Draft Four: Us against them
Nuance and conversation in our tribal world.
My goal is to bore you, my friend and mentor Jacqui Banaszynski said as we headed into the Cascade mountains to her beautiful cabin. Jacqui is a Pulitzer Prize winning feature writer, an editor, and a teacher to thousands of journalists, including many in Romania, where she’s been visiting for many years. What she meant by “boring me” is this: we’d be in a cabin in the woods, surrounded by trees and birdsong, a place with little to do except walk, read, write, eat, and play games. She also wanted me to unplug – not just from city life, but from the rhythm of to do lists and chores I’d been living on for ages.
I love to be bored like this, though.
Her cabin, as I told her when we arrived, is meant for reading – especially the recliner by the fireplace. It’s so quiet, you can hear yourself think. A running and biking trail snakes behind the house for further retreat into the quiet. And we have long afternoons and dinners where we talk about everything, from writing, to local taxes, to world affairs.
For the past week I’ve had a few afternoons and evenings like this – first with my cousin and her family in Vancouver, then with Jacqui in Seattle, now out here in the Methow Valley. During one of them, over cheese, crackers and wine, I met journalist and changemaker Mónica Guzmán, whose book I Never Thought of it That Way I really enjoyed. It’s a book about bridging divides, and, in it, Mónica writes a lot about conversation and its power of connection. (“If two people are talking, they are in a relationship that has the potential to grow deeper. Always.”)
We should create more space for conversations that allow for “boredom”, more space for the messy fits and starts of hanging out, because they might help us find our way to others, and to their complexity. They can be an antidote to the ruthlessness with which how we judge and sort people today, often without meeting them. One social media post you disliked? Out. One wayward opinion that doesn’t match your own? Out. One inkling that someone might consume a cultural product you have doubts about? Out.
This is part of the impetus that got Mónica to write the book. She saw divisions grow exponentially, and people turning away from each other – especially because of politics. Then, she learned that her parents, Mexican immigrants to the US, voted for Donald Trump. And while she didn’t agree with their decision, she also didn’t want to distance herself from them, which is what many of her peers did.
Sure, her parents were susceptible to misinformation and propaganda, but Mónica also understood there was something deeper at work, and she’s read enough research to know preaching and fact-checking wouldn’t change their mind. Remember: facts alone rarely (if ever) change one’s mind, and most attempts at persuading others to consume or vote differently fail.
It’s a hard lesson we must learn. But if we can’t aim for persuasion, we can still aim for understanding.
Being curios and open and empathetic is not easy, especially when so much of our identity is caught up in what’s right or what we consider to be the acceptable norm or who is the right voice to listen to. When any these are contradicted, we exclude.
“We get together into groups”, writes Mónica. “We’ll call this sorting. We push off against groups that seem opposed to us. We’ll call this othering. We sink deeper into our groups and our stories, where it’s harder to hear anything else. We’ll call this siloing.”
Where do you think that leads? Into a safer place, maybe. But also a lonelier one. Or, at worst, one where little that doesn’t adhere to our beliefs gets through.
When is the last time you’ve heard opinions different from your own?
When is the last time you tried to understand and not persuade?
When is the last time you aimed for nuance and complexity?
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Nuance and complexity suck because they don’t provide black and white answers. We want to know we’re right and others are wrong, yet life denies easy categorization, which is why it’s becoming more and more comfortable to cut people off, or call them toxic, or block them outright on social media. (Yes, do stay away from ill-meaning trolls and provocateurs; I’m not talking here about people who actively enjoy hurting others or stirring up conflict).
Is there another way?
When you have some time, listen to these episodes (one, two) of Amanda Ripley’s How To! podcast. Amanda is someone I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter, because her book on how we end up in “high conflict” (which never leads to progress) and how we can get out is important to me. Her guests on these episodes are Mónica, as the expert voice coaching a conversation, Jenn Brandel, whose work on community engagement and healing systems I’ve also mentioned here, and Jenn’s brother.
What they are trying to solve is a problem many of us are familiar with: a parent who sends inflammatory political chain emails, or forwards dubious messages and links with no context, sometimes hinting at being a victim of a culture that silences them. In Jenn’s case, these were messages sent by her Dad about immigration threatening America, about political correctness denying his freedom, and so on.
She and her brother were upset by many of these messages, especially since it was never quite clear what part of them he believed in. When they engaged their father about them, it turned into a debate (OK, a fight), which no one enjoyed. Of course, nobody changed their mind.
They also didn’t want to push their father away, which is how they ended up with Amanda and Mónica coaching them through a conversation with him that aimed for listening and understanding. Connection, not fact-checking. They advised the siblings to get personal (ask “how” questions, not “why” questions), drop the labels (such as “conversative” vs. “liberal”), and stay curios. In the second episode, we hear the resulting conversation between the siblings and their dad. Some of it is cringe, some of it magical. It didn’t change anyone’s mind (you knew that already), but it did flow differently, and it helped everyone uncover biases and fears. It also took a few hours, because TikTok takes are one thing, the human mess is another.
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Another book I read this week that tackles the human mess is Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, by Claire Dederer. What Dederer is attempting is even more complicated than a plea for conversation and curiosity: looking at the works of monstrous men (because they are almost always men – think Pablo Picasso, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Kanye West etc.) and asking whether she can still love the art, while also hating the artist.
Spoiler: kinda. But it’s not the answer, but the journey of the book that is the real treat.
Dederer, like many of us, embarks on this ride hoping to find a dispassionate and “objective” stance, akin to the distance of the New Critics, who believed you have to separate the work from the biography. It leads nowhere and, she concludes, quoting poet William Empson that “life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis”.
If I were writing an honest autobiography of the audience, I mean the audience of the work of monstrous men – that autobiography would need to balance these two elements: the greatness of the work and the terribleness of the crime. I wished someone would invent an online calculator the user would enter the name of an artist, whereupon the calculator would assess the heinousness of the crime versus the greatness of the art and spit out a verdict: you could or could not consume the work of this artist.
But it doesn’t work like that – not for Dederer. She, the critic, doesn’t believe an objective stance can be achieved. She brings all her baggage to the interpretation, and so do we. (Insisting on “objectivity” or “a feelings-free” interpretation is also baggage, maybe even a sign of the privilege you might have had that allowed you to observe from the sidelines. Plus, it’s usually men who demand “objectivity”.)
The subjective though, is itself hyper-charged in our digital age. “We live in a biographical moment”, Dederer says, “and if you look hard enough at anyone, you can probably find at least a little stain.” Fandom and consumption – remember: we invented terms like micro or niche influencers – is based on knowing the biography. The biography, for many, determines the reading, which determines the decision: in the club, or out. “Everyone who has a biography that is, everyone alive is either canceled or about to be canceled.”
We are all judging each other, or, as a more honest writer would say: that means I am judging you, and you are judging me.
To state the obvious: Dederer isn’t making excuses for her subjects’ behavior. But she also refuses to let their crimes, mistakes or moral failings determine her relationship to work that has shaped her. Polanski raped a teenager. His films shaped her as a critic. Woody Allen married his step-daughter. Annie Hall is a tremendous film. (Manhattan is downright creepy).
“This tension between what I've been through as a woman and the fact that I want to experience the freedom and beauty and grandeur and strangeness of great art this is at the heart of the matter. It’s not a philosophical query; it’s an emotional one.”
It’s an emotional one. This is why I love the book. We live in an age where my truth – my political truth, the truth of my choices about how I work, parent, shop, consume – needs to become everyone’s truth, so I feel justified and safe in my choices. But these are not “objective truths”, they are emotional truths, based on life experience, choices and values.
They might align with yours, but what if they clash?
This why I largely stopped posting on social media. I also want to belong, I want to have others help me think about complicated issues, yet social media is the enemy of conversation and nuance (it’s calibrated precisely to amplify outrage). Since I’m not interested in converting others to my emotional truths, I don’t want to be on there for endless fights that usually just fuel the conflict. These letters are better – I feel I’m thinking aloud, but I’m not writing to persuade, and I don’t feel you’re reading just to judge.
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“This impulse to blame the other guy is in fact a political impulse”, Dederer writes. “Us against them. The morally correct people against the immoral ones. The process of making someone else wrong so that we may be more right.”
This will only lead to more division, less nuance, and little curiosity. It might lead us away from people we care about, or make us turn against music or books or music that shaped us. We can certainly make the choice to do so, but we must remember that it’s most often an individual choice, not a universal truth. There is no computer that says this person, this piece of art, this opinion, is something to turn away from. Dederer:
In other words: There is not some correct answer. You are not responsible for finding it. Your feeling of responsibility is a shibboleth, a reinforcement of your tragically limited role as a consumer. There is no authority and there should be no authority. You are off the hook. You are inconsistent. You do not need to have a grand unified theory about what to do about Michael Jackson. You are a hypocrite, over and over. You love Annie Hall but you can barely stand to look at a painting by Picasso. You are not responsible for solving this unreconciled contradiction. In fact, you will solve nothing by means of your consumption; the idea that you can is a dead end.
The way you consume art doesn't make you a bad person, or a good one. You'll have to find some other way to accomplish that.
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These weeks of travel have reminded me that I feel at my best when I’m curious about others. When I allow for conversations to wander. When I make boredom my friend, when I put the phone away so it’s not a selfish crutch for the moments when life stops revolving around me. When I can sit and ask: “How did you come to believe in this / be this / do this?”. When I can avoid judgement. When I can squint to see a way forward that encompasses many viewpoints.
“No us can see a them clearly without opening our eyes wider than we’re used to and building bridges to span divides we fear are too big to cross”, Mónica Guzmán writes. And yes, often the building of bridges idea is naïve. Occasionally, it’s patronizing, especially when you demand oppressed groups to be the builders. But at other times, as I’ve seen even in journalism, it can work and lead to something magical.
Because it’s not about building bridges so others can cross to your side. The bridge doesn’t exist just to be crossed, Mónica says. It’s more important that it’s maintained “so that one day, when someone who’s been nervous is ready, it can hold their weight, carry their truth, and expand their world.”
SIDE DISHES:
Important (and obvious) coda to the above. My biography influences what I pay attention to, and how I look at the world. Here’s some of that: I believe in institutions, I believe in people coming together, I believe in reform more than I believe in revolution, I believe in social democratic constructions, I believe I never know enough, and know that I always need to be surrounded by voices or ideas that challenge my own. I also believe it’s OK for others to tell me to step aside, so they can take their turn to speak, as my group has held the microphone enough. That might feel uncomfortable, but it’s not “cancelling” or “not being allowed to speak”; it’s just equity at work. Also, if you’re interested in the reform vs. revolution debate in politics, click for a great conversation.
This essay on nuance by Meghan Daum is uncomfortable in many ways, but it also shows the difficulty of thinking independently in an age of tribalism. (“Just as you can’t fight Trumpism with tribalism, you can’t fight tribalism with a tribe. Nor, I’ve come to realize, can I count on nuance in the public discourse to save me from the confusion inside my head.”)
If you believe in conversion and complexity, then maybe you care about gatherings done well and with purpose. The Art of Gathering, by Priya Parker, is a gem for anyone planning any event, from a birthday party, to a conference. Start with this: what’s the purpose of your gathering? Why are we celebrating this birthday? Why are we organizing this conference?
Jacqui gave me a starring role in her most recent weekly Storyboard newsletter, which you should subscribe to for great writing advice. Here are some of Jacqui’s reminders which apply to the way I write these letters:
Good writing sometimes requires not-so-good writing.
Deadline is your friend. When deadline hits, hit the SEND button.
When you get in a rut, only the work can pull you out of it.
PS: I’ve been thinking about how I could meet some of you reading this newsletter. What kinds of gathering you’d feel safe attending – is it a dinner, is it a book club-type discussion, is it drinks or coffee? Something else? Would you rather come to listen, or to engage? What would lower the anxiety of meeting strangers? While I tinker with ideas, feel free to reply and describe the ideal scenario in which you’d spend a couple of hours – in a state of curiosity and vulnerability – with people you might not know.
This newsletter meant so much to me.
Right before reading it, I had a conversation with a friend about politics and social stratification that made me quite uncomfortable. As I was explaining "my" views, I was gradually realising the biased beliefs that gave substance to the debate, while also feeling unable to solve any "bigger" problem. I wish to have better conversations in the future, and I think Mónica's book will be a good starting point to achieve that.
I'd love to test my listening abilities in any sort of gathering. Virtually anytime, or in Bucharest July-September.
Book club meeting ar fi grozav pt mine; nu am anxietatea de a cunoaste oameni noi; probabil niste exercitii/jocuri scurte de spart gheata ar fi utile. Succes in tot ce iti propui!