Speaker 1: Any notion of reaching across these divides is seen as compromise,
Speaker 1: is seen as selling out. And yet would experience in
Speaker 1: other countries have shown and not just the Mendelos and
Speaker 1: many others, you know, we have to find a way
Speaker 1: to bridge this. Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day,
Speaker 1: a podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a
Speaker 1: legal status. This season is all about how we practice democracy,
Speaker 1: what can we get rid of, what can we invent,
Speaker 1: and how do we change the culture of democracy itself,
Speaker 1: relieving the theoretical clouds and hitting the ground with inspiring
Speaker 1: examples of people and institutions that are showing us new
Speaker 1: ways to govern ourselves. Throughout season four, we've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time dreaming up and defining what a culture
Speaker 1: of democracy can look and feel like. And that collective
Speaker 1: vision is beautiful and motivating. But to build the culture
Speaker 1: we want, we also need to face the one we've got,
Speaker 1: and right now, I think that culture is conflict. Our
Speaker 1: democracy is based on this extreme version of in group outgroup.
Speaker 1: We don't just disagree, we dehumanize And I'm not a
Speaker 1: both sides kind of person. I think the right has
Speaker 1: done a lot more of this, but I've experienced it
Speaker 1: from the left too, and I know that nobody's got
Speaker 1: a monopoly on our garbage culture. We've all become more
Speaker 1: deeply entrenched in our differences, and many of us don't
Speaker 1: see or don't want to see a path toward being
Speaker 1: in community with people on the other side. Throw in guns,
Speaker 1: sensational media, and a political system that rewards outlandishness, and
Speaker 1: the division we experience looks much more like a feature
Speaker 1: than a bug Listen. Sometimes I wish everyone I disagreed
Speaker 1: with would just read that article I sent them and
Speaker 1: realize how wrong they are. Other Times I find myself
Speaker 1: asking if we can just split the country in half,
Speaker 1: call it a day. We tried, and we move on separately.
Speaker 1: But community cannot be defined by total alignment on everything.
Speaker 1: That's not community. That's a cult. And we're trying to
Speaker 1: live together better here. That's the mission, and that living
Speaker 1: together requires living with an incredible amount of difference. We've
Speaker 1: been talking a lot about bringing democracy home, but it's
Speaker 1: hard to practice democracy at home when there are members
Speaker 1: of our families we can't talk to because they've been
Speaker 1: sucked into conspiracy, because they're part of a dehumanizing political
Speaker 1: culture or their opinions and mere presence feel so opposed
Speaker 1: to our own that it's hard to practice anything with them.
Speaker 1: But if we stop trying and just accept that this
Speaker 1: is the way things are, this division will only get worse.
Speaker 1: I'm must confess that I have this fear. I fear
Speaker 1: and I feel the possibility of truly escalated armed conflict
Speaker 1: along politically divided lines in this country, something we haven't
Speaker 1: experienced on mass you know, since our Civil war, and
Speaker 1: we're not currently in that state. We're not living through
Speaker 1: that literally right now, but it's a nightmare many of
Speaker 1: us carry, and it's an actual lived reality that other
Speaker 1: people around the world have gone through quite recently. Tim
Speaker 1: Phillips and his organization Beyond Conflict have been facilitating conversations
Speaker 1: between the victims and perpetrators of extreme violence and harm
Speaker 1: for over thirty years. I reached out to hear how
Speaker 1: they've helped people work through life altering conflict so we
Speaker 1: can gain some insights into how we avoid the path
Speaker 1: that Rwanda, Northern Ireland and so many other countries have
Speaker 1: already been down. After the break my first of two
Speaker 1: conversations with Tim Phillips, which took place a few weeks
Speaker 1: after the January sixth insurrection. Tim, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for spending time with me and with us. And I'm
Speaker 1: here with you in part because I had a great
Speaker 1: experience with your organization through a gathering in downtown Los
Speaker 1: Angeles a few years back. And the specifics are no
Speaker 1: longer with me, but the emotion is my mind felt
Speaker 1: almost literally blown. I've done a lot of work around
Speaker 1: race and people feeling disconnected from each other and polarized,
Speaker 1: and there was something your facilitators did that helped us
Speaker 1: all see the world a little differently. So I just
Speaker 1: want to take this personal, selfish opportunity to thank you
Speaker 1: for that experience, thank you for training people and not
Speaker 1: just you, to do some of this work, and thanks
Speaker 1: again for making time. I'd love to start him with
Speaker 1: a more personal question. Can you tell me something about
Speaker 1: yourself that surprises you? Yeah? Thank you. That's a really
Speaker 1: good question, and surprises me is maybe this is getting
Speaker 1: very personal, but I've been doing this work internationally for
Speaker 1: over thirty years and I still struggle with feeling agency
Speaker 1: in this work, and it surprises me. But it also
Speaker 1: reflects on the challenge of the work. I think we
Speaker 1: both are trying to do, which is, how do you
Speaker 1: give people agency in this world? How do you give
Speaker 1: people a sense that they can really become agents of
Speaker 1: their own personal lives, but of the people around them.
Speaker 1: And you know, because we're coming up in thirty years
Speaker 1: and most of our work was international in the last
Speaker 1: five years, started working here in the United States, I
Speaker 1: really started reflecting on the work of the internationally to
Speaker 1: bring it home to this country. And I started really
Speaker 1: thinking about what allowed me to go overseas in my
Speaker 1: late twenties was I knew what exclusion felt like. I
Speaker 1: knew what humiliation felt like, I knew what feeling less
Speaker 1: than equal felt like, and not in a sense gave
Speaker 1: me an emotional connection to the difficulty of this work.
Speaker 1: And I think thinking about where we are as a
Speaker 1: country and the challenges we face has also been reflection
Speaker 1: on my own journey. Can I press you on the
Speaker 1: humiliation that you were familiar with, which sounds like it's
Speaker 1: helped you do this work? What was that for you? Well?
Speaker 1: I grew up the youngest of six children, grew up
Speaker 1: in a housing project here in Boston, what was used
Speaker 1: to be called veterans housing. I didn't like the fact
Speaker 1: that we lived there because I was being haunted. I
Speaker 1: was being judged. Often hearing parents will say to their
Speaker 1: son I was in school with why are you hanging
Speaker 1: out with that kid from the projects? And so that
Speaker 1: really shaped a part of me to feel, you know,
Speaker 1: I know what this shit feels like. But also I
Speaker 1: had a mother who said, no, you live in Buckingham Palace.
Speaker 1: And years later I saw the real Buckingham Palace and
Speaker 1: I said to my mother. I took out a trip
Speaker 1: to London with my sisters. I said, let me just
Speaker 1: show you. This ain't Buckingham Palace where we grew up.
Speaker 1: But the point is is that, you know, I had
Speaker 1: both nupbringing that knew what exclusion and humiliation and fear
Speaker 1: felt like. But I also had, like many people, parents
Speaker 1: who said, this isn't what defines you as a human being,
Speaker 1: in your family, in your community. But to your point
Speaker 1: about humiliation, I remember when I started going overseas in
Speaker 1: the late eighties early nineties, particularly at the end of
Speaker 1: the Cold War, when I would meet these dissidents who
Speaker 1: are now serving in government or leaders of journalism or
Speaker 1: civil society organizations. They knew what it felt like through
Speaker 1: a different lens, which is to be a victim, to
Speaker 1: keep your head down, to feel like you're always on
Speaker 1: guard and you don't really belong. And it was just
Speaker 1: really an eye opener for me about how this manifests
Speaker 1: itself on a human experience and not just defined by
Speaker 1: the country we grew up in. For someone who's never
Speaker 1: heard of beyond conflict, what is it? So it's an
Speaker 1: organization that started in nineteen ninety one when I had
Speaker 1: a chance to go to Central East in Europe at
Speaker 1: the end of the Cold War and had a chance
Speaker 1: to meet, as I mentioned earlier, as some of these
Speaker 1: dissidents who are now running these post communist countries, and
Speaker 1: I remember asking them, how do you deal with your past?
Speaker 1: How are you dealing with the legacy of repression or
Speaker 1: a dictatorship, what it did to individuals and communities. And
Speaker 1: the response was, well, that's what we talk about amongst ourselves.
Speaker 1: But that's not the help we're getting right now, because
Speaker 1: at the end of the Cold War we were getting
Speaker 1: help to write constitutions, build new democratic institutions, design market economies.
Speaker 1: Nobody can understand what we've gone through. We're being asked
Speaker 1: to manage these new governments and transitions, and we don't
Speaker 1: know where to get this help. And so that led
Speaker 1: me to this simple, what I thought, one off conference notion,
Speaker 1: or bring together these new leaders of these postcommunist countries,
Speaker 1: but with people who themselves had been through a transition
Speaker 1: from dictatorship to democracy. And in nineteen ninety one the
Speaker 1: examples were Argentina, Chile, there was a process in a
Speaker 1: couple of African countries, Spain after Franco denocification in Germany,
Speaker 1: and so I had said to some folks, you guys
Speaker 1: should do a special session bringing these new leaders of
Speaker 1: these postcommunist countries. But do it not with self described experts,
Speaker 1: but people from these other countries that struggled with these transitions,
Speaker 1: who never imagined that they could have come out the
Speaker 1: other side, almost like a big support group. And so
Speaker 1: what started as a one off conference became a second
Speaker 1: and third. But there was a real growing interest and
Speaker 1: how do we learn from the experience of others, how
Speaker 1: do we deal with our past? And of course at
Speaker 1: the end of the Cold War you normally had what
Speaker 1: happened in Eastern Europe, but at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: peace process in Northern Ireland, or the Central American Peace Accords,
Speaker 1: or the beginning of a negotiated transition in South Africa.
Speaker 1: And then on the flip side you had the disintegration
Speaker 1: of Yugoslavia and so forth. And so this whole period
Speaker 1: became ripe for work not only about how do you
Speaker 1: build democracy, but how do you deal with these countries
Speaker 1: that are coming out of brutal past. And so for
Speaker 1: these thirty years we have worked in probably seventy five
Speaker 1: countries with this notion of she had experience, meaning bringing
Speaker 1: in people to model as former enemies what change could
Speaker 1: look like. Do you remember the moment you became interested
Speaker 1: in conflict resolution? Well, I think actually in late eighties,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, I was watching the Super Bowl at
Speaker 1: the home of a woman who's sort of well known,
Speaker 1: Doris Kurrn's Goodwin and her husband Richard Goodwin at the
Speaker 1: time KG. Yeah, And I knew her had a husband
Speaker 1: through some work in a political campaign. And there was
Speaker 1: Bob Dole, Senate majority leader, and he had flown to
Speaker 1: Managua Reagan was president to criticize in ridicule the Sundinista government,
Speaker 1: and then got back on his plane and flew home
Speaker 1: and I remember seeing this in between the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: sort of innings, and I remember thinking, what just happened here?
Speaker 1: Why did he not go and actually see the leaders?
Speaker 1: Who was he playing to what's actually going on in
Speaker 1: the region. And Dick Goodwin had been the author of
Speaker 1: the Alliance for Progress as a speech for JFK, and
Speaker 1: so he had a deep tie to the region. And
Speaker 1: I remember just speaking to the two of them and saying,
Speaker 1: this is pretty incredible that you have one of the
Speaker 1: biggest issues on the foreign policy agenda of the United
Speaker 1: States and people are just sort of playing politics for
Speaker 1: domestic purposes here in the United States. Can we understand
Speaker 1: this better? And so I ended up organizing a trip
Speaker 1: to Central America with Doris Goodwin and others to see
Speaker 1: firsthand what was going on. And then I ended up
Speaker 1: meeting the Sundinista leadership at the time of Nicaragua and
Speaker 1: at the Contras in Costa Rica, the f Mellen Gorillas
Speaker 1: of El solvad Or meeting in Nicaragua because it was safe,
Speaker 1: and then people from the other side and other settings,
Speaker 1: and it was just mind blowing and it was a
Speaker 1: huge eye opener to not only the region but the
Speaker 1: nature of conflict and the fact that people can learn
Speaker 1: from each other as sort of kumbayas that sounds, but
Speaker 1: that was early at the core you set up this
Speaker 1: mentor program, this support route of people who've been through
Speaker 1: something like this before, for those who were new to
Speaker 1: the process. Democracy sponsors, if you will. Where did that
Speaker 1: support group idea come from? Where people seated in a
Speaker 1: circle holding candles? No, but you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: the nature. You're a very creative individual human being, right,
Speaker 1: Creativity just sort of emerges, right, and in this context,
Speaker 1: it just struck me that sitting in these rooms, whether
Speaker 1: it be a workshop, a conference, or sitting around a
Speaker 1: dinner table with people who are struggling with even the
Speaker 1: nose sitting across the table from their enemy and having
Speaker 1: from South Africa. Sarah Romoposa who's now president, or Rolf
Speaker 1: Mayer who was the chief negotiator for the Clerk come
Speaker 1: into a group of Protestant former paramilitary leaders in Belfast
Speaker 1: and say, you know, we're here now as friends. We
Speaker 1: just negotiated about a year ago the end of APARTEID
Speaker 1: in South Africa, and we want to ask you what
Speaker 1: is making it so difficult for you to imagine change here,
Speaker 1: and you would hear these people across the divide in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland saying, if they could do it in South Africa,
Speaker 1: why can't we do it here? You know, if they
Speaker 1: could make peace with their enemy, then why is it
Speaker 1: we're struggling to even imagine sitting in the same room
Speaker 1: with these people. I've read too many newspapers over time,
Speaker 1: so I kind of know a lot of these names
Speaker 1: you've dropped, But could you explain for someone who may
Speaker 1: not have heard of it what was going on in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland. So the Northern Ireland conflict lasted about thirty years,
Speaker 1: starting in the late six literally thirty years until nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and over thirty five hundred people were killed,
Speaker 1: many of the meicent civilians, and the equivalent in this
Speaker 1: country would be a million civilians being killed in the
Speaker 1: United States. And if you were a Catholic, you viewed
Speaker 1: the conflict as a legacy of centuries of repression by
Speaker 1: the British government in one form or another. If you
Speaker 1: were Protestant, many of them thought of this conflict as
Speaker 1: a thirty year aggravated crime wife. And so you had
Speaker 1: really diametrically opposed views of what the nature of the
Speaker 1: conflict was middle class, affluent Catholics tended to join if
Speaker 1: they joined a political party, the Social Democratic Labor Party
Speaker 1: led by John Hume. They wanted eventual unification with Ireland,
Speaker 1: but we're willing to do it politically and not through
Speaker 1: armed conflict or resistance. But often more working class Catholics
Speaker 1: who lived in many of the poorer communities were known
Speaker 1: as Irish Republicans and they tended to support in Fain,
Speaker 1: and many of them joined and supported the Irish Republican
Speaker 1: Army and felt it was a legitimate resistance to colonial repression.
Speaker 1: And their view was we couldn't wait for unification. It
Speaker 1: has to happen now and if we have to use
Speaker 1: armed resistance to get it, we will. And then on
Speaker 1: the other side, you know, you had two mainstream Unionists
Speaker 1: or Protestant political parties, the Democratic Ulster Unionist Party and
Speaker 1: the UUP Ulster Unionist Party. One was sort of more
Speaker 1: middle class, which is the UUP DUP was led by
Speaker 1: Ian Paisley, and they wanted to preserve their British identity.
Speaker 1: Protestants were British and they were going to defend it.
Speaker 1: And the working class equivalent of shin Fin and the
Speaker 1: IRA where the Loyalless paramilitary parties and their two armed wings,
Speaker 1: and they ended up killing more people than the IRA did.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned a friend of mine, David Irvine, who
Speaker 1: was a Loyalless paramilitary leader, and I remember taking them
Speaker 1: to know only the Balkans, but to Columbia to meet
Speaker 1: with the el n in the Farc and others over
Speaker 1: the years. And he really connected with him because even
Speaker 1: though he was white Protestant from Northern Ireland, he was
Speaker 1: a working class socialist as you would say. But somebody
Speaker 1: who said that we took up arms to defend a
Speaker 1: community that we thought was under threat. But he said,
Speaker 1: we went from defending our community in other words, feeling
Speaker 1: that we had to kill to live, than to living
Speaker 1: to kill. And he said something about a conflict like
Speaker 1: that takes over our psyche and our community and the
Speaker 1: narratives that you wake up a decade later and saying
Speaker 1: you know, we're living to kill. This is what we know.
Speaker 1: And so where it ended up is the Good Friday
Speaker 1: Agreement brought them together, but it didn't get to that
Speaker 1: point of resolving these underlying differences. Wow, thank you for that, Tim.
Speaker 1: Most of us. We really didn't know the details of
Speaker 1: that conflict, and I think, as Wikipedia to Tim, you
Speaker 1: did a good job of breaking that down. I want
Speaker 1: to know when you bring these leaders together, where their
Speaker 1: trust falls to him. What's the vibe of those gatherings.
Speaker 1: If it's the first gathering, it's often very tense. I'll
Speaker 1: give an example. After the signing of the day In
Speaker 1: Peace Accords, I was asked by Richard Holbrook if I
Speaker 1: could bring together in London the leaders of the three
Speaker 1: communities in Bosnia, Serb, Proat and Muslim. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Dayton Peace Accords forced a sort of peace agreement, but
Speaker 1: in many ways those communities were not done fighting each other,
Speaker 1: and there was such profound anger, and so we ended
Speaker 1: up having this gathering in London, and in the beginning
Speaker 1: we had the three communities come in and the last
Speaker 1: ones to take the seat with the leaders of Bosnia.
Speaker 1: They called themselves Republic of Serupska. They were kind of
Speaker 1: a proto fascist state, frankly, and the Bosnian Muslim leaders
Speaker 1: saw them and walked out and said, we can't sit
Speaker 1: in the same room with these war criminals. And the
Speaker 1: people who got up and went to the Bosnia Muslims
Speaker 1: and said please come back in where the Palestinian and
Speaker 1: Israeli leaders who were in the room, who were women,
Speaker 1: a South African leader and somebody from Belfast, because they
Speaker 1: immediately understood how difficult this was, and they went on
Speaker 1: their own out into the lobby and spoke with them
Speaker 1: for about forty five minutes and essentially, you know, we're allies.
Speaker 1: They said, please come in and sit in this room.
Speaker 1: We know how difficult this is. And in moments like that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really difficult to imagine sitting in the
Speaker 1: same room with people who were involved at the cleansing
Speaker 1: or involved in killing and then in that sort of
Speaker 1: support group approach. When they're sitting there, at first they're like,
Speaker 1: how do these people from Northern Ireland are Bosnia or
Speaker 1: El Salvad or connect with my experience? And then when
Speaker 1: you hear there are stories and what they went through,
Speaker 1: then the differences start to fade away and people start
Speaker 1: to listen. And there was one moment when a man
Speaker 1: named David irv who unfortunately has passed away, who was
Speaker 1: a Protestant paramilitary leader who spent a decade in prison
Speaker 1: for terrorism, was sitting there with these Kosovo leaders at
Speaker 1: a different conference, and they were shouting and yelling and saying,
Speaker 1: how do we learn from you? What do you have
Speaker 1: to share to our experience? And one person yelled out,
Speaker 1: we had artillery reigning on Sarajevo or reigning on Mostar.
Speaker 1: You didn't have any of that. And David looked over
Speaker 1: at a former IRA commander and was the first time
Speaker 1: the two of them had met, and they said, if
Speaker 1: we had access to artillery, trust us, we would have
Speaker 1: used them on each other. We used everything we could
Speaker 1: to destroy the other side. And you could see that
Speaker 1: the boson coos of our leaders stop and begin to listen.
Speaker 1: And then somebody said, but aren't you were a terrorist?
Speaker 1: And David said, you know, terrorists have to come from somewhere,
Speaker 1: and injustice is a powerful place to come from. And
Speaker 1: what would happen it is you could see people start
Speaker 1: to pull back and listen and realize they're not here
Speaker 1: giving a history example. They're speaking and profoundly human terms
Speaker 1: in ways that resonate with their own experience and challenge.
Speaker 1: Just gave me chills with that one you've mentioned, and
Speaker 1: been a part of a lot of different gatherings of
Speaker 1: people who've been on opposite sides of issues. El Salvador,
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Bosnia of region. What outcome
Speaker 1: has surprised you the most in all of this experience?
Speaker 1: Is there one that stands out? One of my great
Speaker 1: honors of life is having met Nelson Mandelar in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, and he actually served on our advisory board
Speaker 1: and I had a chance to meet him in New
Speaker 1: York and I went up to him in our brief
Speaker 1: sort of encounter, and I asked him, as you negotiate
Speaker 1: the future of your country, are you thinking about how
Speaker 1: are you going to deal with your past? And he
Speaker 1: looked at me in these said, that's exactly an issue
Speaker 1: that I've been thinking about. We've been thinking about, and
Speaker 1: he called over his aid, a woman named Barbara Masskella
Speaker 1: at the time, and I had, you know, I had
Speaker 1: this sort of I guess presumption of writing a memo
Speaker 1: and I gave it to his assistant and it laid
Speaker 1: out the question of as South Africa's negotiating this big transition,
Speaker 1: what are the models to look at? And so of
Speaker 1: course it was Argentina, Chile. What happened in Europe at
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two. But what struck me
Speaker 1: was Mandela came back to me at the end of
Speaker 1: that reception and there are all these great and the
Speaker 1: good and here was this young guy who got invited
Speaker 1: through a friend and he come up to me. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to follow up with you on this because
Speaker 1: this is really important. And he did. And over the years,
Speaker 1: I was able to bring people from Northern Ireland, the Balkans,
Speaker 1: the Middle East, to South Africa when he was president
Speaker 1: and after, and he would sit there and he would
Speaker 1: say to them things like be tough on structures, be
Speaker 1: tough on institutions, but don't be huff on each other.
Speaker 1: And had a power coming from Mandela. And we tend
Speaker 1: to forget or think because Mandela became such this iconic
Speaker 1: figure that what he did is used his political and
Speaker 1: moral authority to essent create a pathway for the other
Speaker 1: side to cross and said, okay, it is up to
Speaker 1: you to cross this bridge. And I've seen less famous
Speaker 1: individuals do it in other countries. John Hume in Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland did the same thing with the IRA, meeting with
Speaker 1: them secretly in the eighties and when his own party
Speaker 1: members found out, they wanted to expel him, and he
Speaker 1: had the same view. When you describe this scene or
Speaker 1: describe his intervention and counsel to others in conflict, how
Speaker 1: do you feel in that moment when you witness that.
Speaker 1: What's going through you emotionally? What's going through at the time,
Speaker 1: me as an American who wasn't from those countries? Is
Speaker 1: it landing? Is it making the impact? Because you know,
Speaker 1: it's difficult for people to change, particularly when the change
Speaker 1: you're going through as an individual, maybe as a leader,
Speaker 1: isn't reflected in the community you're from. They're not meeting
Speaker 1: the enemy face to face, and they're in that community
Speaker 1: that reinforces legitimate grievance and anger and strategy. But there's
Speaker 1: something that happens on that human level when you recognize
Speaker 1: your enemy as human. And so to your question, I
Speaker 1: wish Mandela was alive today. I wish a number of
Speaker 1: these leaders who are still alive I can get on
Speaker 1: a plane and go and see them, to bring this
Speaker 1: home to this country, because now, as an American caught
Speaker 1: up in this moment, I'm seeing it through a different lens.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing it through a lens of like this shit
Speaker 1: is difficult, you know, I had the privilege and not
Speaker 1: appreciating it, of pushing people to sit across the table
Speaker 1: from their enemy, to make peace with her enemy, literally
Speaker 1: telling families in Bosnia and Trebenitza after that they should
Speaker 1: move back into those villages and to those homes that
Speaker 1: have been rebuilt next to families that try to kill them.
Speaker 1: And I felt like I was doing the right thing,
Speaker 1: and I was, but here at this moment, this country,
Speaker 1: it'll last few years. I'm thinking this work is difficult.
Speaker 1: I was at a safe emotional distance from that and
Speaker 1: the other thing you asked me about trust. I remember
Speaker 1: we brought leaders from Bahrain to Belfast a few years
Speaker 1: ago after the Arab Spring, and they were talking to
Speaker 1: people separately from Protestant Shenfain other political parties, and they
Speaker 1: would ask do you need trust to negotiate? And independently
Speaker 1: they will say no, if you had trust, why would
Speaker 1: you be negotiating like this. But what they say you
Speaker 1: need to build sort of a support network underneath. Recognize
Speaker 1: that you if you had trust, you wouldn't be in
Speaker 1: this moment. Yeah, yeah, you know, this conversation about trust
Speaker 1: makes me think about this concept I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: about the zone of discomfort? Can you explain what a
Speaker 1: zone of discomfort is and how do you get people
Speaker 1: through it? So one of my mentors, as a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, Josimitia at Gaeta from Guatemala, and a number
Speaker 1: of years ago he said to me, you know, it's
Speaker 1: difficult to move people from A to Z at one moment.
Speaker 1: You need to move them from sort of A to
Speaker 1: D and then D to G. And this is without
Speaker 1: knowing the science or research. Just empirically, it's very insightful
Speaker 1: because he worked and how do you bridge divides in Guatemala?
Speaker 1: How do you build trust where there was no history
Speaker 1: of trust? And what he just observed over three decades
Speaker 1: was that where people didn't know each other, where they
Speaker 1: fail the other side, you would have to bring them
Speaker 1: together where they could begin to see the other, understand
Speaker 1: the other, and predict the other's behavior. And then you
Speaker 1: have to take them through some very difficult realities that
Speaker 1: they may not accept. And he said, that's a zone
Speaker 1: of discomfort. And then you give him a landing pad
Speaker 1: as you would put it in that A to D,
Speaker 1: let them process at that and then you take them
Speaker 1: to the next level of change. So in the US,
Speaker 1: can you paint a picture of one of our zones
Speaker 1: of discomfort from one of our communities that needs to
Speaker 1: get from A to Z, but an aid to d
Speaker 1: leap is a more appropriate path to get there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So after the election in November, you know, we have
Speaker 1: this team work and on polarization in American social divides.
Speaker 1: When seventy four million people voted for Donald Trump, ten
Speaker 1: million more than last time, a lot of people are
Speaker 1: here just wanted to not erase these people, but feel like,
Speaker 1: how do you talk with them? How do you cross
Speaker 1: that divide or bridge that when they had no excuse
Speaker 1: in voting for this man four years later? Right? And
Speaker 1: I remember as we looked into it, we recognized that
Speaker 1: there was a lot of fear in this recent election
Speaker 1: on both sides. And one thing, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: research on what they call status threat and so for
Speaker 1: a lot of people who, let's say supported Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: there's fear of the changing cultural demographic terrain of the
Speaker 1: United States. And that is rooted in human psychology because
Speaker 1: you can see that in Northern Ireland among Protestants as
Speaker 1: a demographic changes, or in the Middle East between Israelis
Speaker 1: and Palestinians, or in South Africa when apartheid was ending
Speaker 1: at the route that human predictive brain is trying to
Speaker 1: navigate its environment. And when things are changing in a
Speaker 1: profound way and leaders don't come along to help them
Speaker 1: navigate that, to change and update that mental model that
Speaker 1: gets set up becomes very difficult for people. What often
Speaker 1: happens is populist demagogues come along and turn legitimate fear
Speaker 1: into grievance, then gets weaponized into something else. And so
Speaker 1: when I look at this country, the reality is, and
Speaker 1: there's research in this White Christian evangelicals think of themselves
Speaker 1: as a persecuted, prosecuted community in this country, and it's
Speaker 1: very difficult for people outside that community, particularly on the left,
Speaker 1: to accept that. So what it means, I think for
Speaker 1: the left is to recognize, you know what, these are legitimate, psychological,
Speaker 1: almost biological states of mind. And you know, and on
Speaker 1: the right, I've seen people respond when we talk about
Speaker 1: status threat and they feel, well, that's collective blame. You're
Speaker 1: essentializing us, you're thinking we all feel that way. And
Speaker 1: so there are all these sort of landmines right now
Speaker 1: in the United States because we're so divided and because
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was such a personality type and was so
Speaker 1: outrageous on so many levels. It put more oxygen and
Speaker 1: fuel into that space. And so any notion of reaching
Speaker 1: across these divides is seen as compromise, is seen as
Speaker 1: selling out. And yet what experience in other countries have shown,
Speaker 1: and not just the Mandelas and many others, is you know,
Speaker 1: we have to find a way to bridge. This doesn't
Speaker 1: mean compromise. It doesn't mean it's unity for the sake
Speaker 1: of you know, everybody get along. It's about clarity. It's
Speaker 1: about being clear about what's going on, being clear at
Speaker 1: this moment, being clear of how we got to this
Speaker 1: moment as a country, but also where we want to
Speaker 1: go together in this country. One of the frustrations I've
Speaker 1: had in talking about bridging divides and outreach and empathy
Speaker 1: and understanding someone else's journey is I have perceived I'm
Speaker 1: using my words so carefully, tim but I have perceived
Speaker 1: that the folks who I'm associated with on the left
Speaker 1: have been doing a lot of that, trying to do
Speaker 1: a lot. Let's go talk to a Trump voter, Let's
Speaker 1: get inside their head, let's get inside of their psychology,
Speaker 1: Let's super humanize them and I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: take me through a zone of discomfort exercise. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: shorter that looks at things from a different perspective, because
Speaker 1: I've also heard and felt a lot of anger around
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter it's a terrorist group. Is there a
Speaker 1: zona discomfort example that will help me and others understand
Speaker 1: this phenomena around the divide over Black Lives Matter in
Speaker 1: the US. Is there an easier question? You know? Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Somebody asked me sort of a similar question
Speaker 1: the last month or so after what happened at the
Speaker 1: US capital, and I said, we really have to be
Speaker 1: as precise as we can with words and what we're saying.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting in the world of sort of
Speaker 1: conflict resolution, there's a distinction that I and others make
Speaker 1: between conflict resolution and conflict transformation. To resolve a conflict,
Speaker 1: think of the Day and Peace Accords in Bosnia, or
Speaker 1: the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, or the one
Speaker 1: that ended the Salvadoran Civil War. That's about a brutal
Speaker 1: civil war, people dying, people being killed, people disappearing. We
Speaker 1: need to end this. It's triage, and the way you
Speaker 1: achieve that is getting people across the table to in
Speaker 1: a sense, have unity for that moment of change, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't fully transform the underlying dynamics of the society.
Speaker 1: So that conflict resolution is about unity for the sake
Speaker 1: of that agreement. But conflict transformation requires clarity. How did
Speaker 1: we get here at this moment and where do we
Speaker 1: go together? Because if we're going somewhere in the future
Speaker 1: where it's going to be a democracy, a more representative democracy,
Speaker 1: a more inclusive democracy, a more shared democracy, we need
Speaker 1: to understand how we got to this moment as a nation,
Speaker 1: in a community, and in that clarity, you need to
Speaker 1: create a space for people to come together to feel
Speaker 1: like they're being heard. And it's very difficult. Take South
Speaker 1: Africa where ninety percent of the population was Black, Malaysian,
Speaker 1: other community. I mean, that was a brutal regime. But
Speaker 1: what was interesting that the African National Congress leadership, even
Speaker 1: before Mandela got out of prison, people like Albi Sachs
Speaker 1: and others would say that we came to realize that
Speaker 1: we had to understand where the African of people were
Speaker 1: coming from historically, like how did they set up a
Speaker 1: system of apartheid, what experience did they go through to
Speaker 1: justify setting up something like this. What were they afraid of?
Speaker 1: This dynamic they created and they came to realize. They
Speaker 1: said that they suffered at the cleansing and genocide in
Speaker 1: the Boer War under the British and they had no
Speaker 1: country to go back to, unlike white South Africans of
Speaker 1: a British background literally had a passport in the back pocket.
Speaker 1: So the Afrikaans had no country to go to. So
Speaker 1: they're going to fight to the very end. And the
Speaker 1: point is is that the A and C leadership in
Speaker 1: a sense went through his own to discomfort, saying, we
Speaker 1: are absolutely clear that this is about liberation and resistance,
Speaker 1: that this is a brutal dictatorship that's been dehumanizing. But
Speaker 1: what does the future look like? Are we going to
Speaker 1: share this place? Are they going to flee? Well, these
Speaker 1: people have nowhere to go to, so they're going to stay,
Speaker 1: which means we have to figure out together how we're
Speaker 1: going to live in this country and share it. And
Speaker 1: it may not be Kumbaya, everybody come together, No, it's
Speaker 1: literally uncomfortable. It is we have to share this country together,
Speaker 1: and so a shared future has to be built on
Speaker 1: a shared understanding of how we got here. And that's
Speaker 1: about clarity, and that clarity requires discomfort. It requires a
Speaker 1: discomfort like you know what I may want. And from
Speaker 1: the other side, Mandela, I mean, I'm believed that the
Speaker 1: reason why Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela got divorced within
Speaker 1: a year or two is they lived in two realities
Speaker 1: of apartheid South Africa. He was in prison for twenty
Speaker 1: seven years and had a lot of time to reflect.
Speaker 1: She was in the social reality of apartheid South Africa,
Speaker 1: where day in day out she could find no moment,
Speaker 1: no chance to really sit back and say, what is
Speaker 1: the nature of the struggle about and where do I
Speaker 1: want to go with this right? And I've seen this,
Speaker 1: by the way, in other settings where leaders in prison
Speaker 1: said they had to make sense of their experience to
Speaker 1: figure out where we want to go from here. And
Speaker 1: so the zone of discomfort in this country is, you know,
Speaker 1: we have to have a reckoning, but I also think
Speaker 1: we have to have a summoning. We have to summon
Speaker 1: people to something else because black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American,
Speaker 1: this is our country. It's a country where what connects
Speaker 1: us is a common citizenship. But not a common participation
Speaker 1: in it. I mean, this is real, legitimate. I don't
Speaker 1: have to tell you this suffering and loss and need
Speaker 1: for healing and repair humanization of Native Americans and African
Speaker 1: Americans and other communities for a long period of time.
Speaker 1: And yet we also have other communities who either legitimately
Speaker 1: have had real loss over time or have narratives in
Speaker 1: their communities of loss. And so I think that's the
Speaker 1: point of clarity and the discomfort, and not I mean
Speaker 1: just the left and the right. Americans across also have
Speaker 1: to sit back and say this is a defining moment,
Speaker 1: this is about transformation. Otherwise we're in deep trouble. Sorry
Speaker 1: to be so pessimistic, but I do think that that
Speaker 1: is what's required at this time. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think of myself is progressive and liberal. My whole life
Speaker 1: is on social justice. But there are moments in this
Speaker 1: country in the last few years where I tell my friends,
Speaker 1: you know what, you've got to give people the capacity
Speaker 1: to change those who don't change. You start to figure
Speaker 1: out who are the people who will never change, And
Speaker 1: now you've identified them further, then there are those who
Speaker 1: are fearful of change because change is difficult, and then
Speaker 1: more than not most people want to change and they
Speaker 1: have to go through discomfort. But in recognizing that takes
Speaker 1: a discomfort because we want that certainty about what this
Speaker 1: process should look like. And that's why you say that
Speaker 1: reckoning is so important, But it's also summoning at the
Speaker 1: same time. How do we both reckon and summon Because
Speaker 1: reckon is dealing with a reality of the past and today,
Speaker 1: but summing what to the future. And I think that's
Speaker 1: that moment we're renascent nation. You've reflected a few times
Speaker 1: on bringing your work home. You've done a lot of
Speaker 1: work outside of the US, and it sounds to me
Speaker 1: like you feel a sense of urgency about what's happening
Speaker 1: in the US right now. Do you ever feel a
Speaker 1: sense that the divisions and conflicts in the US are irreconcilable?
Speaker 1: I don't. I do it at moments. There are deep
Speaker 1: divides and there's anger on all sides. I say all sides.
Speaker 1: It's not just both sides. I think we have to
Speaker 1: go through stages. You know, I was saying earlier about
Speaker 1: clarity and unity. I think it sounds good for some,
Speaker 1: but unity is actually a disservice to talk about right now.
Speaker 1: So one is clarity, the other is coexistence or dissent.
Speaker 1: Recognizing and living with difference and dissent is going to
Speaker 1: be really important because people are not going to change
Speaker 1: quickly and overnight. There are really these and transpositions. You
Speaker 1: have media platforms whose economic incentive is to drive that,
Speaker 1: and so we have to be realistic about those. And
Speaker 1: so what do we do in the interim is, I
Speaker 1: think find ways to live with difference and not of me,
Speaker 1: just cultural and demographic difference, political difference. It's okay to
Speaker 1: be dissenting, It's okay to you know, have profound disagreement
Speaker 1: because at the core democrat see is about managing difference.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we have to do here,
Speaker 1: is to say it's not an irreconcirable why, because what's
Speaker 1: the alternative? It is find ways to live with difference,
Speaker 1: to manage that, and find ways to reconnect and to
Speaker 1: see how much we have in common, and then together
Speaker 1: figure ways to define a country that reflects the reality
Speaker 1: of what we are and where we're going in a
Speaker 1: positive direction. After the break, we fast forward to this
Speaker 1: current moment we're living through and dig deep into beyond
Speaker 1: conflicts US based work to understand how we can apply
Speaker 1: the lessons they've learned abroad, plus our in studio virtual
Speaker 1: audience talks with Tim about ways we can counter conflict
Speaker 1: and extremism in our communities. So, Tim, you and Beyond
Speaker 1: Conflicts work has historically centered on these facilitating these in
Speaker 1: person cross party dialogues. Over time, you've then layered in
Speaker 1: a lot more behavioral science and neuroscience to understand what
Speaker 1: drives division in the first place. What does science and
Speaker 1: research taught us about social conflict? What did they taught you?
Speaker 1: You know, this year is the thirtieth the anniversary of
Speaker 1: Beyond Conflict, And for the first twenty twenty five years,
Speaker 1: we would go into countries that we're trying to imagine
Speaker 1: how do you go from dictatorship to democracy or from
Speaker 1: conflict to peace? And so having done that for a
Speaker 1: number of years, we saw some successes, but we were
Speaker 1: also coming up against a lot of intractable conflicts and
Speaker 1: a lot of fragile peace agreements. And the question that
Speaker 1: I and my colleagues ast is what are we missing
Speaker 1: about the human experience? What are we missing about the
Speaker 1: struggles that people go through? That Guatemala and friend of mine,
Speaker 1: and a mentor said to me, you know, exclusion is
Speaker 1: the main driver of conflict. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: how does that play out in the human brain and
Speaker 1: our cognition, in our emotion. Because if we understand that better,
Speaker 1: could we actually be more effective in framing strategies, interventions
Speaker 1: and ways to advance real transformative change in peace. And
Speaker 1: that's why we started looking at brain and behavioral science.
Speaker 1: And I'll just maybe quickly and there by saying, Jerry
Speaker 1: Adams was one. He was president of Shenfein, which is
Speaker 1: the political party associated with the IRA. Though he won't
Speaker 1: admit it publicly, he was one of the top IRA leaders.
Speaker 1: And I had him come to a course I was
Speaker 1: teaching at a university here a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: a student sat across the table and said, how do
Speaker 1: you make peace with somebody you may have tried to
Speaker 1: kill or they may have killed somebody very close to you?
Speaker 1: And he paused, and he said, in a very thick
Speaker 1: Belfast accent, he said, it's tough to make peace with
Speaker 1: a humiliated partner. And there was a retired neuroscientist sitting
Speaker 1: in the room who had been observing the class. Nick
Speaker 1: up and he said, you know, I've heard Adams talk
Speaker 1: about humiliation. I heard somebody from the Middle East talk
Speaker 1: about fear and empathy and what it is to be
Speaker 1: a victim and things that are sacred. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of brain science research behind that, And
Speaker 1: I said, what do you mean brain science because I
Speaker 1: knew from either social psychology, what I observed, what I
Speaker 1: experienced growing up, and I thought, tell me more. And
Speaker 1: the key thing he said that got me on this path,
Speaker 1: he said, well he was intosemities at this point. He said,
Speaker 1: speaking as a scientist, we are not rational beings with emotions.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're just the opposite. We're emotionally based beings
Speaker 1: who can only think rationally when we feel that our
Speaker 1: identities as we see them, not you or other as
Speaker 1: we see them, are understood and valued by others. Once
Speaker 1: we feel understood, he said, there's a deep psychological, almost
Speaker 1: biological necessity to feel understood. Then literally we can begin
Speaker 1: to engage rationally with others. And that's what put me
Speaker 1: on the journey to look at this. Yeah, that's powerful, man,
Speaker 1: It's just this like a prerequisite. You know, there's an
Speaker 1: emotional safety, emotional acknowledgement. Psychological acknowledgement prerequisite before you can
Speaker 1: enter some of these higher levels. So in terms of
Speaker 1: were you able to look back at some of your
Speaker 1: previous interventions that maybe didn't stick you talk about these
Speaker 1: kind of fragile peace agreements, was that, in hindsight a
Speaker 1: clearly missing element the emotional side, the neurological side. You know,
Speaker 1: it was clear that these emotions were playing an outsize
Speaker 1: role in making peace and reconciliation possible, like intractable conflict.
Speaker 1: In the last negotiations with the PLO underrs R Fat,
Speaker 1: when Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright were trying to negotiate
Speaker 1: the Camp David Accords, it collapsed at the last minute,
Speaker 1: and the two most difficult issues were the writer of
Speaker 1: Palestinian refugees to return and the future of Jerusalem as
Speaker 1: a sacred city for Jews, Muslims, and Christians. And years
Speaker 1: later I found that there's research coming out of brain
Speaker 1: and behavioral science that those things that we hold sacred
Speaker 1: choice and not mean just religious terms, but things that
Speaker 1: have a profound, almost sacred importance to us a process
Speaker 1: in a different region of the brain than utilitarian decisions
Speaker 1: we make. And there's even neuroimaging that is confirmed that
Speaker 1: this gets processed differently and is in a sense more
Speaker 1: entrenched cognitively in the brain when people are still being
Speaker 1: forced to compromise things that are above compromise, And the
Speaker 1: research found is a simple but powerful gesture of symbolic concession.
Speaker 1: I understand how a sacred this is to you, I
Speaker 1: understand how important this is to you. Actually creates a
Speaker 1: cognitive shift where people feel like, now I'm being understood.
Speaker 1: And it goes back to what the scientists said a
Speaker 1: few years earlier about Jerry Adams comment, we have a
Speaker 1: deep need to feel understood if we're able to navigate
Speaker 1: the world and connect with others. That is profound. And
Speaker 1: you've anticipated where I might have gone with that, which
Speaker 1: is does that mean you then need to fully concede
Speaker 1: to their perspective or that sacred, deeply held belief if
Speaker 1: that's an athema to your own. But you use the
Speaker 1: phrase symbolic concession that we need to feel understood, even
Speaker 1: if we're not completely fully understood. That kind of opens
Speaker 1: the doorway and I interpreting, Yeah, I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: understanding science is not to make it more complex, but
Speaker 1: to decomplexify it in a sense if there's such a phrase,
Speaker 1: And that is what we all know without understanding all
Speaker 1: the structures of the brain, is we need to feel understood.
Speaker 1: We relax, our stress levels go down. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there's research that affirms that, and we can begin to
Speaker 1: think about hearing others. But it doesn't mean, to your
Speaker 1: point that I have to accept and endorse your point
Speaker 1: of view. It just means I understand what this means
Speaker 1: for you. And Bill Clinton, I had reached out to
Speaker 1: him but a year ago for this work we were
Speaker 1: doing on status threaten and identity threat United States. I said,
Speaker 1: it's become really existential threat in this country right now.
Speaker 1: How do we navigate this when fear of change, demographic,
Speaker 1: economic has been weaponized and let's be honest, particularly by
Speaker 1: the right, for decades. Now, how do we deal with this?
Speaker 1: And he said that when he was running for governor
Speaker 1: of Arkansas in the early eighties, he would always ask himself,
Speaker 1: how do I get on the right side of fear?
Speaker 1: How do I acknowledge it? How do I have people
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, somebody's understanding me without validating it. It's
Speaker 1: like I hear you now let's move in this direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what we need to do. Understand doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean agree with Bingo, which is a relief now I
Speaker 1: know you and Beyond Conflict have been doing deeper work
Speaker 1: recently looking at how Democrats and Republicans, for example, misperceive
Speaker 1: one another and their viewpoints. Can you walk me through
Speaker 1: those studies and what you're finding there? Sure? So leaders
Speaker 1: from other countries that I had worked with, from South
Speaker 1: Africa or Central America, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, they
Speaker 1: had been telling me for fully a decade beforehand, Oh,
Speaker 1: you need to work in your own country. They like
Speaker 1: canaries in a coal mine, could sense were things were going,
Speaker 1: and they would know, you know, they've been through it,
Speaker 1: and they would know, you know, they know how to
Speaker 1: navigate these environments, and they pick it up in the ether, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that language is really unhealthy. There are real problems emerging
Speaker 1: back home. And they were picking it up when Barack
Speaker 1: Obama became president in two thousand and eight. And so
Speaker 1: what we did was we now had this relationship with
Speaker 1: researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and other schools, and
Speaker 1: we said, Okay, with some funding, let's understand how polarization
Speaker 1: is being shaped at this moment and what can we
Speaker 1: do about it. And so that report you mentioned, we
Speaker 1: called America's Divide in Mind, done by my colleague and
Speaker 1: Mel Bruneau, who you met a few years ago, who
Speaker 1: unfortunately passed away from cancer and he's deeply missed. We
Speaker 1: looked at how polarization is being shaped psychologically and what
Speaker 1: we found it was becoming more identity based. When that happens,
Speaker 1: a whole range of unconscious psychological processes come online that
Speaker 1: only serve to drive us further apart. And when you
Speaker 1: say identity based as opposed to idea based, right, So
Speaker 1: you and I could have a strong disagreement about a policy,
Speaker 1: or we could have a strong disagreement about each other's
Speaker 1: value or validity or humanity. Is that the distinction? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in the nineteen fifties, I had to dig
Speaker 1: up and reading over the last few years a lot
Speaker 1: of political science about polarization, and political scientists in the
Speaker 1: United States said that the United States was not polarized
Speaker 1: enough because the Republican and Democratic parties were bigger tents
Speaker 1: and there were fewer choices for Americans of different political interests.
Speaker 1: Or persuasions to vote, unlike the UK or other countries
Speaker 1: that had broader political structures and therefore with more polarization,
Speaker 1: like a local election as a polarization process. Right, because
Speaker 1: you're people from different science competing. That's natural and healthy.
Speaker 1: But when it becomes the way it's become in this country,
Speaker 1: where all these other distinctions class, race, culture, geography get
Speaker 1: aligned under Democratic or Reublican. More white Christian evangelicals are
Speaker 1: under the Republican, more people of color, professionals, educated, urban
Speaker 1: or under Democrats. I mean, you can see a whole
Speaker 1: series of how these new alignments have happened. Yeah, then
Speaker 1: it takes on an identity piece, and it goes from
Speaker 1: where citizens quote unquote of a nation maybe with profound
Speaker 1: disagreements and we don't really feel this democracy maybe fully
Speaker 1: works for all of us, but when it becomes an
Speaker 1: us versus them, then you are profound threat to my
Speaker 1: community and identity. The good news is that we did
Speaker 1: these surveys nationally and we would ask representative democrats a Republicans, So,
Speaker 1: a Democrat, where are you on immigration and open borders? Well,
Speaker 1: we need immigration reform, but we need a process that
Speaker 1: works and allows people in but a lot of Democrats
Speaker 1: were in the middle. Republicans we need stronger restrictions, but
Speaker 1: a lot we're in the middle. But if it has
Speaker 1: a Democrat, where do you think the Republicans are? On immigration?
Speaker 1: They want the borders completely closed. Republican what do you
Speaker 1: think the Democrats are? They want them completely open? Right,
Speaker 1: So on big issue of the big issue, and on
Speaker 1: how much you think the other side dislikes you, and
Speaker 1: even more concerning the humanizes you, it's up near fifty percent.
Speaker 1: So we sat back and said, wait a minute. A
Speaker 1: huge chunk of the country, probably close to fifty percent,
Speaker 1: are overestimating by fifty percent how far apart they are.
Speaker 1: And all that does is further drive this tribal polarisition.
Speaker 1: And perception is reality. So if I believe that, I'm
Speaker 1: going to behave based on that. So what happens when
Speaker 1: you tell people, actually, you're not as far apart as
Speaker 1: you thought. What comes of that? So we actually in
Speaker 1: the last year and a half, we hired a filmmaker.
Speaker 1: I said, let's create a short video, take the research
Speaker 1: on these misperceptions, and get representative Trump and Biden supporters
Speaker 1: ask them the same question and capturing your response. It
Speaker 1: was like a holies moment, like you're kidding, but where
Speaker 1: am I getting at my information? Or what about this?
Speaker 1: What about that? That video? We then tested and then
Speaker 1: Stanford tested and a big Strengthening Democracy Challenge a few
Speaker 1: months ago with thirty two thousand people out of two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty interventions. It was rated number one for
Speaker 1: reducing support for political violence in the United States and
Speaker 1: partisan animosity because it corrected these misperceptions and Americans do
Speaker 1: not get information that says, you know what, Yes, we
Speaker 1: are divided, we have some profound issues to address, but
Speaker 1: there's much more overlap. And when people know that, and
Speaker 1: I've seen this in other countries, it's what makes peace
Speaker 1: possible and deeply divided places that you have allies that
Speaker 1: you may have never imagined. How much did the propensity
Speaker 1: toward political violence decrease? How did you measure that? We
Speaker 1: followed up I think it was every quarter and asking
Speaker 1: certain questions to see does this change your view about
Speaker 1: the use of political violence? A warmth thermometer in terms
Speaker 1: of how warm you feel, do you feel like a
Speaker 1: greater sense of being understood and so forth and so on,
Speaker 1: And what we found is that all of these measures
Speaker 1: improved because people sat back and said, you're not asking
Speaker 1: me to compromise. You're not giving me a symbolic concession.
Speaker 1: You're not saying that I could potentially betray my tribe
Speaker 1: by saying, well, I have something in calm with you,
Speaker 1: because there are all these cognitive not just explicit, but
Speaker 1: implicit forces that are telling us don't do this. But
Speaker 1: this is simple, it's neutral. It's saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you have more in common than you ever imagined. And
Speaker 1: think of that in a family situation. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: thought a colleague or a friend really disliked you and
Speaker 1: then you found out No, it's just the opposite. How
Speaker 1: does it make you feel emotionally? Relief? Relief? Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: I need to get my hands on that video and
Speaker 1: plug it into the TikTok algorithm for everybody. No, please
Speaker 1: ject the Fox News airwaves and make sure that those
Speaker 1: viewers it's if it's the number one out of two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty interventions. We need to scale that. And
Speaker 1: I would love to fall up with you. Not because
Speaker 1: we even did research on misperceptions around democratic norms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I will say that after January sixth and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump I assumed that Republicans had decreased their support for
Speaker 1: democratic norms and principles. Our recent research with colleagues in
Speaker 1: Chicago found that Democrats Republicans still today equally value democratic
Speaker 1: norms and principles, but if they think the other side doesn't,
Speaker 1: they're willing to violate them. And it's the same fifty
Speaker 1: percent gap. So getting these out at scale is what
Speaker 1: we're now looking at doing. Well, when I hear the
Speaker 1: rhetoric of the people trying to protect the election and
Speaker 1: showing up with guns, they're verbalized rationalies, well, because the
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to steal it and go so because
Speaker 1: they're going to violate the norm, that gives me an
Speaker 1: excuse to violate the norm. And then Democrats see that like,
Speaker 1: well they're violating the norms, so we got to So
Speaker 1: it becomes this escalation. I know that you are also
Speaker 1: working on a more current intervention and process. Where do
Speaker 1: we go from here? You're calling it? Tell us about that? Sure?
Speaker 1: So you know, I mentioned that our sort of traditional
Speaker 1: historic work in other countries was bringing together former enemies
Speaker 1: across profound divides at different levels. Yeah, but then I
Speaker 1: realized on a personal level, for the last five or
Speaker 1: six years when things started to go off the rill
Speaker 1: here in my country, our country and has a different
Speaker 1: emotional residence. It's like, wow, my history, my identities, my narratives,
Speaker 1: my family members who GUY can talk to, not talk to,
Speaker 1: and it's very different. And I realized I was at
Speaker 1: a profound safe distance. So over the last year I
Speaker 1: reached out to a lot of these friends and I said,
Speaker 1: I need to bring you now to my country the
Speaker 1: way we would go to these other countries. We need
Speaker 1: to bring it to this country, and not just in Washington,
Speaker 1: but across the country to meet with people across divide,
Speaker 1: whether it be community activists, bridge builders, local elected officials, megachurches,
Speaker 1: small synagogues, because there are a few Americans who have
Speaker 1: the direct experience of navigating such a profound crisis in
Speaker 1: their own country. And we also lack a historical memory,
Speaker 1: you know. I talk with my partner Elizabeth about this
Speaker 1: a fair amount. As the World War two generation, you know,
Speaker 1: leaves us, we are collectively losing a direct connection to
Speaker 1: the worst versions of some of this division and the
Speaker 1: scale of political violence like taken to the maximum and
Speaker 1: to the extreme. So we have a temporal gap to
Speaker 1: chatti clothes, but also into your point spatial when you
Speaker 1: can bring people who've been through it, who know the
Speaker 1: worst of this and also the healing that's possible on
Speaker 1: the other side, bring them home here to your territory.
Speaker 1: What does that look like him how are they received?
Speaker 1: So in June we took this most recent report and
Speaker 1: I brought Rolfmeyer, who was the key negotiator and the
Speaker 1: talk Stand Apartheid. So this is a man who grew
Speaker 1: up as a white afrikana who thought that apartheid was
Speaker 1: normally good for whites but for blacks early in his
Speaker 1: career shocking, but that was the mental model of the
Speaker 1: world he had. He then went through a process of
Speaker 1: recognizing this system is corrupt and I need to do
Speaker 1: what I can to end it. So he became the
Speaker 1: chief negotiator in the talk Stand Apartheid, and he said,
Speaker 1: I came to realize over a period of years, not
Speaker 1: only the corruption of apartheid, but what was in the
Speaker 1: mindset of my community to even set this system up.
Speaker 1: So we went to Washington and met with some of
Speaker 1: the key congressional leaders on the Democratic side, because we
Speaker 1: tried to get some Republican but not at that time
Speaker 1: interested and we met with key congressional leaders and they
Speaker 1: were old enough to know the role that Rolfe played.
Speaker 1: But talking about identity threats, social standards threat in this country.
Speaker 1: It had a huge impact on the members of Congress
Speaker 1: in the meeting and the question was where do we
Speaker 1: go from here? And Rolfe and I were talking afterwards
Speaker 1: and country after country and even Monica McWilliams, who founded
Speaker 1: the Women's Coalition in Northern Ireland said we all got
Speaker 1: to the point said there needs to be a better way.
Speaker 1: And that's when these leaders and other countries, and we
Speaker 1: are often involved but not the only ones, would go
Speaker 1: to these other countries and come back and say, wow,
Speaker 1: if they can do it, we can do it because
Speaker 1: this is a shared human challenge of how do you
Speaker 1: sit across the table from your enemy? Can you forgive?
Speaker 1: And we need it here so I want to shift
Speaker 1: us into bring it in some of the questions that
Speaker 1: people submitted, we've got Mark texted, are you trying to
Speaker 1: seek middle ground with those who may view the world
Speaker 1: differently than you or is your goal only really reached
Speaker 1: when they have one hundred percent bought into your political viewpoints.
Speaker 1: We can't expect nor do we need to convince everybody
Speaker 1: of somebody's point of view what you need to do.
Speaker 1: And it's country after country. Most people are not political
Speaker 1: A democratic Republican and I'm aggressive of a mega supporter.
Speaker 1: They think about what am I going to do today
Speaker 1: for my family, my work and all these things that
Speaker 1: are in front of me, and yet they care about
Speaker 1: it takes many of them, not all, and that's where
Speaker 1: the vast majority are and they just want the system
Speaker 1: to work. Yeah, so we don't have to win everybody over.
Speaker 1: We just have to win enough people over to say
Speaker 1: we live in a diverse country. We live in a
Speaker 1: multiracial nation which is not fully a multiracial democracy. And
Speaker 1: the only way we're going to address these shared problems
Speaker 1: is finding what we have a shared problems today to address,
Speaker 1: because our research shows that Americans have far more common
Speaker 1: than they imagine, and how do we build off that
Speaker 1: with all people feeling that they have to give up
Speaker 1: their core identities or interest Thank you, We're going to
Speaker 1: continue this conversation. We have some live questioners queued up.
Speaker 1: Damon Williams Europe first, and go ahead and state your question.
Speaker 1: I'm Damian Williams from Memphis, Tennessee. And you've kind of
Speaker 1: touched on it already. But what I was really wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, what it looks like is just different world perspectives.
Speaker 1: And I've seen it, and I've had in my own
Speaker 1: experience where two people will look at the same thing
Speaker 1: and literally see two different things. So how do you
Speaker 1: have some kind of reconciliation with someone who's experiencing a
Speaker 1: completely different reality. One of the simplest and best interventions
Speaker 1: I've learned from my colleagues in the science is context.
Speaker 1: Is that our brains have alved to be predictive. We're
Speaker 1: constantly trying to predict our social and physical environment. And
Speaker 1: if we don't know or have experienced the lived experience
Speaker 1: of others, we can access it through context. Oh, I
Speaker 1: know what that feels like in my community. I know
Speaker 1: what that feels like in my experience. So how do
Speaker 1: you contextualize something. I'll give you a concrete example, and
Speaker 1: it may not completely connect to your point, but I
Speaker 1: think it's related. So there was a statue of Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln in Boston that was a replica of the one
Speaker 1: in DC that was built about a decade after his
Speaker 1: assassination and he was standing on a pedestal with two
Speaker 1: freed slaves looking up to him, unshackled. Even at the
Speaker 1: revealing of this in Washington, Frederick Douglas said, this is inappropriate,
Speaker 1: it's dehumanizing. So two years ago the city of Boston
Speaker 1: decided to take a down and a friend of mine
Speaker 1: went to college with whose Irish American called me up
Speaker 1: and he's sort of centator. A conservative said, is Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln now being canceled? And what I said to him is,
Speaker 1: you know, Bob, imagine if there was a statue of
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria or Oliver Cromwell and Boston. Before I could finish,
Speaker 1: he said, take that statue down. It connected to his
Speaker 1: lived experience because there are these narratives in the Irish
Speaker 1: American immigrant community of the famine and what Queen Victoria
Speaker 1: did and what Oliver Cromwell had done earlier. The notion
Speaker 1: of a statue representing those two is so ibhortant that
Speaker 1: he all of a sudden contextualized. Well, I guess I
Speaker 1: can understand now what that would mean for someone who's
Speaker 1: African American. And from a research point of view, a
Speaker 1: simple intervention like that, and they've followed up can last
Speaker 1: a lifetime. That's fascinating. Oh, I want to follow up
Speaker 1: on everything, but we have so many more in the
Speaker 1: que I want to give keep the passing the Mike,
Speaker 1: Allison Mousqueta, please go ahead and state your question. Thanks. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Alison Musqueta. I am here in Denver, Colorado, and
Speaker 1: I work in public health across the entire state of
Speaker 1: Colorado and lots of different communities that all have very
Speaker 1: unique their own cultures, their own belief systems, lots of
Speaker 1: political differences, and I work in a program where we
Speaker 1: all have the similar goal, but we have a lot
Speaker 1: of different ideas about how to get there. And I
Speaker 1: really find that one way to do that is similar
Speaker 1: to what I think you've been saying, is find those
Speaker 1: foundations of what we all agree upon as the basis
Speaker 1: of the conversation and build from there. And it's taking me,
Speaker 1: as a young professional, long time to learn these skills.
Speaker 1: I was never taught these things. So I was just
Speaker 1: really thinking about my two young children and concern for them, like,
Speaker 1: how do we teach young kids and young people to
Speaker 1: prepare them to be in a world where these kinds
Speaker 1: of conversations are going to be really critical and importance
Speaker 1: and have this healthy level of conflict when what they
Speaker 1: see role modeled around us right now is not that.
Speaker 1: What many of the South Africans, for example, would tell
Speaker 1: people in other countries is process before substance in a
Speaker 1: deeply divided setting, to go to the issues that divide
Speaker 1: people as a recipe for disaster, because then people don't listen.
Speaker 1: And it's not just from a political or an explicit
Speaker 1: it's as much as psychological mindset. I don't know you,
Speaker 1: I don't trust you, Why should I trust you? And
Speaker 1: the process piece to me the common ground that we
Speaker 1: need to lay whether it's in a family or school
Speaker 1: or other settings. And we've been trying this, by the way,
Speaker 1: with some of these different groups over the last few years,
Speaker 1: is laying out these processes. Let's talk about how our
Speaker 1: brain navigates the world. Let's talk about common experiences we
Speaker 1: have and what it feels like to be marginalized, humiliated.
Speaker 1: You know, what is it to feel human fragility? What
Speaker 1: is it to feel privileged? Do you feel privilege? And
Speaker 1: so we take out the sort of precursor white fragility,
Speaker 1: white privilege, because I think it in the context of
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland. If the Catholics said, of the Protestants, what
Speaker 1: we need to do is talk first about your Unionist
Speaker 1: or Protestant fragility or privilege, those conversations would have gone
Speaker 1: nowhere because you've already had this deep identity based conflict
Speaker 1: where those identity markers play a much more salient important
Speaker 1: role than core political and economic interest. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very clear if that book that came out several years ago,
Speaker 1: what's the matter of the Kansas is people will always,
Speaker 1: you know, they say it an organization's culture, Trump's process. Well,
Speaker 1: culture and identity will trump everything because that's what's deeply
Speaker 1: sort of ingrained in our evolution is how we navigate
Speaker 1: the world is on these identity markers. And so if
Speaker 1: we could think about organizing conversations and a more neutral
Speaker 1: human center term as opposed to a Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative,
Speaker 1: Catholic Protestant, what is it that we all share? I
Speaker 1: want children's videos of the things that you've already launched
Speaker 1: into the world. And well, i'll just flag this now.
Speaker 1: I think there will be tension between speaking truth and
Speaker 1: being effective in your linguistic approach to preserve an open door, right,
Speaker 1: And so if we're just going to talk vaguely about
Speaker 1: privilege and that save white privilege or supremacy, and that
Speaker 1: save white supremacy, what's the trade off in terms of
Speaker 1: completeness versus openness that the other would even have to
Speaker 1: entering that conversation, Bartune, I agree with you totally about privilege.
Speaker 1: The thought is, how do you have a conversation about
Speaker 1: the nature of privilege and then say so in this context,
Speaker 1: could you feel privileged by the color of your skin?
Speaker 1: As opposed to not even going there. It's to be
Speaker 1: able to have people think about, all right, I've already
Speaker 1: sent in the conversation of privilege in my brain, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm already gendering in my mind, oh I know,
Speaker 1: or I don't feel privileged, but could you feel privileged here?
Speaker 1: And then you're creating a cognitive pathway for people to
Speaker 1: engage something. You're walking them up to it rather than
Speaker 1: slamming them. Yeah, you're walking them up to it as
Speaker 1: opposed to the way I learned how to swim. Whether
Speaker 1: it just threw me in the deep end and say
Speaker 1: do you know how to swim? I'm like, I guess
Speaker 1: I do now if I want to live thanks to
Speaker 1: each All right, Mary Pearl coming on line and go
Speaker 1: ahead and state your question. Thought. Well, my name is
Speaker 1: Mary Pearl. I'm dog sitting at my brother's house on
Speaker 1: Cape Cod and I'm hearing that Tim thinks we have
Speaker 1: to start where we are today to have these conversations.
Speaker 1: But I just have to ask it. Don't we have
Speaker 1: to have a reckoning with our history of systemic racism
Speaker 1: and violence and indigenous slaughter. It's used me. There's a deep, psychological,
Speaker 1: strong connection between white supremacy and hatred of Indigenous people
Speaker 1: from our past that just infuse our presence. So how
Speaker 1: can we get to a new place of respect and
Speaker 1: understanding if we can acknowledge the history? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that is such a key question here, and it's a
Speaker 1: key question pretty much every country worked in in the past,
Speaker 1: and they're also often very divided and difficult and never
Speaker 1: completely resolved. My personal view is that it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to talk about reconciling of people until you reconcile a history.
Speaker 1: And the question is how do you do that in
Speaker 1: such a way that it advances real change? And I
Speaker 1: think you have to break it down as one is
Speaker 1: to acknowledge what has happened, and what are the ways
Speaker 1: in which you can do it actually is meaningful to
Speaker 1: the communities that need that history acknowledged, and what is
Speaker 1: the repair today for their descendants and the legacy of
Speaker 1: four centuries of blatant to humanization to people of color
Speaker 1: in this country. I mean Native Americans in particular and
Speaker 1: African Americans. So those are absolutely essential. The question then becomes,
Speaker 1: how do you move those forward in a country that's
Speaker 1: deeply not just divided politically, but with the recognition of
Speaker 1: what happened to Native Americans and African Americans who are
Speaker 1: brought here, is all these other immigrant communities Asians, Latinos,
Speaker 1: Muslims and others who have had Irish American, Italian American
Speaker 1: when they come over, we're really dehumanized, and they have
Speaker 1: these narratives in their families. And so what I've been
Speaker 1: doing for the last couple of years is reaching out
Speaker 1: to the people who led these truth commissions in many
Speaker 1: countries around the world and say, what can we bring
Speaker 1: to this moment in the United States, How do we
Speaker 1: stage this, how do we do in such a way
Speaker 1: that it can really be a process of healing and transformation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a little trick I learned on this one, Mary,
Speaker 1: and I think the history can be a real third
Speaker 1: rail and to tim earlier point, context matters, and so
Speaker 1: how you walk people up to it. And because I
Speaker 1: end up talking to a lot of white people, I'm
Speaker 1: the white people whisperer in terms of race conversations. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I try to I tell a personal story of my
Speaker 1: own emotional challenge with accepting the painful history right in
Speaker 1: my own family history, with the heroic figure, you know,
Speaker 1: my mother, who a lot of people know of, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, but also there were these other things
Speaker 1: about her and they created challenges for me. And there's
Speaker 1: a longer version of it, but essentially, like I hook
Speaker 1: them in with the mom was fallible story and tell
Speaker 1: my journey of healing on the other side of that,
Speaker 1: and how I actually have a deeper knowledge of my
Speaker 1: mother through this acknowledgment and thus a deeper love. And
Speaker 1: that's what I want for us in the country. And
Speaker 1: so it's entering through a point not of lecture and
Speaker 1: shame positioning, but rather confession. Really first, here's my experience,
Speaker 1: Here's how hard it hurt. Here's what I found on
Speaker 1: the other side. I want you to have that same transformation,
Speaker 1: that same journey, that same taste of freedom, and for
Speaker 1: the people who've had direct access to that's a much
Speaker 1: more welcome pathway into a real hard conversation than your
Speaker 1: daddy owned slaves. You are a white supremosies, you know,
Speaker 1: like it just doesn't quite do the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Can I add one quick thing bartunity? And that is
Speaker 1: the challenge we have in this country is that the
Speaker 1: truth commissions that emerged, the Truth and Reconciliation commissions from
Speaker 1: Argentina and Chile and then picked up by South Africa,
Speaker 1: we're mostly state run dictatorships. And then they had a
Speaker 1: lot of people supporting it, but they were institutionalized, legally
Speaker 1: set up state dictatorships. What we're seeing from Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: to the United States is mostly there are elements of
Speaker 1: the state and history in states who still today do
Speaker 1: things that are horrific. But it's a lot of civilian
Speaker 1: civilian if you know what I'm saying, right, and so
Speaker 1: nobody has quite figured out what is the process in
Speaker 1: a deeply divided community that is hyperpolarized to come to
Speaker 1: terms with this, and people would go to the model
Speaker 1: in South Africa, and the South Africans went to Argentina
Speaker 1: and Chile. And the benefit of that is Afrikaans and
Speaker 1: white people could say, ah, it was the system, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: or in Argentina Chile it was the military dictatorship here right,
Speaker 1: people's yeah. That's what I struggle with because of the
Speaker 1: identity based nature of our divisions, it makes it so
Speaker 1: much more difficult. So I agree it needs to be done,
Speaker 1: but let's figure out a way to do it with
Speaker 1: the tools we have to make it meaningful and transformative. Andrea,
Speaker 1: we are about to call on you. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's Andrea or Andrea you will let us know.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and state the question that you have. I'm Andrea.
Speaker 1: I'm from Washington State, and I was just wondering when
Speaker 1: you have two people who when you're in a conversation
Speaker 1: with somebody where the conversation is becoming not useful anymore,
Speaker 1: what kind of linguistic tactics do you have to get
Speaker 1: the conversation going in a positive direction. I've struggled with this,
Speaker 1: and it was more difficult because it's my own people
Speaker 1: I know and so forth. But here's what I've tested
Speaker 1: and learned more anecdotably, when somebody said to me recently
Speaker 1: that the twenty twenty election was stolen, that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: is illegitimate, and that Donald Trump is the best president
Speaker 1: we've ever had. Rather than getting angry and outrage and
Speaker 1: get into the issues, I said, well, I can maybe
Speaker 1: understand why you feel that way. And what it did
Speaker 1: was I could see there was like a change in
Speaker 1: this person's countenance. What he was expecting was me to
Speaker 1: come back in an aggressive way. I said, I can
Speaker 1: understand why you feel that way. What I didn't say
Speaker 1: was I agree with you. You're wrong. Don't you realize
Speaker 1: what he stand for? Don't you realize what happened? And
Speaker 1: what it forced him to do was a bit of
Speaker 1: cognitive dissidents to rethink, so, huh, what does this mean?
Speaker 1: And I could see it going on. And I had
Speaker 1: the benefit of speaking to some brilliant social psychologists ahead
Speaker 1: of times, saying I want to try this, and they
Speaker 1: said it creates cognitive dissidents because people come in with
Speaker 1: an expectation that you're going to act and speak in
Speaker 1: a certain way. And then I didn't want to then
Speaker 1: at that point, because I knew I would see this
Speaker 1: person continue on the conversation. I wanted him to sit
Speaker 1: with I understand you. I mean it's almost like if
Speaker 1: you're keeping them engaged, they're not storm in a capital, right,
Speaker 1: And so if that's the energy you have, and again
Speaker 1: Tim said this already, that's not everybody's job. But if
Speaker 1: you find yourself in that situation and you want to
Speaker 1: try it, I think it can be worth a shot.
Speaker 1: You also can't change most of us are not in a
Speaker 1: a position to change in one's mind if we don't
Speaker 1: have a relationship with them. And so preserving the link
Speaker 1: is also preserving the opportunity to move people across that
Speaker 1: link and to be moved, you know, into some degree.
Speaker 1: But if we just have a counter energy and a
Speaker 1: severing of relationship, then we're severing one of the pillars
Speaker 1: of how a citizen, which is to invest in relationships,
Speaker 1: and we're sort of we're losing an opportunity to potentially
Speaker 1: persuade or change or shift that may come later. We
Speaker 1: got one more live question, Deborah Scheka. My name is
Speaker 1: Deborah and I am in Reno, Nevada. So my question
Speaker 1: is this. I've been thinking about how polar and I've
Speaker 1: been divided our country is and it troubles me deeply,
Speaker 1: and so what can I do? You know, I call
Speaker 1: a service center and I talk to a customer service
Speaker 1: agent and I try to be extra nice ideal with
Speaker 1: people in the grocery store and try to be extra nice.
Speaker 1: And that's the only thing I've been able to come
Speaker 1: up with. And it's kind of a nice thing to do,
Speaker 1: but it feels like it's not enough. What else can
Speaker 1: we do? Or is being extra nice to everyone we
Speaker 1: encounter that meet our standards as well? Is that going
Speaker 1: to going to give points for that? You know, I
Speaker 1: think we have to pick and choose on an individual
Speaker 1: level those relationships that we want to invest in. It
Speaker 1: could be a family member, it could be a coworker.
Speaker 1: There could be somebody that you know you have profound disagreement,
Speaker 1: but they will be in your life in some way,
Speaker 1: and you want a decent relationship. On a broader scale.
Speaker 1: What I've seen and recommend is be engaged citizens, you know,
Speaker 1: step out of your silos, look for those moments where
Speaker 1: you can actually do something that crosses divides. I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's one lesson that all these leaders from profound
Speaker 1: divides in other countries who have been through the ship
Speaker 1: to put up bluntly say is you've got to find
Speaker 1: ways to live together and cooperate because the alternative is
Speaker 1: really bad. The other thing is norms play an outsize
Speaker 1: role in shaping behavior. Research showed in behavioral science that
Speaker 1: actually focusing on hearts and minds has very little impact
Speaker 1: on behavior as much as norms do. In fact, people's
Speaker 1: hearts and minds will follow to shape to their new norm.
Speaker 1: And think of those leaders and institutions that we want
Speaker 1: to elevate, whether it be a Republican, a Democrat, and
Speaker 1: independent or cultural figures who have the capacity to shape
Speaker 1: new norms. When I think of John McCain in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, when that woman came up and said
Speaker 1: candidate Barack Obama was on an American What did John
Speaker 1: McCain do. He took the microphone and said, no, I'm sorry, miss,
Speaker 1: that's incorrect, that's wrong. That has a big influence. We
Speaker 1: need to be finding people, but take me on the
Speaker 1: Republican side, who are willing to step up and do
Speaker 1: the right thing. And I think that can shape an
Speaker 1: environment that can begin to bring the temperature down. Because
Speaker 1: one thing we see, and again I've seen this in
Speaker 1: other countries. People don't like to live their lives with
Speaker 1: this much toxics city in the environment. And you know,
Speaker 1: there are some who benefit from it, some who find
Speaker 1: it very entertaining and energizing, but the vast for joining Yeah,
Speaker 1: not the most, but not the most, but not most
Speaker 1: of us. And I think that's that's a good common
Speaker 1: ground to re establish them. We can all agree, even
Speaker 1: if we don't share it a factual reality, we share
Speaker 1: that emotional exhaustion reality, and that is a possible bridge
Speaker 1: as well. Gun stim We got to talk about guns.
Speaker 1: I think the context for increasing language around dehumanization and
Speaker 1: anti democratic norms and openness to political violence. It hits
Speaker 1: differently in the US because we have so many guns
Speaker 1: per capita here and so the fears of violence are
Speaker 1: justified in ways that they might not be in other
Speaker 1: places with just a lot of newspapers talking a lot
Speaker 1: of smack. Do you have any research experience focus on
Speaker 1: the special relationship that we have with guns in the
Speaker 1: US and the unique challenges that creates for reversing this spiraling,
Speaker 1: escalating threat. And it's horrendous to see the amount of
Speaker 1: guns and the gun culture we have in this country.
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned earlier that things that we hold
Speaker 1: to be sacred to us a process in the different
Speaker 1: part of the brain than other utilitarian calculations. So I
Speaker 1: wrote a piece after Sandy Hook, six months eight months
Speaker 1: after Sandy Hook, looking at sacred values and gun control
Speaker 1: and recognize that after seeing a failure of gun legislation
Speaker 1: after Sandy Hook, it actually got worse. What are we missing?
Speaker 1: Is there a different way to frame the protection of
Speaker 1: children and a different way to frame a conversation with
Speaker 1: those gun odors who really think it's like a sacred value.
Speaker 1: And I'll be happy to share that and you can
Speaker 1: link it. But that got a lot of interest and
Speaker 1: the answer, you know, I don't know the answer, my friend.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's deeply embedded. You know. I said to somebody,
Speaker 1: we never demobilize as a nation from the American revolutions. Wow,
Speaker 1: And that no of militias and the right to be
Speaker 1: our arms has never been reformed and changed. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: ask all of our guests, how do you define citizen
Speaker 1: if you interpret it as we do as a verb,
Speaker 1: What does it mean to citizen to you tim, to engage,
Speaker 1: to know what's happening around you, to show the concern
Speaker 1: about your family, your community, your colleagues, and the country
Speaker 1: you live in. Because there are a lot of well
Speaker 1: educated people that I know, and when I ask them
Speaker 1: about the state of affairs, they're clueless. And it's not
Speaker 1: because they're stupid. They don't know. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a requirement to understand the world you live in, particularly
Speaker 1: at this moment in time. Tim Phillips, thank you for
Speaker 1: helping us see the possibilities of a world beyond conflict
Speaker 1: and spending this time with us. Thank you, Thank everybody.
Speaker 1: It's hard to feel fully satisfied after a conversation like this.
Speaker 1: The kind of intractable disagreement, dehumanization, distrust, and disinformation we're
Speaker 1: up against. It's just overwhelming and a problem. This complex
Speaker 1: doesn't have a simple solution. Tim and Beyond Conflict have
Speaker 1: contributed to a constellation of approaches and insights that we
Speaker 1: can interpret and try to use in our own communities.
Speaker 1: And they've also reminded us that comforting or not, the
Speaker 1: United States is not the first country to live through
Speaker 1: intense division, and we're definitely not the first to believe
Speaker 1: that moving beyond it is impossible. I remain most heartened
Speaker 1: by Beyond Conflicts research which shows that we're not as
Speaker 1: far apart as we think we are. Basically, what I
Speaker 1: think Republicans think of me is far worse than what
Speaker 1: they actually think of me, and vice versa. That's important.
Speaker 1: But as far as the tactics that we use to
Speaker 1: reconnect to each other, I think tim and Beyond conflict
Speaker 1: they get us part of the way there. So this
Speaker 1: is the first of two episodes we have addressing this
Speaker 1: division at the heart of our democratic culture. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Adrian Marie Brown right now and this thing she
Speaker 1: said about conflict. We don't actually need to try always
Speaker 1: to get beyond conflict. Instead, we need to try to
Speaker 1: engage in generative conflict so that the disagreements we have
Speaker 1: and we're gonna always have them, don't destroy the prospect
Speaker 1: of an us and the prospect of this beautiful experiment
Speaker 1: we're in together. Time for some actions. First, one internally,
Speaker 1: reflect Think about a recent time where you strongly disagreed
Speaker 1: with someone about a political or ideological issue, whether it
Speaker 1: was online or in person, Notice where you felt that
Speaker 1: in your body. Did you feel pressure across your forehead,
Speaker 1: tension in your jaw, tightness in your stomach or chest.
Speaker 1: These are survival responses. Your brain and body are telling
Speaker 1: each other that you are in danger. The next time
Speaker 1: you're in a situation like this, try the ninety second
Speaker 1: rule created by Harvard researcher doctor Joe Bolte Taylor. She
Speaker 1: found that it takes ninety seconds for an emotion to pass,
Speaker 1: So before jumping back into a debate that's getting your
Speaker 1: blood boiling, take ninety seconds to step out of the
Speaker 1: room or away from your phone, Breathe, pace around, hold, plank, position,
Speaker 1: whatever it takes to give you that time to move
Speaker 1: out of this understandable fight flight freeze response to an
Speaker 1: ability to better understand yourself and others. The more we
Speaker 1: practice this, the more we'll be able to recognize and
Speaker 1: reduce our own fear and threat responses towards people we
Speaker 1: disagree with. Next up, become more informed. We've got stuff
Speaker 1: for you to watch, read, and listen to. With tickling
Speaker 1: all the senses, check out America's Divided Mind Beyond Conflicts
Speaker 1: short video that shows Americans aren't as far apart as
Speaker 1: we think, and if you want to take a deep
Speaker 1: dive into their research, we've linked some of Beyond Conflicts
Speaker 1: reports on the psychology that drives us apart, and on
Speaker 1: renewing democracy. But if reading or watching aren't your thing,
Speaker 1: Tim recommends listening to an interview with South African leaders
Speaker 1: on how America can move beyond toxic polarization. You'll find
Speaker 1: all of these resources linked in our show notes. Finally,
Speaker 1: let's publicly participate. Bridging the political tension in our country
Speaker 1: and in our communities won't resolve itself on its own,
Speaker 1: and if you've got the bandwidth, take time to move
Speaker 1: conversations offline and invest in building real relationships with people
Speaker 1: across the aisle in your community. And you don't need
Speaker 1: to do it alone either. Check out organizations creating opportunities
Speaker 1: for Americans to come together and navigate our divides at
Speaker 1: the local level, groups like One America Movement, Civic Genius,
Speaker 1: Make America Dinner Again, or Living Room Conversations. Find links
Speaker 1: to all these groups in the show notes. If you
Speaker 1: take any of these actions, please brag about it online
Speaker 1: and use the hashtag how to citizen. Also tag our
Speaker 1: Instagram how to citizen. I am always online and I
Speaker 1: really do see your messages, so send them. You can
Speaker 1: also visit our website how a Citizen dot Com, which
Speaker 1: has all of our shows full transcripts, actions, and more. Finally,
Speaker 1: see this episode show notes for resources, actions and more.
Speaker 1: Ways to Connect a Citizen with barrettun Day is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio Podcasts and row Home Productions. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart. Our
Speaker 1: lead producer is Ali Graham, Our associate producer is Donia
Speaker 1: abdel Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing producer, and John
Speaker 1: Myers is our executive editor. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to dust Light Productions, who arranged my first
Speaker 1: interview with Tim. Original music by Andrew Eapen with additional
Speaker 1: music by Blue Dot Sessions, and our audience engagement fellows
Speaker 1: are Jasmine Lewis and Gabbie Rodriguez. Special thanks to Joel
Speaker 1: Smith from iHeartRadio and Lay Labina. Next time on How
Speaker 1: the Citizen. Tim gave us insight into how deep seated
Speaker 1: the discord and hatred of our political division has grown.
Speaker 1: But a lot of us are at a loss when
Speaker 1: it comes to figuring out our role and de escalating it.
Speaker 1: And while sitting down and trying to talk things out
Speaker 1: will work for some of us, in order to rebuild
Speaker 1: relationships with those we deeply disagree with, we've got to
Speaker 1: get created. And she said, people are so deeply in
Speaker 1: their camps and there's there's so much distrust that I
Speaker 1: think we need to remember why we enjoyed each other
Speaker 1: in the first place. And so she threw a parking
Speaker 1: lot party, and she convinced her board to rent a
Speaker 1: dunk tank, and the core of the parking lot party
Speaker 1: was dunk the deacon, Yes, right, and we can all
Speaker 1: come together around that. Author and facilitator Prey A. Parker
Speaker 1: on the art of gathering and the inventive ways we
Speaker 1: can practice being in community across differences. Row home Productions