21 Jun I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times
If, like me, you feel like the world is becoming more and more divided.
And if, like me, you find this distressing.
Then this great article by Monica Guzman on the Next Big Idea site is well worth reading and sharing …
Mónica Guzmán is the Director of Digital Storytelling at Braver Angels, a nonprofit committed to depolarizing America. She is also host of the Crosscut interview series Northwest Newsmakers. Previously she led a network or newsletters as Vice President of WhereBuy.Us, and founded the award-winning newsletter The Evergrey.
Below, Mónica shares 5 key insights from her new book, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Listen to the audio version—read by Mónica herself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. We’re so divided, we’re blinded.
If you can’t get curious across divides in a polarized world, then you can’t see the world at all. The social science research shows us over and over again that when someone is asked to guess the views on the other side of the political divide, they assume that those views are more extreme. We’re looking at a projection instead of reality. I call this S.O.S., the call for help: sorting, othering, and siloing.
Sorting is the natural tendency to want to be around people who are like us—a tendency that grows stronger in times of anxiety and stress. Othering is the tendency to push off from people who are different from us. Finally, siloing is the stories we tell ourselves as a result of sorting and othering. This includes how we can sculpt our digital universes, friends, and feeds so that we do tend to be surrounded by voices who agree with us, or at least share a lot of our experiences and perspectives.
Now, judgment is important. We need to be able to judge our world to know how to negotiate it and make it better. But judgment is reckless when we don’t understand what we are judging. Whoever is underrepresented in our lives will be overrepresented in our imaginations. Instead of people, we’ll see monsters. Instead of possibilities, we’ll see disasters. That’s the challenge of this polarized world, but there is a way we can meet it…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE