I’ve been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and praying about learning to disagree better (as opposed to moving away from each other – literally – and throwing stones from my bubble. Tim Muehlhoff’s “I Beg to Differ: Navigating Difficult Conversations with Truth and Love“ offers great wisdom on this subject. I have written online about it here. Saw a great oped piece bu Arthur C. Brooks in the NYT this am, which led me to his blog. He has written a book titled Love Your Enemies. In the book and in this blog, Brooks identifies contempt as our problem, and not disagreement. He advocates entering into disagreements, especially in the caustic, tribalized and polarized atmosphere of our culture, rather than avoiding them, while practicing agreeable (respectful) disagreement tactics that recognize both the shared humanity of the debate partners as well as their shared goals:
- Never try to insult someone into agreement (they will typically double down on their beliefs)
- Never assume the motives of a person who disagrees with you – we hardly even know each other, much less our respective motives
- Use your values as a gift, not as a weapon – which neutralizes their moral content
A friend reminded me of Jonathan Hiadt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which explores the reality that we make most decisions with our gut – justifying them with intellect and reason – like an elephant driver who decides to go wherever the elephant wants to go.
Finally, I am on the waitlist for a NYT-reviewed book titled Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason by William Davies. Here are the final paragraphs of the review:
Remember the more you know about the treatment of the condition even though there are so many men around the globe who tend to face this problem. cialis super viagra uk levitra Jelly and soft tabs are available in many delicious flavors including mint, strawberry, orange, vanilla etc. Sildenafil boosts blood flow into the order cialis pills penis by smoothing the skin and fighting wrinkles that sneak up on a man as he ages. levitra online no prescription Men are the main victims, if compared with the treatments provided with other medicinal drugs.Rather than issue high-handed proclamations, what we need now, Davies says, is something more humble, and admittedly more scary. “The political task is to feel our way toward less paranoid means of connecting with one another,” he writes, aware that this sounds like an impossible project at a time when everybody feels aggrieved and nobody feels safe. Suffering is real; but in this increasingly unequal and ecologically besieged world, vulnerability is also something that more and more people share.
After all, as Davies puts it, “If those committed to peace are not prepared to do this work of excavation, then those committed to conflict will happily do so instead.”
Love, respect, and vulnerability. We’re supposed to know about those values in the church. Perhaps we (and I) can practice them.
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