Reasonable minds in unreasonable times

Grace in conflict

Current events are pushing us harder than we’re meant to be pushed. We are challenged daily to resist tyranny and protect democracy, both of which are very heavy lifts. I am becoming convinced that, to have a good ending to our democracy meltdown, we need to be working on two levels at once:

• Protest and resistance to the continued deconstruction of democracy at the federal level, and

• Bringing people together at the local level in community engagement.

My theory of the case is that a nation of civically engaged people would not be fertile ground for a Donald Trump-type to rise to power. One factor in our current crisis is that Americans have regarded themselves more as consumers than citizens for too long. Democracies that let themselves go and fall into unhealthy habits don’t live long in the same way unhealthy people don’t live long. Civic engagement is like healthy eating and keeping oneself in shape.

We must stay watchful about the myriad ways Donald Trump & Co. are corrupting the office of the president, dismantling government agencies, and undermining national security as well as public health. (In my fears, I imagine us dying by the millions of tuberculosis, followed by being bombed by North Korea.) For the foreseeable future, we need to keep calling our representatives and showing up in force at protests.

Meanwhile, on the home front, we should do everything we can to nurture our local communities, build capacity for dialogue when there’s controversy, and, in essence, make our land inhospitable to tyranny. In doing so, we’re taking a page from the Republican Party playbook, looking at the long view.

Make America democratic (for once)

I almost titled this section “Make America democratic again.” but there’s no halcyon democratic past we can simply revert to. There are gaps to be addressed in the Constitution and several structural changes to be implemented so that our system is not rigged to favor one party over another. There is no shortcut to take that would bring these changes quickly.

This is why I’m becoming more invested in deliberative dialogue and building social capital in small communities across the nation. Leaders and visionaries younger than I will take the torch on the Constitutional and structural transformations. I’m wagering that, through local deliberative work, we can shift perceptions of what government is for and why everyone’s interests are served when government dedicates itself to making our country hospitable to all its citizens and residents. Here are a few of the shifts I would hope to see:

• Away from seeing government as an external force and toward seeing government as a social compact made and run by all of us.

• Away from zero-sum fights and toward creative compromise wherever possible.

• Away from a focus on what government can do for me and toward a focus on what is needed from the citizenry to keep democracy alive and healthy.

An Anytown illustration

Last week, I gave you a case study of one small city’s struggle with divergent opinions. People on all sides have spoken out, saying, “Here is my opinion, and this is why I’m right.” What they are missing is a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the basis of peoples’ thinking. This is not the same as knowing why someone holds their opinions. Dialogue is for answering “what” questions, rather than “why” questions. What values, goals, and life experiences led people to hold the opinions they do? “What” questions invite descriptions, whereas “why” questions invite defensiveness. By getting into fixed positions and focusing on why questions, the people in Anytown are missing an opportunity:

• To gain awareness of potential unintended consequences to either side.

• To create project plans that represent a plurality of opinions rather than “for” and “against.”

• To grasp the complexity of the issue and consider the context.

An election may ultimately answer Anytown’s question, but it won’t solve Anytown’s problem, which is deep distrust between city officials and residents.

There are many ways of making decisions. Elections in which the majority rules is just one of them. All decision rules have strengths and weaknesses. The downside of elections is:

• They frame questions in terms of binary options, which may distort the realities of the issue.

• They create fixed, opposing groups of “winners” and “losers.”

• Elections don’t usually solve community conflicts. They merely postpone them.

My thinking so far

I’m not speaking to you as an expert. I’m a student on a steep learning curve. Some of my questions seem discouraging:

• How do you foster dialogue among Americans of differing social classes and across the urban-rural divide? I’ve been attending a project in public conversations, where we learn some of the values and techniques that would animate deliberative dialogue. The other attendees tend to be more like than unlike me in terms of demographic characteristics, political leanings, and education. If I were to pack up this project and take it into a racially or socio-economically different community, I would likely get run out on a rail for being arrogant and condescending. Imagine if I were to take the project to a mining community in Kentucky. Thus my question: how does one create dialogue across differences? It won’t help anyone if everyone stays in their bubble.

• How do you take this project to scale? In small communities, it’s fairly simple to create a bunch of small discussion groups. But what if your “community” has hundreds of thousands of people to engage? How would you incorporate deliberative dialogues into the election process so that people might go to the polls with a deeper appreciation of the implications of their vote? The sheer logistics of breaking large communities into small conversation groups seem daunting. Someone who is a better organizer than I would need to spearhead the effort.

While I grapple with these and other questions, I am proceeding on the assumption that answers will emerge in their due time. What are some of the conditions we’d need to create to hold effective dialogues? Anytown’s story is helpful as I clarify and deepen my thinking.

Right now in Anytown, people are at loggerheads. The matter will be resolved by a vote that’s for or against a proposed project. Winners will be jubilant; losers will be butt hurt. I imagine bringing groups of them together and what it would take to get them into genuine dialogue.

While they are together in the room, I would ask them to agree to a few conditions:

1. We aren’t here to persuade; we’re here to learn.

2. Differences of opinion are an opportunity, not a problem, and

3. Consider the possibility that your own opinion may be mistaken.

These conditions may sound counterintuitive. It’s asking a lot for people to suspend their disbelief and listen empathically for the sake of understanding rather than explaining, defending, and persuading.

Principles of democratic hygiene

If you’re working on resistance activities and cultivating dialogues on local issues, you will need to give yourself breaks. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You may also need to cut yourself some slack if you find you’ve made a mistake. This work, whether national or local, is a process rather than an event. It requires sustained participation. You may go to a dozen marches and feel like they aren’t getting you anywhere. You can spend hours with your neighbors practicing a different way of talking to each other. You will get discouraged. You will get tired.

A post on Facebook, attributed to Michael Moore, used a choir as an analogy. In choirs, notes are often sustained longer than people can wait to take a breath. The solution is for people in choirs to take breaths at different times. When you’re part of a choir, you won’t personally be sustaining a long-held note, but the audience will hear a sustained note nonetheless — because it’s the choir — not the individual singers — keeping the sound going.

You are more than one individual. You are also part of numerous groups that cannot be reduced to their members.

Some things require a choir. This is one of those times.

It takes more than willpower to avoid getting locked into a position and having fights with your opponents. Even the most skilled of dialoguers will find themselves there if they let themselves get:

• Too tired

• Too lonely

• Too angry

That is why your homework every day is:

Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.

Take care of this place.

Song of the Day

“Talk To Me” — Sunny and the Sunliners

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Keep on keepin’ on,

Cindy