You know the old saying: egrets have layers. Or was it ogres? Either way, people have layers, too — which is a truth we often forget.
There’s an English word that, as far as I know, exists for the time being only on the internet. The word is “sonder” — and it’s the realization that everybody around us lives a life just as full, complicated, and bursting with potential as our own.
These discrete little universes have lots of reasons for believing the things they do. We all do. Many of these reasons are even beyond our control. We all have blind spots, plus a selection of lenses we place between ourselves and an unfiltered perception of the world and its peoples. We choose some of these lenses. Other lenses are chosen for us through a kind of social inheritance.
The thing is, we don’t have to make do with phrases like “agree to disagree.” We’re not talking about race relations, or equal rights, or the dignified treatment of women. These are beyond debate.
Between these inflexible pillars of civilization, though, is a range of shades of grey. Moral ambiguity does exist — sort of. But it requires us to peel back the “layers,” you might call them, of others’ worldviews and complete several tasks whenever we find ourselves at an apparent impasse of conflicting ideologies. Here are some of those tasks.
Task 1: Learn the Difference Between an “Argument” and an “Argument”
Humanity has been shouting at itself for thousands of years. We don’t need more of the same, which means neither of us is allowed to raise our voice next time we have a conversation. An “argument” as most people understand it is an exchange of decibels and two (or more) increasingly exhausted combatants.
But an “argument” as Plato and Socrates understood it is a good-faith, good-natured exchange of ideas. Not sure what this looks like in practice? Try this: enter into conversations assuming nothing about the issue at hand. Listen earnestly when information is presented to you. You’ll be tempted to pounce with a sound byte you’ve already prepared. Don’t. If you have an argument which answers the case that’s just made — great! Make it after your companion has finished speaking.
But don’t engage in straw-man arguments by misquoting or being disingenuous about something they said. If you have a case worth making, it needs to be based on the information you’ve just taken in — not on prepared rhetoric, and not a straw-man version of the opposing viewpoint. Whenever possible, avoid fraught terms and labels — like “democrat” or “libertarian” or “socialism” — and communicate in plain English. Omitting the combative terms and the canned, “politically correct” phrases will help reveal a lot of hidden common ideological ground.
Task 2: Consider the “Source” of the Misunderstanding
We began with the assumption that some so-called “divisive” issues here and elsewhere are actually settled issues. There are international bodies like the UN which have, for example, already drawn up a set of human rights which far exceeds the rights protected by U.S. law and the laws of many other developed countries. We are approaching a common understanding of human dignity and human rights that knows no borders.
With that understood, logic seems to dictate that most of our civic and “political” debates can be settled by doing two things:
- Making sure both parties can admit when there’s not enough evidence to draw a satisfying conclusion about something (and when there has).
- Committing to exchanging information earnestly, honestly, and civilly.
There are reasons why a person might choose to doubt that human activity is a force which can perpetuate global climate change. But not very many of those reasons has anything to do with the scientific method. Most of them are, demonstrably, the product of Corporate propaganda filtered through a captured State.
Therefore: while no two people need necessarily be scientists in order to have a good-faith debate about a scientific matter, it’s usually easy to tell who wishes to perceive their corner of the world in as unfiltered a manner as possible.
Task 3: Follow the Money, Follow the Truth
We all assume we’ve got all of the information we need to draw each of our conclusions.
But don’t we all operate, daily, with an almost horrifying lack of information? We can’t always see the moments where taking our foot off the gas pedal for a moment might’ve prevented a life-changing car accident. We take most things at face value if they 1) Confirm our existing beliefs, 2) Are delivered convincingly, ideally by television personalities, and 3) If doing so means we don’t have to introduce meaningful change to our lives.
Human beings are frighteningly gullible, on average, and especially in large numbers, no matter how “woke” you think you are individually. There are still real people, with real flesh and blood, living on the ground in Venezuela. You wouldn’t believe how many Russians there are whose names don’t include the words “Vladimir” or “Putin.” You wouldn’t believe the returns some countries are enjoying thanks to some small, sociable, common-sense tweaks to their social contracts. But we, here, and many others elsewhere, choose to believe in our own “exceptionalism” instead of learning from one another.
Most of the evidence also suggests America is not the “perilously divided” wasteland you and I tend to believe it to be. Taken apart civic issue by civic issue, America stands together on many issues of everyday consequence. But our government has been captured by groups of people with astonishing amounts of money to spend on maintaining their various legal and illegal, public and private, unscrupulousness. It’s their hired mouthpieces, including major “news media” conglomerates, who bend over backward to paint a picture of a country whose citizens are at each other’s throats.
And in many places in the country and the world, we certainly are at each other’s throats, literally and figuratively. Real sources of anguish are being drowned out by selfish infighting and loud bullies.
In other places, confusing “civics” with “politics” means children and their families have to bathe and shower with bottled water for years at a time.
Politics aren’t civics. Arguments aren’t always arguments. When in doubt, follow the money to figure out who’s got a more convincing motive to lie, cheat, steal, or, in some cases, hire television personalities to lie for them.
And for everything else, there’s civility. Not civility in the face of cruelty or obvious breaches of human dignity. The quiet kind of civility. In fact, it’s so quiet it makes the same sound “learning” makes. Nothing else can change minds as they gather around the dinner table to collate their thoughts — or anyplace else.
Kate is a health and political journalist. You can subscribe to her blog, So Well, So Woman, to read more of her work and receive a free subscriber gift! https://sowellsowoman.com/about/subscribe/