To be effective, communication on controversial topics must understand this truth about belief: it is a usually a psychological process that involves identification with a like-minded group and demonization of your opponents. To get to the point of real discussion about beliefs you must first:
establish this basic level of trust: “I believe the things I believe because I think they will lead to happiness for people and I’m not motivated by bigotry or the desire to hurt or oppress others.” This should be fairly easy but it’s the largest hurdle. Millions of Americans subscribe to a worldview that only makes sense if there are equal numbers of hateful people on the other side lying about their motives and consumed by a desire to punish and oppress. If you can convince a person that this MIGHT be exaggerated you have taken a huge first step. A common deflection at this stage is to veer into the past: “black people have been murdered by the thousands simply for wanting basic rights!” or “Queer people used to be at risk of execution for their sexuality!” These are both broadly accurate but also totally irrelevant. Those places no longer exist. Those people are long gone. Let’s talk about what’s going on right now. If I hated you I wouldn’t be speaking to you like this right now.
state your assumptions. Be honest and as fulsome as you can practically be. Flag the areas where you’re not sure, talk about he books and lessons and thinkers that led you to different ideas and speak to your own experience. Explain your OWN emotional investment in different aspects of the problem.
identify areas of agreement. Really listen to your counterpart and restate his points in your own words, to ensure that your impression is accurate. You want to ‘steel man’ the opposing belief: you want to be able to explain your opponent’s ideas so clearly and astutely that in explaining it HE learns about the ideas that he holds.
When you’ve covered this territory you can then begin to address the facts of the issue and the pros and cons of various paths forward.
You will usually find that most of your differences are impassable and conversion not possible. This is expected and not at all discouraging. Belief is a psychological process that involves group identification and learned emotional cues and is rarely the outcome of logical objective analysis. By having this conversation you should find yourself MORE secure in your own beliefs and enjoying a sense of amiability and empathy with another person, even in your disagreement. For psychologically normal people this is a comforting feeling. If you feel a little less certain, embrace the possibility of error and try to stay flexible in your viewpoints. You are an individual with an individual mind, and not a herd animal. Each person has the responsibility of engaging with the ongoing confusion of reality straightforwardly, and finding his or her own path forward.
What follows is a letter I recently write to a person who shared a YouTube video in which a British comedian (Konstatin Kisin) addresses the Oxford Union on the subject of wokeness, using the global warming debate as an example to illustrate global policy priorities and sensible debate:
“..I always admire a fresh take that uses a conciliatory and original approach. More than half of our difficulty is mutual incomprehension. On global warming, Republicans really think the activists are just trying to gain power over the lives of citizens and activists think that Republicans are recklessly leading us to doom to gain a near-term profit. If people would just LISTEN to one another we would understand that most everyone is concerned for the environment and most everyone wants prosperity. The real conversation (for regular people, not radical environmentalists or lobbyists or politicians) is about the science and the ways to get where we’re trying to go. Global warming is a relatively cordial topic actually (despite some of the hysteria). When you consider issues like race and gender identity the dialogue has become totally dysfunctional and I think the Left bears most of the blame for that. Their positions on those issues have changed very quickly in the last few years but their perspective ONLY makes sense if one believes that a huge number of Americans are actually motivated by racism and transphobia (and that there an epidemic of racism and transphobic violence afoot, which simply isn’t true). Every time I’m in conversation with someone about THESE issues I hammer the point: Americans were mostly good willed and practical people even in 1964 (or the Civil Rights Act would never have passed) and we are infinitely more sensitive than we were then. Very few Americans are racist in an ideological sense. They believe is fairness and most black Americans agree with them. It’s intellectually dishonest and dangerous to conflate color-blind policies with racism. Regarding trans, middle America is just worried about kids. That’s it. I’ve never spoken to or listened to a conservative who wanted to subordinate or oppress trans people. Admitting that your opponent are decent and intelligent is difficult for the activists though because it removes the urgency and sense of crisis from their narrative. Ultimately what you find in that case is that the crisis mentality is all they have. Hating others is usually only psychologically possible if you believe they hate YOU first. Nothing about their viewpoint makes sense unless you assume that there is a genocide against trans people. I say it again and again and I’m struck by the responses I get: they’re actually MORE infuriated by a kind and measured response because it threatens their core beliefs. They would 100% be reassured to encounter transphobia and hate because it would bolster the delusional conception they have erected. I don’t think I’ve ever communicated with an activist who credits what I’m saying. They resort to ad hominem attacks and flee into the fortress of their preconceptions. After a brief exchange it becomes clear that they’re having a conversation with a psychological boogeyman that they’ve constructed and not with me. When your worldview requires the existence of 100 million bigots that simply don’t exist you have wandered from the realm of policy discussion into paranoid delusion and I think about 1 out of every 5 Americans is in that place. To reprogram a cult member you must be understanding, persistent, logical (rather than emotive) and emphasize again and again that you’re not motivated by enmity or persecutory zeal or vindictiveness. If you can just get the believer to admit that you MIGHT be a voice of concern (and not an existential threat) you can begin to chip away at the complex of falsehoods. The first step isn’t about convincing them of the validity of your beliefs. It’s about establishing the honesty and decency of your motivations. I think the same strategy is required here. We’re all Americans and we are only able to regard political opponents as enemies by pretending that the rest of the world doesn’t exist and ignoring our REAL enemies. That requires a huge amount of short-sighted ignorance about the rest of the world but there’s always plenty of that around. I don’t want to win or score points or punish the Left. I want to convince people… but cult members are the most difficult people to convince and this IS a cult.”
This is probably the most important message I have and one that I emphasize at every opportunity. We will never make the groups that we disagree with disappear and discussion/disagreement/agreement is an individual experience that must take account of the emotional tendencies and biases of the human mind. I hope you enjoy this and perhaps even begin to use some of this information in your own consequential disagreements.
This is probably the most important message I have and one that I emphasize at every opportunity. We will never make the groups that we disagree with disappear and discussion/disagreement/agreement is an individual experience that must take account of the emotional tendencies and biases of the human mind. I hope you enjoy this and perhaps even begin to use some of this information in your own consequential disagreements.