I belong to an informal group of about a dozen people, about
half of each gender, most of whom meet once a week at a friend’s house for morning
coffee and a free-flowing discussion about world events, local issues and
anything else that comes up. A couple of people in this group live elsewhere
and contribute via email. Everyone is highly educated, but apart from that we
represent a wide diversity of national and cultural backgrounds, life experiences,
subject specialties, political views, etc.
Now in the highly partisan, highly divisive, highly hostile
and critical atmosphere of today’s American culture, this group is unusual in
that we seem to have quite amicable and respectful explorations of differing
views and opinions, in which many of us change our minds, modify our views, or
come to a new understanding of others. It got me to thinking about how one
approaches people with differing views.
A typical reaction in America today on meeting or reading
the writings of someone with a different political or cultural view is to
dismiss them at least as ignorant or uniformed or misinformed, if not outright
evil. But if one thinks about it, the all-too-common statement “I can’t see why
anyone would be so [dumb, ignorant, misinformed, etc] as to believe that” is
really in fact a statement about our own ignorance. Clearly they do believe
what they believe, and they believe it for reasons which seem perfectly sound
to them, and if we can’t see why they believe what they believe then clearly that
reflects some profound ignorance on our own part.
One can react to this basically in three different ways. One
can dismiss them and their views out of hand. That is the most comfortable
reaction and what most people seem to do and it just leaves us bound in our own
ignorance, perhaps feeling falsely virtuous from our supposedly “superior”
understanding of the world.
One can argue with them, but that just pits our own cultural
and life experiences, assumptions and biases against theirs, and since each of
us is arguing from within our own different cognitive and emotional framework,
arguments seldom change anyone’s mind or accomplish anything useful. Still,
many people seem to love the emotional high and virtuous feeling that arguments
give them.
Or one can freely admit one’s ignorance and explore with
them respectfully and with an open mind just why they believe what they
believe. It is important to do this from a serious commitment on our own part of
wanting to learn and understand the other’s views, rather than as just an
exercise in gathering ammunition for our next assault on them. One needs to begin
with the assumption (obviously true if one thinks about it) that they may well
be right and it is we who are wrong because of our own ignorance or assumption
or biases or cultural and life experiences. It’s amazing what one can learn about other people’s
lives, other people’s experiences, other people’s assumptions and biases, and
other people’s cultures with this approach. And it is amazing how often that
new understanding will modify one’s own views.
Of the three approaches, only the third is productive, only
the third reduces our own ignorance. Too bad it is so rarely deployed.
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