Having conversations in a polarized environment

I have tried writing this piece about 10 times.  Each time it ends up as a muddled mess.

So I’ll try again.

Context:  Our current political and cultural environment in my country has become so polarized and full of hate and outrage that no one is capable of listening or having a productive conversation.

Question:  What can we do about this?  How do we keep it from destroying us?  How do we have useful conversations?

One solution is to avoid the whole mess.  If it is giving you stress and it is out of your control, you can disconnect and turn off.  First and foremost, you need to protect your own mental and physical health.  Because this stuff is poison.

But that doesn’t mean you need to run away and hide.  You can still engage in conversations.  You can have productive conversations that find common ground.  I believe that’s what the majority of us want.

First point:  Social media and political parties are not in the business of productive conversations.  These are things you can sequester yourself from.  Social media is in the business of amplifying you emotions to get you to buy stuff.  Political parties are in the business of doing whatever it takes to gain more power.

Neither of those things produce productive conversations.  They produce outrage and hate.  They produce binary choices of us versus them.

So, when I say ‘you can turn it off’ that’s what I mean.

Second point:  You can still have conversations.  Productive conversations.  Even with people who are on the other side of the debate.

How do you do this?

Part of it is structural.  Think about it like the old parliamentary debating rules.  You can have clear guidelines or boundaries for the conversations that you are willing to take part in

Guideline one:  No name calling or personal attacks.  Your conversation is about policies, not people. This is hard.  But if you start with ‘so-and-so is evil and stupid’ there can be no conversation.  Avoid triggering.

Guideline two:  Everyone gets a chance to have their say without being interrupted, attacked or shouted down.

Guideline four: Practice active listening.  Listen to what the other is saying.  Probe for what is behind their words.  Many times there is emotion there.  Many times it is fear.  Fear that you or your side are trying to take something away from them. Ask questions.  ‘How do you feel about that?’  “How do you know that is true?”

Guideline three:  You don’t need to agree.  You don’t’ need to ‘win’.  You seek only to understand.  But can you find common ground?

The third point in having successful conversations and lowering the outrage level is that it starts with you.

And this is also partly what I mean by disengaging.

Let’s say you’re online and feeling angry about things.  One particular person is really making you mad.  So you find the perfect post to forward to everyone that shows how much of an evil troll that person is.

How does that make you feel?  It gives you a little rush of superiority.  It makes you feel in control.

You are part of the problem.  You are being manipulated.  And you are enjoying it.

In order to have productive conversations you need to look inside and understand the emotional reward you are getting form the behavior.  You need to check your own facts and sources.  You need to find what that fear is that may be driving this behavior.

And you need to let it go.  That’s how productive conversations start.  By letting go of the polarizing crap and working together to find solutions based on common ground.

We do need to talk to each other.

But in a healthy way.

We need to walk away from the yelling matches where we try to shout over each other.

We need to walk away from the personal attacks.

We need to walk away from are the outlandishly biased and inflammatory narratives on all sides.

We need to have conversations that are not focused on winning the point.  Conversations are not a binary, win-lose choice.  You don’t have to compromise your ideals (another fear) or risk losing a friend (another fear).

Flip the script.  See the conversation as an opportunity.

Not an opportunity to convert someone to your position, but a way to articulate and to use shared energy to find new solutions and common ground.

It’s subtle but important.  You can’t go in with the intent of ‘making them see the light’ or ‘convincing them how stupid their position is’.

You go in with the attitude that you are going to listen, understand and try to help.

That person on the other side of the conversation from you, (that real person, not the internet troll), probably has 80% or more in common with you.  If you could have a conversation and acknowledge their fear (and yours) we can start working together to isolate the haters.

There will always be haters.

But we don’t need to give them a microphone.

If we can talk to each other and have real conversations, we can move the hate back into the fringes where it belongs.