Episode 26 | A Republican and a Democrat Walk Into a Bar … May 15, 2022
GUEST: Mónica Guzmán, Author, I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times
A Republican and Democrat walk into a bar. They see a liberal buying a conservative a drink, while a priest chats with a rabbi and minister. A CEO is talking with a union leader. A grandmother is there with her granddaughter, while an environmentalist is speaking to an oil company exec. “Is this a joke?” one of them asks. The bartender points to a sign above the bar. It reads: “No talking about religion or politics. It’s how we stay in business.” That’s not how our guest Mónica Guzmán thinks we should be doing business. She believes talking openly about today’s issues brings about better solutions. Yet, she has witnessed how today’s political polarization leads to discord and strained communication among family members, friends, co-workers, and community leaders. In this episode, this director of digital and storytelling at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, shares ways we can broaden our perspectives to become better listeners and better communicators. Do you want more moments of “I never thought of it that way?” We talk to Mónica about how to make those moments happen.
BIO:
Mónica Guzmán is the author of I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. She embraces conversations that encourage all participants to think about and assess their unique biases, prejudices, and feelings on matters large and small. This journalist, author, and community collaborator has worked to find the intersection between communications and personal perspectives, so as to generate a greater understanding of where we all stand in times of disruption, political polarization, and a search for truth. Guzmán also is the director of digital and storytelling at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, and host of the Crosscut interview series Northwest Newsmakers. She’s a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how journalists can better meet the needs of a participatory public.
LINKS:
The Reclaim Curiosity Newsletter
Full Transcript
BRAD PHILLIPS, HOST, THE SPEAK GOOD PODCAST:
In the late 1970s, a man named Joe Deitch started a financial firm that went on to become one of the largest and best-known in its sector.
Among other things, his firm is known for its superlative customer service. Not only have they won dozens of “Best Places to Work” recognitions, but they’ve won five J.D. Power Awards for being best-in-class in customer satisfaction in their category.
After spending a career focused on delivering great service to others, it wouldn’t surprise me if he bristles when he as a customer, receives poor service from others. But, as he tells the story, that’s not exactly the case. Here’s what he wrote in his book, Elevate: An Essential Guide to Life, about when he and his family go out to dinner, quote:
“Whenever we receive bad service somewhere, we celebrate. We really do. That’s because, long ago, we realized that one reason our business thrives is because so many others fail to deliver great, or even good, service. They make us look wonderful by comparison; we didn’t even have to do anything. So, every time we discover another example of bad service, we say a silent ‘Thank you.’ ”
When reading that story, I conjured up this visual: His family is seated in a booth at a diner. A server messes up the order, doesn’t seem to really care, and makes little effort to correct it. Rather than grumbling or threatening to leave a bad Yelp review, Joe and his family smile. They exchange a knowing glance and high-five each other across the table. In silence, they feel full of gratitude for the contrasting experience that allows his firm to shine.
When I first read that anecdote in his book, I had what author Mónica Guzmán calls an “I never thought of it that way” moment. His story highlighted for me how we have the power to change our mindset and reconceive life’s irritating moments as moments worthy of celebration.
In Mónica’s new book, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times, she reveals how she’s had to learn how to shift her own thinking. Like her parents, Mónica immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She’s a liberal who voted for Joe Biden. Her parents are conservatives who voted for Donald Trump. Mónica’s friends and acquaintances sometimes have a hard time squaring that circle. After all, didn’t Donald Trump refer to Mexicans as rapists and pass legislation intended to exclude other Mexican people? But, as Mónica reminds us, people are complicated – and they have their reasons for their views and actions, even if they may not be immediately apparent to the rest of us.
Mónica’s book provides tools to explore, discuss, and learn from their reasons – skills she honed after many years of working as a journalist. Think of it this way: rather than engaging in yet another argument about gun control with one person insisting on their Constitutional right to carry and the other discussing what they see as Republicans’ seeming indifference to dead children – which will get both participants in the conversation exactly nowhere – she offers better ways of engaging in those types of difficult topics – not with an eye toward persuasion, but rather toward really hearing one another. And that matters, because as you’ll hear during our conversation, a study of 515 other studies found that chatting in person with someone from an out-group cut down prejudice 94 percent of the time. The conversation may not lead to anyone changing their mind – but it might cut down on the dehumanizing caricatures we create of other people – and that they create of us.
And it’s worth noting that Mónica doesn’t just talk the talk. Through her work with the group Braver Angels, she helps to bring Republicans and Democrats together – literally, in workshops – in an effort to bridge differences, rehumanize one another, and lower the level of polarization. You won’t be surprised to hear that, after speaking with one another, many of those workshop participants exclaim, “I never thought of it that way!”
(MUSIC PLAYS)
Mónica Guzmán thank you very much for joining me.
MÓNICA GUZMÁN:
Hey, hey, thank you so much for having me.
PHILLIPS:
So, the place I want to begin is in your book, you are very clear at the beginning that this is not a book about persuading people or moving them to your side. What is it a book about?
GUZMÁN:
This is a book about seeing each other, seeing what each other is actually concerned about, what each other is actually passionate about. Seeing each other’s perspectives with curiosity and beginning by acknowledging that we don’t fully understand them, particularly in a world that is this divided.
PHILLIPS:
And, there’s this statistic you offer in the book, it’s a, a study of other studies. And you say that there’s a total of 515 studies. This study looked at that found that chatting with someone from an outgroup cut down prejudice 94 percent of the time. And so, certainly in this political cultural moment we’re in, crossing a divide is uncomfortable, it’s something we don’t want do. We see the other group, whoever that group is, as something different, alien, harmful, toxic, fill in the blank, but that statistic showing its efficacy of conversation lowering prejudice seems to be a requirement if we’re truly interested in preserving the democracy that we currently have.
GUZMÁN:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, people have been talking for years about the lost start of conversation, and yet we, we seem to be getting farther and farther away from creating the conditions where it becomes easier. Not necessarily through the fault, through our own fault. I mean, we just went through a pandemic where it was literally dangerous to be together. And so, and it’s not just having conversation. It’s understanding when conversation is actually there and when we really only see a shadow of it. So, for example, texting with someone, you get text, you get maybe emojis and some photos, right. But you’re not really sure that you have each other’s attention. You’re not really sure that you can speak, you know, with your whole expression coming up. And then in person, that’s when we have the full toolkit of these conversational communication abilities that humans come equipped with. But it has become so difficult, both because of the lack of opportunity, but also because of this enormous fear and distress that we haven’t of each other. We’re judging each other more while engaging each other less, which makes our judgements more reckless.
PHILLIPS:
I have to ask you about your biography because I can’t help, but think that it’s informed your work. Can you talk to me about your parents? And I guess the follow-up question to that is to what degree do you think that you’ve been so curious about this topic of bridging gaps because of the experience you’ve had in your own family?
GUZMÁN:
Oh, I mean, writing a book isn’t easy. You need a lot of drive. And by far the personal drive came both from my journalism career, where I have found it so possible to understand people without judging them as a first step. And also, from my biography. So, my parents and myself and my brother were all Mexican immigrants. I very naturally flowed toward the liberal side, the Democrat side. I remember the moment when I came home from high school in the year 2000, my parents had just been naturalized as U.S. citizens and could vote that year. And I saw the Bush-Cheney sign over my mother’s desk. (LAUGHS) Like, duh, it didn’t occur to me, ‘Oh, all these arguments we’d already had politically, they’re Republicans. What?’ And so, you know, that just started a whole host of very fascinating conversations, sometimes very loudly in Spanish, in restaurants in New Hampshire and bothering a lot of people.
PHILLIPS:
Right. (LAUGHS)
GUZMÁN:
But, of course, they couldn’t understand us. So, whatever. Uh, yeah. And then there was that sharp contrast, especially as 2015 came up and that presidential campaign, just a real contrast between the heat that my parents and I made in our conversations, intense heat. I mean, it was, we yelled, right? I mean, it was not, not easy. It was not like Zen or angelic , but we could have the conversations and we could cook up understanding and then contrasting it with so many conversations that seemed to burn relationships, burn bridges, and not create understanding at all, create an understanding that you should never talk to this person again. So, it was that contrast, combined with so much else, that absolutely played an enormous role in, in my drive to write this book.
PHILLIPS:
Was there a moment when the divide was so great that either you or your parents thought you might not be able to bridge it?
GUZMÁN:
There was a moment. I did the wild thing and watched the election results with my parents in 2020, because I wanted to put myself in an environment where I could hear the unfamiliar and create that friction that we often don’t have. Before the election results came in, I went on a walk with my dad. And, my dad asked, he basically said – he’s kind of a reserved guy – but he said, “You know, I know about some people whose grown children won’t let them see their grandkids anymore because of politics. And I wonder if that will ever happen to us?” That’s the way he said it. And, you know, I immediately said, ‘No, Dad, that won’t, that’s a personal commitment of mine. But, it was interesting to hear from him that that was something that had crossed his mind. And there has been a moment or two, over the years where I’ve thought, “Oh, I’ve gone too far. I’ve gone too far. And it turned out I didn’t, but in the moment it really did feel like I had. And so, those are moments that in conversation make us aware of how there’s so much more than just being right or persuasion at stake.
PHILLIPS:
And so, this idea of bridging gaps between two people who are very different – in your case, a Democrat with two parents who are Republicans, Bush-Cheney voters, Trump-Pence voters, you used this, I guess, as fuel to try to figure out how to bridge divides. And you found yourself on a bus in March of 2017, going from your hometown of Seattle to a small county in Oregon called Sherman County. Tell me about that trip.
GUZMÁN:
Yeah. So, I had just started, with my co-founder, a newsletter that is in Seattle and still going strong and among our core values were curiosity and honesty and boldness. And so, after the election, Seattle being extremely liberal, democratic leaning, it just felt dead. And several of our readers were writing and going I want to be curious, but I don’t know how. I don’t know anyone who voted for Trump or, gosh, I don’t understand different cultures and different lifestyles in this country where someone where that would’ve felt like a natural choice. I’m all of that. So, we ended up stumbling on this feature in the Washington Post that showed that the nearest county geographically to our county that had voted exactly opposite in the presidential election, was Sherman County, Oregon, second smallest county in Oregon, highly agricultural, not very densely packed, extremely rural.
And so, one thing led to another. And, we ended up finding these incredible people in Sherman County who were willing to work with us and partner to create a day where folks from Seattle would come and visit. There was a bus tour of the wheat fields. There was a meal that we shared that they had donated, and then there was conversation. And we wanted to get curious about each other with each other, which is something that has become so rare. And, it was extraordinary. I went back and talked with a lot of the folks and farmers who had been there from Sherman County. I talked with the people who had been there from Seattle. It was an impactful trip. For many people, it was their only real experience spending any time being with a completely different American political culture. You know, rural versus urban, the whole thing.
PHILLIPS:
I’d love to dig in. And, I guess the first question is, so it seems like it would be very easy for those types of conversations to go off the rails. First of all, how did you create the conditions for it to be a respectful and productive dialogue?
GUZMÁN:
Well, you know, the key thing, of course, is that we had the ability to create structure and we had people who gave buy-in to be walked through a structure. So, that’s already something that most of us can’t imitate in our daily lives. But it allows us to look at the mechanics that do cultivate good conversations. So, I remember very clearly I had spoken with a mentor of mine, and he has worked on focus groups across difficult political issues his whole career. And we had wanted to bring cameras to tell the story, to record the events it was happening. And he was very clear that if you do that, you have to know that you might really be compromising trust in really subtle ways and compromising the honesty with which people can engage.
PHILLIPS:
Right. Because now they are performing. They’re aware that the camera’s looking at them.
GUZMÁN:
They’re performing or they’re afraid, you know, and they’re wondering suddenly who we are and what we’re here to do becomes fraught for a lot of folks. So, we made a difficult choice, you know, that the experience was more important than the story. So that was one thing. But another was really to begin with the human. So, I remember there was a big chunk of the event where people paired off, one on one, someone from Sherman County, someone from King County. And the first question we had them ask each other, we had a menu of really smart, strong questions they could ask to explore each other’s politics. But the first question they asked each other was what’s your favorite childhood memory. And that was very intentional to make sure that you make a human connection before you treat each other as a walking political opinion. And so, that was extremely important.
PHILLIPS:
And you had some kind of research in the book that showed when you set the conditions of people recognizing one another’s humanity first, it leads to a much stronger outcome of the conversation.
GUZMÁN:
Absolutely. I mean, we tend to engage in these issues online, where there is no warmup. There’s not even a hello.
PHILLIPS:
Right. It’s just that I oppose you on abortion or gun control or which party I’m voting for.
GUZMÁN:
Yeah. It’s just, I’m throwing my ideas into the ether, and they will debate other ideas. And the internet is a nonplace that makes us into non-people. So, we’re not people we’re just ideas fighting in some kind of showdown, but yeah, so it’s like we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to see the person first and that made an enormous difference for people.
PHILLIPS:
And so, in the room then can you give me an example of a dialogue you observed that you thought was kind of profound in the way that it bridged these gaps in a way that doesn’t typically happen?
GUZMÁN:
Yeah. So, this happened with, with several folks, this stood out. A lot of people from King County came down with that idea, that sort of suspicion that, oh my gosh, if someone voted for Trump, it must have come from a very hateful place. You know, for a lot of liberals, it just, that’s what it amounted to. Right? Trump’s language and rhetoric. It just all seemed too much. So, I knew that a lot of liberals carried that in their hearts and there was one farmer in particular, Darren Paget, very tall guy who talked about his reasons for voting for Trump. And, they were surprisingly economic for everybody. He runs like a fairly large farm and works right at the margins. Each year’s crop, each year’s weather can really change things one way or the other. And he talked about federal regulation that could be seen as sort of threatening his ability to control his land. And no one had ever heard about it before from Seattle.
PHILLIPS:
This was the waters of the U.S. …
GUZMÁN:
The waters of the United States rule.
PHILLIPS:
Right.
GUZMÁN:
So, again, if you’re not a farmer, you probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s an extreme concern for many farmers. And they just don’t trust Democrats to take it seriously, but they trust Republicans. And that was a big, that was a huge motivator for him. And so, several folks told me, yeah, that was an eye-opening moment. That was an, I never thought of it that way moment. That people might have reasons for making casting their vote that I had, that don’t even matter to me, but that matter a lot to them. And that end up sort of supplanting this assumption I’m making, that everything must be driven by something hateful that I am then justified in hating them for.
PHILLIPS:
Right. And this work is something you’ve now continued with this group called Braver Angels. I was struck in your book by the discussion you had about the red-blue workshops and specifically how the outcomes lead very clearly to these depolarization effects, that they’re not just nice to have conversations that feel good for a day and disappeared to the ether. They actually have these longstanding effects.
GUZMÁN:
Mm-hmm. Yes, the red-blue workshop is one of the signature workshops for Braver Angels. So, this is the largest cross-partisan nonprofit working deliberately to depolarize America and to bring liberals and conservatives together to do that. It’s a tall order, but these workshops were kind of … the heart of it is these techniques and structures that we know work, the red-blue workshop, part of its magic is something called the stereotypes exercise where the handful of blues and the handful of reds get to witness each other listing for themselves, the stereotypes that they see the other side apply to them. And then, they offer corrections to those stereotypes, but they also offer the kernels of truth. And it’s fascinating because each side gets to see each other in a kind of humility, in a kind of intellectual humility coming to the table.
And then you get this really awesome opportunity to ask questions from one side to the other about the political beliefs on that side, understanding that you’re really talking to individuals who can only speak for themselves, right? And that’s where the real power, so much of the power lies, because as I talk about in the book, questions, curious questions, every question is not a curious question. Some questions are meant to stupefy, to disqualify, to shame, to disguise an opinion and an accusation in the form of a question. A truly curious question seeks primarily to close the gap between what is known and what one wants to know. And so, any question that gets at its own way is not a curious question. In that workshop, you learn how together, how to craft a good question for what you really, really want to know generously from the other side. It makes all the difference. And part of last thing I’ll say is the most impactful takeaway, I think, from that workshop, and I’ve observed several now, is people who say, you know, we are not as divided as we think. I thought everyone on the other side thought in these ways, but here I am kind of experiencing people who are just as thoughtful as I am, but on the other side. And that you can export that awareness to everything else in your life. And that’s why these workshops are so impactful.
PHILLIPS:
I’m so glad you made that last point because I found myself, when reading your book, doing this series of but what about this, but what about that? And almost arguing with you as I was reading the book, and then I would’ve to tell myself, be quiet, listen to her message. And here’s where the buts were coming through and why I think that point you just made it so powerful. I kept thinking about the Tucker Carlsons and the Sean Hannitys and the Newsmaxes and the OANs perpetrating these toxic harmful narratives, that actually have real-world consequences for people, particularly in marginalized communities. And what I had to keep reminding myself, as I was reading your book is the world is much larger than Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. And yes, you might have a whole lot of people, millions per night that are watching them, but when you sit down one on one with them, they’re not regurgitating talking points from those shows all the time. Sometimes they’re people whose primary concerns, as you said, is the waters of the United States regulation. It’s not the kind of big things or the conspiracy theories. So, I guess my it’s not even a question so much as just a point of conversation. I think it probably is important to not fall into the trap of thinking that every cable news narrative represents the belief system of every person on the other side of the political divide.
GUZMÁN:
Yeah. And I do think that is a, a very easy fallacy to fall into because of the enormous visibility and influence that these folks have. I mean, just over the weekend, the New York Times started running this enormous, you probably saw it, this incredible a piece on Tucker Carlson. And yeah, I mean, all I could think of being who I am and doing the research I’ve done is this is so not about Tucker Carlson. We’re going to keep thinking it is because it’s just easier. It’s easier to talk about him. And, we should, because he does have enormous power and he needs accountability, and we need a lot of sunlight on what he’s doing, but this is really about the people who watch Tucker Carlson. And I don’t think we’ve, we the mainstream media, hasn’t done a very good job at all of listening to people across American cultures and across American ideologies. We just haven’t. And I can say that as a we, because I’ve been in media my whole career, it’s an enormous, enormous challenge, but, that’s part of what I see of the tragedy of the Trump era as well is these personalities that gain power by gaining attention. And then all we can do in response is give them more attention. It drives me crazy. It’s again, a way of disengaging with each other to, to look at these larger-than-life personalities who are, you know, pushing these things for their own reasons. We can go into that.
PHILLIPS:
You used this phrase, I don’t think it was yours, I think you were citing somebody else about dopamine lollipops. This idea that there are people, I mean, Donald Trump was just a master of this. He knew how to enrage people and keep engagement high. And, more recently, Elon Musk is also, I have to say he’s Trumpian, not in his politics, but in his use of social media to elicit a very strong reaction, both from people who are, I think, hardening their loyalty to him and repelling those who don’t share his views. And it is up to us, I think, to say, okay, so what does that mean for us? Does it mean that we are going to react every dopamine lollipop that they lay out on the trail for us?
GUZMÁN:
Right.
PHILLIPS:
Or does it mean that we’re going to join up with a group like Braver Angels or just do that work in our personal lives of not letting these things stop us from having thoughtful conversations with others.
GUZMÁN:
Yeah. What, what I hope is the outcome of pieces like the New York Times for mostly liberals are going to read that generously let’s be honest, right? Is that it just gives us more and more curiosity about our neighbors. You know, I’ve met and talked to so many conservatives who they don’t agree with everything Tucker Carlson says, but they feel an affinity to him because he’s out there being strong sharing many of their beliefs. But they don’t necessarily think like every single story and his most controversial things they’ll agree, those were bad ideas. But they’re not going to abandon one of the only, what they see, is one of the only hugely influential voices on their side. So, we need to kind of start looking at that whole landscape for people and understand that, you know, I think too often we just think anyone who supports someone who’s done this awful thing must be really awful themselves. And that’s just that’s another fallacy that we really need to step away from because it’s going to lead to more chaos.
PHILLIPS:
Yeah. Now I think the thing in your book that I will take away from it, maybe more than anything else was your discussion around values. And I’d like to read what you brought up about a researcher, an Israeli social psychologist named Shalom Schwartz, he studies values and he has a test . You took the test and you told readers what your results were, what your father’s results were, how you used those differences to try to assess how you viewed the world differently. And I was motivated to take the test myself.
GUZMÁN:
Hmm …
PHILLIPS:
I was really interested in the outcome. So, it turns out I came out very high on care, which is the value they define that relates to the concerns regarding care and protecting individuals from harm. I scored very low on loyalty – primarily because of patriotism. Now, I have a problem with the way that the questions were asked in that test. I think dissent is patriotic. I don’t think not automatically waving a flag for everything blindly is a good thing.
GUZMÁN:
Sure. Absolutely.
PHILLIPS:
I think it’s important to have dissent, but that aside what it made clear for me, and I was thinking about your father in this, too, I can look at patriotism and say, dissent is patriotic. It is important. If you truly love the place where you live to hold it accountable, to make it better, to not let it get away with bad behavior. But I could see another person saying, you know something I immigrated from a country where the law wasn’t typically followed. I like the fact that, I mean, we could debate whether there’s enough law and order in this country in the right ways or not, but I could see how somebody could look at it and say, you know, what, compared to where I’m coming from, there’s more accountability here. And I really value that and love that. And, therefore, they are going to rate very high on the loyalty scale. And so, I think the question that I walked away from your book thinking about is a great question to ask, maybe even yourself, not the other person, is what value are they bringing to this conversation?
GUZMÁN:
Mm-hmm.
PHILLIPS:
I may be bringing caring for others.
GUZMÁN:
Right.
PHILLIPS:
They may be bringing deep loyalty to the country. And it seems a very charitable or sympathetic question to ask of others, as opposed to maybe just describing these really negative things, like the ones you’ve been talking about to them.
GUZMÁN:
I love that. Yes. Thank you for articulating a really wonderful strategy. I think that’s true. My mind actually just replayed in my own head, a little movie about a conversation that I had, not that long ago, some months ago, with someone who’s very conservative and it was like a three-and-a-half-hour conversation. And I remember thinking at some point that, wow, and I even said this, and it made the conversation richer that I seemed to be really kind of sticking to the care value. And he was really sticking to a value around freedom of choice and freedom to thrive and to make one’s own decisions. And it was so cool. It was about COVID. It was one of the things, but we actually went on many topics and that was sort of repeating pattern where he really was standing up for, but people need to be able to run their own lives, you know, and I was standing up for, but people need to be able, we, we need to care about each other. And what also happens when we end up like noticing that is we start to think that it’s a binary. I’m the one who cares about people. You’re the one who wants them to be free and we don’t overlap. But, of course, we do. He cares about people too, you know, and of course I want people to be free. My gosh, that’s key to democracy. So, you end up just getting so nuanced and really appreciating what the other person’s representing and resonating with much of it, which is something that I think is one of the most incredibly powerful revelations in these conversations across difference. When they become productive and you go, oh my gosh, I agree with how important that this that this other person is saying, I also think that’s important. And then you have those moments of self-doubt, and you go, oh my gosh, is my position adequately reflecting that value. Now that I hear from someone for whom it is more important, I have to ask myself, well, I’m only one person who’s walked one path through the world, and I’m having an opinion about something that affects millions of people. You have to have the humility to be like, I don’t have the answers for millions of people. Who does, you know?
PHILLIPS:
You know, I’m going to do something I’ve never done on the podcast before inspired largely by your book, which is to get rid of the prepared questions that I had for this interview.
GUZMÁN:
Ohhh .. (LAUGHS)
PHILLIPS:
Because your whole book is about conversation. You have this great exercise, you recommend the follow-up exercise where people are really required to do this active listening, to hear what their partner has just said and ask a follow-up question based on that. We do that in our own trainings when we’re teaching people to be more effective moderators. And I realized there’s kind of an irony in me preparing this list of questions for you. And so, that’s it, for the next 10 minutes, it’s just you and me talking love it. Monica’s giving a thumbs up on camera here. So, let me react to what you just said, because I hear what you just said. And I think, hold on a minute, this individualist value, which I do truly understand, but an infectious disease does not really care about individualism as a value, COVID is delighted that you’re an individualist. It makes it much easier to pass from person to person
GUZMÁN:
Mm-hmmm …
PHILLIPS:
So how do you, so you’re in a conversation and this would be the first place I go. I get individualism. I understand that it has a place in this world, but we’re talking about an infectious disease. Are you nuts? How would you process that moment?
GUZMÁN:
Ah, wait, so how, how would I process that moment if someone says that to me, or if I hear that from someone.
PHILLIPS:
I mean, how do you, I guess, how do you appreciate, you’re trying to respect and appreciate the value, the differences in values that the other person brings to the conversation, but then I hear that that value can do real active harm to others.
GUZMÁN:
Well, what I would probably do is, let’s assume that there’s enough trust in the conversation and there’s been enough traction built up that we can start to really share stories here. I often begin conversations like this in a place of a lot of curiosity to build that trust. So, but eventually, you know, I’ll go I see it very differently. That’s one of my favorite ways to offer my own perspective. Lots of people want to say, I disagree, that’s fine. Just be aware that saying I disagree means you’re making it sort of about the fact of agreement or disagreement rather than about exploring the idea.
PHILLIPS:
Right.
GUZMÁN:
So, I see it very differently. Can I tell, can I say more about that? Can I explain what I mean? Sure. And then I might say exactly what you say, I’ll acknowledge the point. I totally get it. You know, it’s, we we’re in America, you know, our individual freedom is incredible. I am grateful for example, that we don’t live in a society where some dictator can lock us in our homes. There are countries that do that. Is that more effective for killing an infectious disease? Yes, I will grant you that we don’t go that far. And, I will grant you that I will say that I am happy to take some tradeoffs for the fact that we are a freer country and that we’re going to have different parts of our country doing different things. And we’re just going to have to accept that. And maybe more people will die, but at least we have freedom. Okay. But you know, but at what point, I might ask them, tell me, at what point you think that we really should regulate each other’s behavior for the sake of something that is dangerous when we come together, at what point. That becomes fun. That question becomes fun because you lay out the sort of spectrum of difference. I see this, but I also see this, you know, this infectious disease, it spreads, it doesn’t care what we think it’s just going to spread and really harm us. So, at what point would you say that, and then I would really open myself and listen. So yeah, I might go that way. Or, I might just present a story from my own side. Here’s my concern. My concern is that if we lean too much toward what you’re saying we really end up, we’ll end up with more families torn apart because they’ve lost relatives and more pain. So, you know, at what point do we make that line? And then again, I’ve had this conversation and it’s a fascinating one because people start to talk about really interesting things about what kind of life is worth living and what kind of risks are worth taking. And, that gets really interesting, right? Because if, if we all thought that it was all about life and death, none of us would, would be driving cars. They’re very dangerous. So, it’s interesting,
PHILLIPS:
You know, one of the things I really admire about you in the book, and tell me the publication in Seattle, it was the Evergrey?
GUZMÁN:
The Evergrey
PHILLIPS:
The Evergrey … it’s very clear in reading your work, that you truly approach conversations with curiosity and try very hard not to judge other people and really want to hear them and feel the responsibility as a journalist to tell other people’s stories accurately. That said I can’t help, but wonder, is there not a portion in the back of your mind, that’s trying to persuade other people to your side, have you really killed a hundred percent that persuasion switch when you’re having these conversations?
GUZMÁN:
No, absolutely not. No. And I do think there’s no way to kill that entirely because when we have judged something to be our choice, our position, that comes automatically with a sense that it is the superior position (LAUGHS) and you can’t, you can’t walk away from that. And, you shouldn’t totally. This is more about the context of a conversation. We talk about being in conversation. I like thinking of conversation as a place, a unique place that has never existed before, will never exist. Again, 2, 3, 4 people coming together at that moment in their lives. That’s unique. They have unique things in their heads, unique breakfast that morning, you know, you get to explore. It’s awesome. So, it’s about in the context of that conversation. If your primary goal is to win people to your side, you are going to compromise your ability to add friction, you know, to allow all these people to have friction added to their viewpoints, to become wiser and smarter in the exchange of whatever’s going on, you will get in the way of those wonderful things happening.
And, and I talked about this in the book. You’re not going to change someone’s mind anyway, like you can try to persuade, but what I found is the most effective path toward persuasion is just building trust often enough that you have the opportunity to share your stories that have led you to your views. Those stories can sometimes, as others hear you and imagine being you in the story you’re sharing, they might add something to their own view of an issue that can really complicate it for them. And slowly, quickly, only if their minds and hearts are extraordinary fertile, and they were already there, but usually slowly come around to seeing things a little more your way. That doesn’t mean they’re going to change their mind in a position. Nobody knows where that switch is. Nobody knows where like you tip it over into that. Nobody knows, right? But we keep kind of acting and pretending as if in this one exchange on social media, this one meme that I drop, this one-hour conversation with you, I should be able to change your mind because I am so firm in my sense that this is the better option. So, instead, we just don’t even listen to the other person. We don’t allow ourselves to see how they walk to their views and how compelling that might be. Doesn’t mean we agree with it, but we can at least see that it’s compelling.
PHILLIPS:
And that storytelling piece, I mean let’s take abortion as an issue where obviously you have people on both sides of that issue with these incredibly personal, very strong responses. Bringing very different values to this issue. So, if you are in a debate versus with sanctity of life versus individual freedom, I think there’s pretty much zero way of reconciling that in a single conversation. But if you tell your own story, maybe a story about having gotten pregnant as a teenager and deciding to either proceed with that pregnancy or not, maybe that personal story is a way of bridging that gap better than taking the two more politically recognizable positions, which seem much more irreconcilable.
GUZMÁN:
Absolutely. I’m talking more recently as I think about this, about what happens in a conversation when somebody moves from, you know, the logic type of conversation, here’s my reason, what’s your reason. Well, here’s my reason. And you’re just logic-ing. When somebody goes, well, this is what happened, right? Or just launches into a story. You, what you’ll see is people’s shoulders will usually relax. And what your mind is doing is it goes from looking at logic and thinking really hard about stuff into this completely different mode, where you are playing a movie in your head of what this other person is saying. You’re imagining their lives. And as you do that, you can’t help, but become more empathetic in that moment to what they’ve experienced. You automatically compare it, you know, to your own life a little bit. And you find these intersections, it’s a wonderful sort of slowing down and changing of modes. That then when you come back to reason and logic, it’s with a deeper appreciation of the validity of everyone’s experience, you know. Not everyone’s conclusions are valid, not everyone’s conclusions are correct, but everyone’s experiences are real. They’re not fake news. We will never make them fake news. And we have to contend with each other that way and the way that people have arrived at the opinions they hold through paths that are real. And those are the things that we can be learning about, to connect with each other and, and everything looks different. I mean this has happened to me so many times, with abortion, in one particular case, but, yeah, where I realized that I held these judgements, and then I hear someone say that they have done precisely the thing that I judged, or they were in that decision point that I oh, no. And then I hear them talk about making that decision and I’m walking with them. And even though I cringe, I go, oh yeah, okay.
PHILLIPS:
I get it.
GUZMÁN:
I get it. Shoot. I get it. Damn it. I get it.
PHILLIPS:
I thought maybe a, a nice place to end is in 2017 you participated in a rally. And as you describe it in the book, you wrestled with a.) whether you should participate in it at all, because as a journalist, you’re not supposed to express a strong opinion, but you decided, you know what, I am going to participate, but I’m going to be very deliberate about what I put on my sign, rather. And I remember this in my journalism days, if people would come door knocking or ask for a signature for a particular candidate or issue, I would always turn it down.
GUZMÁN:
Same.
PHILLIPS:
And I always said, so I was a journalist in the nineties, and I got out shortly before 9/11, thankfully. So, I didn’t have to sit in edit bay and watch that videotape over and over again. And I remember that it took several years before I was able to really figure out what I believed in because I had conditioned myself pretty well, I think, to be able to look at different sides of an issue. So, I understood the reluctance you had in participating, and then what you would say, but could you end with the words you put on that sign and why you selected them?
GUZMÁN:
Yeah. So, this was the 2017 Women’s March that happened in cities all over the country. There was a huge one in Seattle. I was there to cover it for my newsletter, but I had the opportunity to bring a sign and I decided that I would. But none of the liberal slogans or politics, you know, even though I agreed with them sure, they didn’t, they weren’t the point to me. They weren’t what I was really wanting to fight for anymore. They weren’t what I was most worried about. So, the words I wrote and it’s actually right over there, are honesty, curiosity, and respect. Those were the three things, honesty, curiosity, and respect that I was most worried we were losing as a society and just as a country, as a nation, as a group of people running one of the most fascinating experiments in how we can thrive together and facing one of the deepest challenges that we have in our history. And so, that’s what I marched for. And I got a lot of really strange looks. (LAUGHS) You know, how could that be what you’re worried about. Look around!
PHILLIPS:
And yet those three words cover virtually everything that everybody else is concerned about. That’s what they’re fighting for. I don’t care what your worldview is. It would be a much better place if everybody operated with those three words as their touchstone. Monica, I loved this conversation. Your book is terrific. I Never Thought of It That Way has a lot of actionable advice, including phrases and questions that you could ask other people to keep yourself in that headspace of curiosity and respect. Thank you very much for joining us.
GUZMÁN:
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
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