The Dialogue Venture

Posts Tagged ‘dialogue’

Scene 1: A buddy forwards me an email that rails against U.S. foreign aid, because it’s taking away from Social Security. I’ve read enough to know that’s not true—foreign aid constitutes maybe 1% of the federal budget—and I send him a reply to that effect with three links from reputable (though allegedly liberal) sources. My buddy appreciates the input but still thinks there might be something to the email.

Scene 2: A pillar of a conservative church comes out to the congregation, one family at a time. When he lays out the case for LGBT acceptance—using the Bible and countering the oft-cited passages against homosexuality—people tend to believe him. Then he leaves, and they’re worried that his “silver tongue” has simply deceived them and distorted what they’ve always known as the truth.

What’s happening here?

My knee-jerk response is exasperation with the people who “won’t see sense.” They hear logical reasons to change their minds, they have access to facts and statistical trends and whatnot, and yet they retreat into their current mindsets. I want to use the word ignorance in its root sense: an ignoring of what’s in front of one’s face.

But that’s wrong on so many levels. Most important, it dismisses the sheer power of the deeper forces that move us: culture, upbringing, religion, values, the “tribes” in which we live, our mental health and emotional needs. All of these contribute to the dense mesh of our beliefs and opinions.  All have spent decades weaving themselves into our psyches. They will not yield easily. Nor should they, necessarily: often these influences provide us with time-honored insight into the universe—and shape our lives for the better.

But the strength of these influences can keep us from hearing other people in dialogue, no matter how good our intentions. And since we have to share this planet, hearing one another in dialogue is essential.

This is why I believe that logic and facts and processes, while invaluable, will not suffice to create a climate of dialogue. At some level, we must find within ourselves an openness to others, a willingness to hear and weigh entirely different perspectives, a deep sense that the wisdom we’ve gleaned from the forces that move us may not always be correct.

These are attitudes of the heart. If we do not have them, we must find a way to reorient ourselves—to, as the Shakers sing, turn till “we come round right.”

Faith is good at this sort of thing. The goal of so many faith traditions is transformation at the core of one’s essence, usually toward compassion and peacemaking: the very virtues that both fuel and provide the reason for dialogue. When we start with the transformation, we can come to the dialogue table already open to the other; we can listen to the logic and facts and employ the processes more fruitfully—using our core principles not to block the entry of new ideas, but as a source of wisdom to contribute insights to the conversation.

Yes, we need facts and dialogue processes and ways of coming together, without question. The proper orientation of our hearts is no less important. With all these ingredients working together, who knows how far our dialogue can go?

Last weekend I helped run a rabbit and cavy show. Though rabbits and cavies don’t speak my language per se, I did learn something about communication (and, by extension, dialogue) from the experience.

Over the past few years, the show’s organizers have done an outstanding job in making the show bigger, better, and friendlier to exhibitors. I have been continually impressed with their energy and good cheer. They needed all of it and more for this year’s show—because the usual location was smack in the middle of flood-ravaged upstate New York.

Not to be deterred, the organizers found an alternate location: same town, but now a hotel high on a hill. Still, there were many questions in the air, and on Facebook things were getting testy. Some exhibitors started to question the wisdom of moving forward with the show. (I was worried about it myself.) Others jumped in to disparage the questioning—and the questioners. Virtual voices were raised. People ascribed ulterior motives to those on the “other side” of the debate. I’m sure some relationships were damaged in the result.

I think that conversation could have gone differently. I wish I had acted differently.

For one thing, I wish the organizers had communicated specific answers to our questions. I believe that in many cases, people act from reasonable motives and assessments, so when I hear their reasons I can often go along with their decision. Even if I disagree with it, I at least understand and appreciate their logic. So perhaps more specifics from the organizers could have defused the Facebook kerfuffle and got us all pulling in the same direction.

But, of course, the organizers are not mind readers. They can’t anticipate every concern. So my part in the general conversation (the part I wish I had played differently, and the part any exhibitor could have played) was to ask the questions. Not inflammatory questions like “How can you possibly have the gall to hold a show when people are suffering?” or “Why are you putting our animals at risk?” but specific questions like “What do you know about conditions that we don’t know? Where can I get information about the roads? How wet is the hill where the outside portion of show is taking place? What can the hotel people tell us? What does the federal disaster area declaration mean for us?”

In a nutshell, here’s what I’ve learned: If you have information, share it. If you should have information (as an event planner, a leader, etc.), go get it and then share it. If you’re not privy to information, ask good questions. Whoever you are, assume good intent on the part of others until proven otherwise.

I think this goes for dialogue in general. Do you really know what the “other side” thinks about the issue at hand? If not, what questions can you ask that will help you understand their thinking? What can you share about your perspective that will help them understand you? Is someone in the dialogue missing key information or access to a respected source that could clear up misunderstanding?

Question for the day: Have you ever been in a dispute where one missing piece of information resolved the whole thing—or at least made it easier to understand where everyone was coming from? Please share your story here.

How do you engage in dialogue when your tongue is “set on fire by hell”?

The biblical letter of James says quite a bit about the power of speech, none of it good. With the tongue we bless and curse. In our speech is “a world of iniquity.” The tongue is “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Worst of all, according to the passage, no one can tame it.

Hyperbole? To an extent—though anyone who has suffered from the destructive power of gossip, slander, or insult can attest to the truth of these words. The question is, once we know how destructive our speech can be, what do we do about it?

After 35 years of studying the Bible, I thought I had the answer nailed. Our job as people of faith was to vet our speech carefully, think before we speak, remain silent when in doubt. It’s hard to argue with that advice: we do want to be precise in our language, so that we communicate our insights clearly and accurately and discuss sensitive issues with care.

But this solution, if it is the only solution, has serious flaws. Most notably, it is too easy to slide from careful speech to an attitude of fear. Aware of the issues our speech can raise, we begin to fear that we can’t get our words right, or that people will misinterpret them, or that they will inflame sensitivities on certain issues. As we distrust our tongue, we distrust ourselves. We might choose to hide ourselves within the bounds of “nice speech,” the kind that doesn’t bring up “politics and religion.”

That may get us through difficult situations without taking flak. But it prevents us from sharing our uniqueness—that one-of-a-kind perspective that just might change someone’s mind or shed new light on a problem.

I think the author of James had something else in mind. Early in the passage, he or she asserts that “anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect” while freely admitting that “all of us make many mistakes.” In other words, it would be lovely if we could conquer our tongues—but it ain’t going to happen.

So what will work? The author waits till the end to offer this hint: “Can a fig tree…yield olives, or a grapevine figs?” Translated: “out of the mouth the heart speaks.”  We can only say what we are.

The challenge, then, is to change who we are.

This is why I believe our preparation for dialogue must start long before we get to the dialogue table. We need time to change from the inside out: to reorient our heart to openness and compassion, our mindsets toward curiosity, our awareness to the fact that we don’t have all the answers. If we do that, we can approach others with an orientation toward dialogue—with a clear mind and an open heart.

Best of all, we don’t have to keep such a close watch on our speech. When we speak from a good heart, good words tend to come out.

Changing from the inside out is a long process, of course, and taking care with our language is a virtue. But inner transformation can liberate us to share freely, speak boldly, and listen intensely—to participate fully in dialogue and the potential it can bring our world. A powerful message from an ancient sage.

I had a moment of cynicism this past Sunday, and the lessons apply directly to dialogue.

As the rain from Irene poured onto our yard, we kept waiting for it to come into our basement. Every hour we walked downstairs and checked. Dry. Dry. Dry. Finally, at 11:30, we saw the first film of water on the basement floor. Much wet/dry vacuuming ensued, but the water level never went above a coating.

Meanwhile, on every TV channel, meteorologists shook their heads and reported that Irene was every bit as disastrous as predicted. At one point I turned to my wife and asked, “Is it possible they’re hyping this just a bit?”

As the day wore on, though, the news footage started to come in from Windham, and Schoharie, and Vermont. And I saw how horribly wrong I was.

In the past few days, this experience reminded me of a basic truth about dialogue as a way of life: the way of dialogue suspends judgment. It is so easy to seize on one factoid or limited perspective or shred of truth—especially if it comes from our own experience—and leap to a fully formed opinion about the whole situation.

I would submit that our culture supports this jumping to conclusions in several ways. The overwhelming volume of media—24/7, always on, always “breaking news”—almost demands that we process and evaluate information instantly just to keep up. Partly to accommodate the media, many pundits, elected leaders, and talk radio hosts reduce complex issues to sound bites, and it becomes easy to assume that the sound bite is the sum total of the issue.

Moreover, the cynicism that pervades much of postmodern life can color our judgment. On numerous occasions, I’ve seen our local meteorologists make a big deal of a weather event that didn’t live up to the hype. Because of that, I found it easy to assume that hype had become standard operating procedure for boosting ratings. I did not stop to consider just how difficult weather forecasting can be, how many variables are involved, or how swiftly conditions can change.

Living as people of dialogue—people oriented toward openness, toward listening, toward a passion for seeking out the reality of a situation, toward the importance of others’ perspectives—calls us to remain open to as many inputs as possible, and consider them with respect, before (and even after) coming to judgment. It’s why getting our news from “the other side” as well as “our side” is so important. It’s why the consultancy for which I work (The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc.) urges clients to include a broad cross-section of people in the discussion of an issue: hearing inputs from many perspectives leads to a more complete view of the issue, which in turn makes for more thoughtful analysis and better decisions.

What would happen if we took this open, reflective, think-before-you-judge approach on the federal debt, or on immigration, or even with our kids when they do something questionable? Could it work? What do you think?

How many conservatives read Mother Jones? How many progressives ever tune into FOX News?

If Michael Kitchens’ research is any indication, the answer to both questions is: not many. An assistant professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College, Kitchens conducted a study that investigated whether people’s religious backgrounds influenced their choice of media on religion. He and his students asked 213 participants to rate their preference for one of three fictitious research summaries: one with positive information about religion, one with negative information about religion, and one neutral.

You can guess what the study found. Religious people preferred the positive summary. Non-religious people preferred the negative summary.

In an article on his research, Kitchens extrapolates from these findings to the political realm. It makes sense, he writes, that “people’s political identity fuels the need to seek information that confirms” their beliefs. This, he reasons, has given rise to a fractured media landscape in which “media sources continue to validate people’s preconceived notions and worldviews.”

I think he’s spot-on here.  What surprises me, though, is his bleak outlook for the future: he says that “harmony is unattainable” and the best course of action is to learn how to conduct “a reasonable debate about ideas.”

But how do we even get to the debate if we are so suspicious of the “other side”? That suspicion comes from the same cycle that Kitchens is on about. As we take in the news media that agree with us, we inevitably hear criticisms of those who disagree. In today’s toxic public square, those criticisms are particularly nasty: we hear our adversaries’ motives questioned, their patriotism impugned, their truthfulness cast into doubt. So how can we approach them with anything that appears like listening?

What if, however, we took one simple step long before the debate: what if we all read or viewed media that disagree with us?

What if we all committed to reading one newsmagazine, watching one news program, or visiting one blog whose worldview is completely different from ours? We could do this not just across political lines, but across other divides too: divides of gender, color, sexual orientation, and yes, religion.

Here’s what I’ve seen happen: once we take in this media from proponents of the “other side,” we realize that their thinking has some rationality behind it, that their motives have more integrity than we’re led to believe, that maybe a few of their points make sense—even if we still disagree with them. This opens our minds a bit. The next time we approach these people or their ideas, we might be just a bit more inclined to listen, and our minds open wider.

Now I’m not talking about the ranting media—particularly the talk radio programs whose sole purpose is to inflame passions and get ratings. I’m talking about thoughtful columnists and pundits who believe something different. This is why I read David Brooks and Kathleen Parker as well as Cynthia Tucker. Maybe I need to suck it up and read George Will, too.

What about you? If you could read one columnist or magazine or blog from the “other side,” which would you pick? Share it here. It might just be a resource no one else has thought about.

Is this a teachable moment for dialogue?

A discussion on this topic recently lit up the main listserv of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (where I’m a board member). The inspiration for the thread came from a New York Times article about the downgrade of U.S. debt in the wake of congressional gridlock. From the article:

In its announcement Friday night, S.& P. cited the political gridlock in Washington during the debt limit debate as a main reason for its decision. ‘The gulf between the political parties,’ S.& P. said, had reduced its confidence in the government’s ability to manage its finances.

Let’s summarize:

• Congress faces a momentous vote on the federal debt.
• Rather than dialogue, the two parties dig in their heels and refuse to compromise.
• This shakes the world’s confidence in the government’s willingness (not its ability) to make debt payments.
• Finance people hate uncertainty. So…
• Standard & Poor’s downgrades the credit rating, the markets plunge, and millions of people watch their retirement savings shrink.

Granted, the debt downgrade was not the only driver of the markets over the past week. But that doesn’t detract from the larger lesson here: the refusal to dialogue has consequences. At the highest levels of government, it has big consequences.

I’m not advocating that our elected officials adopt a specific dialogue process to solve this particular issue (though they could choose from a wide range of excellent options if they wanted to). Before any discussion of process, I would suggest, is the need to adopt a dialogue mindset: a deliberate turning toward openness, toward setting aside preconceptions long enough to hear others, toward seeking out common ground, toward seeing the humanness in our adversaries, toward speaking from the heart and listening from the heart.

I know this flies in the face of the Washington culture—and, in some places, even aspects of the system. We elect people, after all, partly to represent our interests. Powerful forces exert their power quite effectively, thank you, without any talk of dialogue, and they perhaps are perfectly happy with the system the way it is.

But on a fundamental level, our elected officials are called to get things done.  Refusal to dialogue makes fulfilling this call extremely difficult. In contrast, authentic dialogue can empower them not just to hear one another, but to build on one another’s ideas—so that the solutions they develop may well be far better than the initial positions of the respective sides.

What would it take for Congress to adopt a mindset of dialogue? What do you think?

I camped out at my favorite Starbucks this morning with the intention of writing about the U.S. debt crisis and the dysfunction of government. We might get to that in another post. But as I wrestled with the wording, normal life kept going on around me…and eventually forced me to pay attention.

To my left, two young women talked animatedly about dress styles. To my right, a boy of around six jabbered to his father about the baseball game they might take in later, as Dad listened with obvious patience, attention, and love.

It felt so blessedly ordinary. People—just people—talking and listening and paying attention and, by doing so, affirming each other.

This feels like something very fundamental to the human spirit. Part of us is hard-wired to be social: to talk and listen and pay attention—in other words, to use the basic abilities that are also the ingredients of dialogue.

I wonder if we can tap into this “ordinary” part of us in extraordinary circumstances, when dialogue is of the utmost importance.

Perhaps this is why some longtime public servants fondly recall the days when they’d fight like mad on the Senate floor and then head out to the local pub with their adversaries. It’s probably (as mentioned in last week’s post) what former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in her days as an Arizona legislator, had in mind when inviting the warring sides of an issue to her house for Mexican food and beer and chat. It’s hard not to relax one’s iron grip on contentious issues in such a relaxed environment. As they prattled and swapped stories and talked about nothing much, I imagine, they stopped being “politicians” and started being people—just people. They tapped into that “ordinary” vein. They allowed their humanness to come out.

And they saw the humanness in one another.

I would submit that it’s harder to mount a savage attack on your adversary once you’ve seen her human side. So these opportunities to be “ordinary” open a door, if even only a crack at first, to talk and listen.

What might have happened if, a week ago, President Obama and Speaker Boehner and House Majority Leader Cantor and others had pushed away from the debt negotiation table, changed into polo shirts and khakis, and took in a Nationals game? What if they’d shared some nachos and bought a few beers and yakked about anything but the debt? Would it have eased the negotiations, fostered more respect, led to a better, and better thought out, solution?

I think this sounds more naïve than it actually is. Why do you think parents give warring toddlers a timeout, if not (in part) to help them take a breather and regain their center? Who’s to say it can’t work with adults?

Considering what doesn’t work in Washington—and the fajitas and beer that have worked in the past—why not give it a try?

Remember all those long-ago TV ads that trumpeted the vast promise of the Internet to bring us all together? Apparently, quite the opposite is taking place.

So says a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed by Gregory Rodriguez. A senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Rodriguez writes that “despite all the newfangled ways we’ve developed to communicate across all sorts of boundaries, we’re increasingly deciding to talk, tweet and Facebook with folks who are more or less like ourselves.”

Why? Rodriguez quotes a fascinating insight from Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. With the explosion of diversity in today’s world, Bishop writes, people increasingly have to create their own identities. That’s a lot easier when you draw on support from people like you.

I see this as a good thing. In Western culture, at least, we no longer have a social consensus to tell us who we are (or aren’t). Thank God for that, especially since the consensus defined “normal” in very restrictive ways. But as someone with his own eccentric identity, I have seen how isolating the resultant “who am I?” quest can be. Support from like-minded people is a breath of fresh air, and the Internet has made it easier to find them.

The problem is not that we hang out with like-minded people. The problem comes when we only hang out with like-minded people (or only read their like-minded thinking).

By doing that, we drastically limit the number of worldviews we encounter. Our views can easily become more rigid and dogmatic. We might think the answers to problems are simple when they’re not. Moreover, we start to believe things about people not of our worldview—and those things are often inaccurate.

That may be why, for instance, some LGBT people see all evangelical Christians as homophobic, or why some Anglos see all Mexicans as unpatriotic, or why some Americans fear all Muslims as potential terrorists.  And it makes dialogue difficult.

But what if we expanded the spectrum of places we hang out online? It can do wonders for clearing away preconceptions. As our exploration unfolds, we may realize that “all people in x group” don’t have the same perspective, because this blogger in x group has a different perspective. More often than not, we discover that her perspective is well thought out. Maybe we can find ways to at least respect those opinions, if not actually bridge our divides.

Rodriguez quotes former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the value of spending time with “them” and their perspectives. To help reach consensus as an Arizona legislator, she’d invite the warring sides over to her house for home-cooked Mexican food and beer. They’d sit around and shoot the bull. In time, they became friends. This can happen virtually too (OK, minus the edibles).

Will this kind of crossover solve all our problems? Of course not. Differences in opinion and debates over policy will never go away, and neither should they: they can contribute to the forging of better solutions. But we can’t even begin to solve our problems if we’re not talking. And we can’t talk productively unless we see and hear others, especially our “adversaries,” for who they really are. If that means reading MoveOn.org as well as nationalreview.com, or The Wall Street Journal as well as The New York Times, then that’s what we have to do.

Every now and then, our elected officials provide an object lesson in how not to conduct dialogue. In that respect, the gridlock over raising the U.S. debt ceiling is turning into a classic. Here are a few lessons I draw from the whole dustup (warning to my conservative friends: I’m going to be particularly hard on the Republicans):

1. Set aside your preconceptions—however temporarily. By doing so, we can transcend our own filters (through which we see the world), clearing our minds and hearts to listen more fully to other perspectives. Had Republican congressional leaders done so, they might have at least heard the views of some distinguished economists that tax increases should form a part of any long-term effort to address the debt. Instead, the leaders have refused to even consider the notion of raising taxes, dismissing any explorations to the contrary and thereby restricting the potential of the dialogue to reach the best solutions.
2. Do not repeat sound bites ad nauseam to address complex issues. The very structure of our news media—fast, brief, pithy, designed for today’s shorter attention spans—puts leaders under tremendous pressure to communicate in sound bites. But while sound bites might illumine an isolated aspect of an issue, there is no way they can communicate the full complexity of something like the national debt. Moreover, when we hear the same sound bites over and over, we begin to assume they are the only way to think about an issue. To borrow a business cliché, these terms set the “box”—and make it more difficult to think outside it. That goes for the people using the sound bites as well as those who hear them. So we need to retire phrases like “job-killing tax hikes” and “balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class.”
3. Treat the issue with the seriousness and urgency it deserves. When ice-in-the-veins economists start using words like catastrophic and very significant, one would do well to approach the issue with instant and extreme seriousness. Add in the constraint of a time limit, and there is precious little room for wasted effort. Yet our leaders continue to talk past one another and not with one another. Other dialogues in other settings—a mutual sharing of views in an interfaith forum, say—can take their time to evolve and explore and meander as necessary. Not so here.
4. Use anger carefully. Part of being human is that we come with the full range of human emotions as standard equipment. Communication tends to work far better in a spirit of calm and open-heartedness, but sometimes (see above) open hearts and minds are in scarce supply, and intransigence rules. In such cases, a judicious expression of heartily felt anger might be just the thing, on the chance that it could wake people up and reset their orientation toward resolving the issue at hand. That’s why I have no beef with the president’s alleged sharp words to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

I’ll bet you’ve drawn your own lessons from this affair. What have you learned? Do share. And to any congressional leaders who might be reading this: Please. Do the right thing. The debt is serious business; give us serious solutions.

(Dear Reader: Yes, I have been absent from these pixels the past few weeks, and not by choice. Work and family obligations kept me away from stringing two thoughts together, let alone two words. Just before the interruption, however, I started work on the post below, so it seems a good place to pick up. My apologies for the hiatus.)

Almost two weeks ago, The New York Times printed a well-researched story by Michael Barbaro on the passage of marriage equality legislation in New York. “Behind N.Y. Gay Marriage, an Unlikely Mix of Forces” reports on the various maneuvers, lobbying efforts, and conversations behind the scenes.

As you might pick up from that last sentence, some of the effort was classically political. Governor Andrew Cuomo, according to the article, organized contentious gay-rights organizations to present a united front to the Legislature. There were postcard campaigns, phone calls to legislators, promises of political cover.

I was more taken, however, with other dimensions of the effort. Here are two:

1. The personal dimension. Barbaro’s story mentions many personal connections between the players in this drama and LGBT people. Billionaire Paul Singer, whose support Cuomo requested in an effort to persuade Republicans, has a son who is gay. Cuomo’s own partner, Sandra Lee, urged him to push through marriage equality at least in part because her brother is gay. The cantankerous senator Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) had watched his family come apart because of his no vote two years earlier: his partner’s nephew, a gay man, refused to speak to him thereafter. Constituents repeatedly approached the governor and legislators with their own stories.

Here’s my takeaway from this: I’ve long believed that the best way to clear away our stereotypes is to spend time with someone we’re stereotyping. In this case, some people changed their minds on same-sex marriage because they knew, or became acquainted with, GLBT people for whom same-sex marriage is a life-changing issue. This is one great advantage to dialogue across divides: it puts us face to face with people we misunderstand. As we hear their stories—and spend time with the human beings behind the issues—our preconceived notions give way to a more nuanced picture, and we begin to see our dialogue partners for who they are.

2. Then there’s the issue of confidentiality. Many of these conversations were held in strictest secrecy, and I believe that’s appropriate. Sometimes confidentiality can create a space for people to give and take, try out new ideas, suggest half-baked proposals, and generally fumble along, free from concern that any given line will be taken out of context in our always-on, media-saturated public square. In this confidential space, people get to put their heads together, and better ideas generally result. Clearly, secrecy can be miserably corrosive in other contexts—secret prisons, anyone?—but I think it serves a good purpose here.

There’s more to be said on these issues, but I’d rather hear from you. What lessons do you draw from the process behind this legislation? What best practices (or pitfalls) do you see that could make our dialogue better?