be in our society.

I’m not wild about you either, though not because you’re a hick who won’t do as I say. I concede your right to pursue your own good in your own way, but I dispute that your negative liberty to make choices for yourself constitutes a positive liberty to determine who may marry whom or deny preventive health care, including contraceptives, to women (to give two examples). I have my own resentments, too: There are big problems I want to help solve, such as replacing fossil fuels, curing intractable diseases, and creating meaningful work that pays real wages, and you insist on voting for leaders whose policies make solutions less likely.

It’s no way to form a more perfect union. The great political question of the day is “How can we all get along?” All democratic nations want an answer, but the need feels pressing in the United States, where the citizens of a large and historically divided nation have been further alienated by social media, cable news and modern political strategies. What social scientists call “affective polarization,” the measure of how much political tribes dislike one another, is as heated as it’s been since polling began: A 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found “that sizable shares of both Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but fear and anger.” Almost half of Republicans complained that Democrats were lazier than other Americans, more dishonest, closed-minded, and immoral. Democrats disparaged Republicans similarly, but in larger numbers. We’d even prefer not to shop or work in the same places, although it costs us.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.