John and I were discussing the upcoming debates tonight. John was saying how he was hoping to hear someone take the “high ground.” I asked him how the high ground would sound to him. He replied, “It would start out, ‘I have a dream….’”
I did think of Martin Luther King, Jr, of course, but also a brilliant, soulful guy named Parker Palmer who wrote Healing the Heart of Democracy. The book came out in 2011 and in it, as I recall, Palmer was extolling the brilliance of our American democratic tripartite system…how it held us together in tension. That sounds nutty but the idea is that the structure allows us to debate and discuss ideas, see problems from different angles, and continue weaving solutions together.
Everything falls apart, however, according to Palmer, when we can no longer honestly and respectfully speak and listen to our neighbors and keep the well-being of both the individual and the collective in our minds and hearts. Our well-being is interconnected is how I paraphrase it. In his book, Parker recalls the young Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote a couple of highly influential volumes about democracy in America in which he remarks on the habits of Americans and that they seemed to be exactly what is needed to make the brilliant American political structure work.
I don’t have an exact quote; de Tocqueville clearly was dumbfounded in a good way by how Americans got together in community and all sorts of associations and …solved problems together for the “common good” (don’t hear that phrase much anymore)…just did whatever needed to be done without chopping anyone’s head off (perhaps he was remembering the French Revolution).
I guess I was lucky that I had parents who disagreed. Disagreement doesn’t scare me. In fact, I see the value in hearing different perspectives. My very favorite fable is the tale of The Blind Men and the Elephant where each has a vocal opinion of what an elephant is like but is limited by which part of the elephant they touch.
Monica Guzman in her book, I Never Thought of It That Way, uses a perfect phrase for me – we all “see through our autobiography.” Our perspectives are limited by what we have experienced in our own lives. Then Guzman encourages us to have adventures by having curious conversations with each other. Guzman is a journalist and a speaker and writer for the organization called Braver Angels which seeks to bridge the political divide by having meaningful, respectful, passionate, honest, authentic, accurate conversations. I’m a member as well.
Last week, I did a facilitation with a group in a town near us. One of the women said, “I want to have conversations with others, but every time I’ve tried, I get attacked. I’ve stopped trying.”
The Braver Angel approach is to first depolarize ourselves. Recognize the ways we dismiss, stereotype, ridicule, and have contempt for others. Those “four horsemen of polarization” don’t work for any conversation or any relationship.
Healing the heart of democracy in my mind is about healing our relationships - caring about each other and believing in each other. Understanding that solutions to complex problems takes us all putting our heads and hearts together and considering both the individual and the common good. And just being skilled in how we discuss our perspectives and listen to others is huge. If we could stop the stereotyping and especially the contempt, we'd be taking a giant leap toward what John and I consider the biggest problem in America...having the courage and expertise and will to bridge our divide.
I’m convinced that we can do this and do it well in our relationships. It wasn’t just seeing my parents work though things, but also several other experiences I’ve had that convince me when so many seem to think it’s a hopeless ideal.
Here’s one of my most powerful experiences. We were a group of four teachers assigned to come up with a common curriculum that we all were proud of which met all the necessary standards and one that we honestly felt could make a significant difference in the lives and learning of all of our students. This was several decades ago, but I remember it well.
The first few days were rough. Our ideas were different. We each felt that we knew quite a bit. I had a doctorate in education, another was a specialist, another was young and bright, and another had taught successfully for years. We each had a different angle. And we were quite opinionated.
Luckily, we respected each other and …eventually after many heated discussions with all of us bringing our own sources of evidence and passion to bear, we had a breakthrough and were able to put our ideas together. We were on cloud nine after that. We all loved what we created, and I think our students did as well.
Many years later, I worked with young leaders from the U.S. and Canada for four summers. They were tasked each summer with coming up with a team solution to a difficult problem. This is what I learned from those experiences.
The teams that listened to each other, that respected the different perspectives ALWAYS created the best solution regardless of who was on the team. Each year, as I watched incredible young people come in with amazing resumes and expertise, I thought that perhaps it would go differently for the teams this year because this or that person had a very important skill or background knowledge which could be brought to bear on the problem they were facing. But no. I never saw it happen that way. The best teams, the ones with the best solutions, were always the ones with the ability to work authentically, passionately, and respectfully with each other.
Though I won’t go into the research from MIT on teams right now (in a later blog), their work seems to support the idea that good teams and building collective intelligence happens through successfully listening, seeing things from different perspectives, and being able to work through problems together.
I have a dream about what we will hear tonight, “We Americans can rise up and live up to our creeds, that every valley can be exalted, that we can work together, we can listen to each other, we can value each other, and we CAN solve our problems together.”
Okay, I’m not the orator that King was by a long shot, but you get the idea. We could be on cloud 9 together if we could do this.
That’s the high road I’m hoping to hear in the debate tonight. That is what I think will heal the heart of democracy and amaze the world as it did de Tocqueville in the 1830’s.
How might we journey together to the Good Life by healing the heart of democracy by listening to each other, disagreeing well, and finding solutions together?
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