In these polarized times, is dialogue a quaint throw-back to a less reactive era? Is it a cowardly way for moderates to stay above the fray, to prioritize niceness over justice?
An acquaintance on social media told me recently that she thinks dialogue with me would be useless, that while it might have been fruitful at one time, it now seems futile. She said that it is boring because we all know where we all come down and dialogue would accomplish very little.
She might be right.
And yet, I keep holding out hope that dialogue – real conversation with talking and listening and curiosity and care – has real value, even in these disturbing times. How do I explain or defend this hope? Here are just three reasons (with a bonus at the end):
Dialogue is where we find our overlap.
When conflict is raging and we are sorting ourselves into “us” and “them,” it’s hard for us to see the places where we agree. Shared ground seems to shrink until we start to feel like “they” are nothing like us, don’t want any of the things we want, have nothing to offer us.
But dialogue shows the lie of that. Studies repeatedly show that people whose positions are diametrically opposed to each other actually share more in common than they differ.
But how can we know that if we’re not talking?
Dialogue is where we show our work.
It’s not so much that my arguments will change your mind but that my arguments will make me better. When I’m talking with people who agree with me, I can be sloppy, hiding behind shared prejudices or misinformation.
But when I’m engaging in genuine dialogue and my own positions are under scrutiny, I have to let go of lazy thinking and sketchy assumptions. I have to test my thinking against someone else’s and let go of the parts that don’t work.
Dialogue is where we beat the algorithms.
The algorithms exist so that very rich people can make money by making us outraged and suspicious. If they can keep us clicking – but not actually fact-checking or thinking – they get richer and we get more and more divided. Dialogue is an analog way to beat the system and free ourselves from the hold that manufactured anxiety has over us. Who knew that a simple conversation could be so subversive?
And then there’s one more: We can’t learn from the conversations we don’t have.
That’s enough for me.
[I’m not naive. Real dialogue involves more than just good intentions. Watch this space.]
