02 Nov How Could You? • Three Steps To Unity In a Politically Polarized Climate
It’s the day before the election.
I’m sitting here at my new house in Glendale. My brother and I just moved last weekend. Boxes are everywhere. We are slowly putting together the remaining pieces from our past life in Simi Valley. One chapter is closed and a new one has begun. I’m massively grateful for this change of seasons. Although this transition is a positive one, the world feels a little tilted right now. Nothing is how I remember it. Nothing is where I left it.
Tomorrow things will tilt even further.
No matter which way this election goes, there will be strong reactions. There will be overreactions. There will also be outraged people with legitimate objections. Regardless of who wins, there are reasonable people who will carry forward cogent concerns about the chosen president and his political ideologies.
As is the case for many of you, there are people I love very dearly on both sides of the political spectrum. I’ve felt a sense of inner conflict about this.
Today I choose to respond to that conflict with gratitude. There is something beautiful about having relational equity with someone who owns a different perspective than I do.
As an Enneagram nine (the Peacemaker), I am not naturally the most comfortable with conflict, especially with people I love and care about. I want peace. I want conflict to be resolved. It is in this understanding of myself that I see the potential for growth. It is easy for me to disengage when I disagree. Disengaging is a pseudo peace-preservation technique for me.
The beautiful thing about being a human is that there is a choice to be made. As Stephen Covey put it, we don’t have to live out of the scripts that we were handed in our development as people. We can choose different (hopefully better) scripts.
So the script I embrace this morning is one of gratitude for the differences in thought amongst my community.
There are three practical ways that I’m embracing this variety.
1. I’m asking myself this question: “How could a rational person vote differently than me?”
I don’t mean this question in the outraged tone that the title of my post might suggest. I’m giving the opposite perspective the benefit of the doubt. One of the reasons that our country is so divided is because, as a culture, we have failed miserably in our duty to humanize people who think differently than we do.
Asking ourselves how a sane person might vote in the opposite direction brings back that sense of humanity. The beauty of knowing and loving people who think differently is that you can personalize this statement…
“How could (insert name) vote in the opposite direction as me?”
I also understand that just because a person is your friend or loved one doesn’t necessarily make them rational. My hope is that you can identify someone who embodies the intersection of “loved-one-with-opposing-view-and-rational”.
The broader point here is to assume the best. Assume that there are people with different views than you that hold their views for a good reason. I’m not saying that you should switch your opinions or beliefs. However, you should spend some time trying to understand where they are coming from and how a sensible human might arrive at their conclusion.
2. I’m finding someone who thinks differently than me and inviting them to coffee.
If you have no one in your life who thinks differently than you do, you have a problem. It’s a fixable problem, but we must acknowledge the issue before we can fix it. Herein lies a major contributing factor to the political polarity we are experiencing in our country. You need to have people in your life that you like (even love) that think differently than you. I hope that you can find someone, even on the more peripheral level of your life, with whom you can practice point #2.
If you have someone in your life who holds a different political stance with whom you’ve built a solid level of relational equity, this part is easy… well sort of. It’s easy in the sense that you’ve found your person to invite to coffee. It’s difficult in the sense that you’re probably bracing yourself for a difficult conversation with someone you are in some way fond of.
The best piece of advice I can offer is to enter this conversation with the attitude of a student. Go into the conversation with the goal of asking the best questions you can in order to become more informed about this person’s perspective. Resist the urge to ask inflammatory or leading questions.
“What is wrong with you?”
“How could you be so stupid?”
“Who raised you?” (there’s actually a useful variant to that one)
“What gives you the right to…?”
“Don’t you believe that…?”
Instead ask questions like this:
“What issues matter most to you?”
“How does your political ideology address the issues you care about?”
“What views did your family have on politics growing up? What mattered to them?” (the better version of the question above)
“Hmm, that’s interesting… Can you tell me more about that?”
You’re smart. You can come up with your own questions. The key idea here is that you want to understand. If you can’t find it in your heart to want to understand, work on step #1 until you get there. You didn’t commence this conversation to argue or even to be understood. The goal is understanding them.
3. I’m dribbling a tennis ball with my weak hand.
My brilliant, comedy-writing brother Brandon posted this video last week in which he used a basketball analogy to talk about the importance of rounding out our political perspectives. In basketball (and in life), we typically have a dominant hand with which we are more proficient. Brandon related the idea of having a dominant left or right hand to the idea of being on the left or right politically. The most effective basketball players often still favor one hand, but they put in the work to develop their non-dominant hand to a useful place of proficiency. Politically speaking it is important that we do the same.
If points #1 & #2 are ways to start putting the basketball in your non-dominant hand, point #3 helps you to develop a more advanced proficiency.
In basketball, a good way to develop your ball handling is to dribble with a tennis ball. Due to its size in relation to a basketball, a tennis ball is more difficult to handle. As you develop the ability to dribble a tennis ball, dribbling a basketball becomes a much easier task.
Trying to get an understanding of the entire opposing political viewpoint is daunting. As you talk to your friend on the other side of the political aisle, focus on finding a “tennis ball-sized” idea that you can research more on your own. If you can start to understand smaller ideas, over time it will be easier to make sense of the broader perspective of the other side.
Now you might be thinking, “This all sounds like a lot of work.” Well, you’re kinda right.
First, you shouldn’t attempt to do these all in one sitting. In order to develop proficiency, you should commit to practicing these sorts of things over time.
Second, this kind of work is worth the effort. We have already seen the impact of neglecting to do the work. Disunity, discord, hatred, misunderstanding, and the like are all fruit of our collective laziness.
Relationships require work. Love requires work. Unity requires work. It’s best for all of us if we embrace it.
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