Description
Product Description
A guide to learning how to communicate with people who have diametrically opposed opinions from you, how to empathize with them, and how to (possibly) change their minds
America is more polarized than ever. Whether the issue is Donald Trump, healthcare, abortion, gun control, breastfeeding, or even DC vs Marvel, it feels like you can't voice an opinion without ruffling someone's feathers. In today's digital age, it's easier than ever to build walls around yourself. You fill up your Twitter feed with voices that are angry about the same issues and believe as you believe. Before long, you're isolated in your own personalized echo chamber. And if you ever encounter someone outside of your bubble, you don't understand how the arguments that resonate so well with your peers can't get through to anyone else. In a time when every conversation quickly becomes a battlefield, it's up to us to learn how to talk to each other again.
In
Talking Across the Divide, social justice activist Justin Lee explains how to break through the five key barriers that make people resist differing opinions. With a combination of psychological research, pop-culture references, and anecdotes from Justin's many years of experience mediating contentious conversations, this book will help you understand people on the other side of the argument and give you the tools you need to change their minds--even if they've fallen for "fake news."
About the Author
Justin Lee has spent more than twenty years building bridges between conservatives and progressives on matters of faith and public policy. He is the founder of the world’s largest LGBT Christian advocacy organization and the author of
Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate. Learn more at geekyjustin.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Echo-Chamber World
Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can notremove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wallbetween them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence andbeyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can notdo this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicableor hostile, must continue between them.
—Abraham Lincoln, 18611
We are a nation divided.
Turn on the TV or hop online, and it doesn’t take long tosee evidence of our polarized mentalities. We disagree on race and religion, onscience and social issues—but we don’t just disagree; we’re baffled by eachother’s views, and we have no idea how to get through to one another. Partisanbickering has created a gridlocked government that struggles to get even widelysupported things done. Important scientific research is being stalled bycompeting groups’ agendas. Culture wars are fracturing our families and tearingour communities apart.
“It’s like we live on different planets,” my friend Ryansaid to me the other day.
He was talking about a rift between him and members ofhis family. They’d been close at one time, he told me. But in recent years,they’d found themselves more and more often on opposite sides of culturalbattles. They were bitterly divided by national politics, by matters of faithand morality, and by shifting cultural views on a variety of issues.
Ryan wanted to be able to sit down with his family andtalk through their differences—to help them understand where he was coming fromand to hopefully change their attitudes on the issues that mattered most tohim. But every time he tried talking to them, he just wound up frustrated.Their views didn’t make any sense to him, his didn’t make any sense to them,and every conversation seemed to wind up in an argument. Their communicationwas breaking down somewhere, and the rift between them was widening into anuncrossable chasm. Ryan had eventually fallen into the habit of swallowing hisemotions and trying to “make nice” at family events, but it was eating away athi