Street muralin the Barranco neighborhood of Lima, Perú
Earlier this month, I traveled to Lima, Perú. I wrote about it in last week’s newsletter on unity through difference:
At midweek, we were fortunate to go on a tour of Lima’s Historic Centre with workshop participants. We walked through the expansive plaza at the heart of Lima while looking at the beautiful colonial-era buildings surrounding it and the Andean foothills beyond. When we entered Lima’s stunning cathedral, I was handed a little card with a short prayer of unity on it. As I read it something immediately felt wrong. Classical music was gently playing in the background of this nearly 500-year-old cathedral and I sat down on a pew to take it all in. After a while I realized that I didn’t like how the prayer advocated for unity through “sameness” or “oneness.” If we somehow were to achieve unity through “sameness,” life would be reduced to something far less that it actually is. It reminded me of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on the dangers of a single story, where she encourages us to see the multiple layers of people and cultures, and to fight powers that would seek to silence them. Some would argue that the silencing is already taking place. It’s why I’m appreciative of people like Kendrick Lamar, who publicly give voice to a counter narrative, both directly and symbolically. If we’re ever going to get to a place of unity, we have to do so through accepting and embracing “difference.”
This week, I started reading Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. In the book, Solnit calls for continuous hope and action. And she makes an important point about the past—be it good or horrible—and how it relates to hope:
We can tell of a past that was nothing but defeats and cruelties and injustices, or of a past that was some lovely golden age now irretrievably lost, or we can tell a more complicated and accurate story, one that has room for the best and worst, for atrocities and liberations, for grief and jubilation. A memory commensurate to the complexity of the past and the whole cast of participants, a memory that includes our power, produces that forward-directed energy called hope.
I’m encouraged by this—to be fueled by hope as I lean forward into action. In my newsletter, I wrote about other “untold” or, perhaps, “forgotten” histories of Perú that you can read about here.
Pine trees in our Wisconsin backyard under the Northern Lights (May, 2024)
Right after the presidential election last November, I wrote about having more empathy for one another. In the post, I suggested “suspending judgement” when it comes to interacting with someone who believes differently than you.
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding a lot of people who think differently than me. I see them online, in my local community, and in different parts of the world—each with their unique experience and perspective. More often than not, the interactions I observe in these spaces are pretty negative and nonconstructive.
This past week, I was thinking about how to navigate different perspectives while also keeping my sanity. For sure, there’s a time when it’s better to disengage from it all—or, as Austin Kleon would describe it, to plant your garden. But then there’s a time to engage with it and to listen. Rick Rubin writes about this in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being:
We often take shortcuts without knowing it. When listening, we tend to skip forward and generalize the speaker’s overall message. We miss the subtleties of the point, if not the entire premise. In addition to the assumption that we are saving time, this shortcut also avoids the discomfort of challenging our prevailing stories. And our worldview continues to shrink.
So many of today’s problems are the result of people avoiding the good friction that is produced from engaging in discussions that expand our worldview. Rubin’s comments reminded me of an old friend I had in grad school. Whenever I talked with Peter, I could tell that he was listening to me so authentically hard—not in the “active listening” sense, but more of a completely-and-silently-focused sense—that I always felt challenged to really pay attention to what I was saying, in a good way, to make sure it all added up. I had to clearly express myself and I knew if I didn’t, I’d be met with a thoughtful follow-up question because Peter truly wanted to understand my perspective.
Like many, I loved Ted Lasso. One of my favorite scenes from the series is when Ted takes on Rupert in a game of darts to prevent him from tormenting Rebecca in the owner’s box. Before sealing his victory with three extremely difficult shots, Ted calls out Rupert’s air of superiority and invites him to be more curious.
In the clip, Ted quotes Walt Whitman: “Be curious, not judgmental.” While it turns out Whitman didn’t actually say this, the message rings true. Curiosity is valuable. It’s a perspective and orientation toward life that grows your worldview.
In his book Show Your Work, Austin Kleon quotes some thoughts that C.S. Lewis penned for his introduction to Reflections on the Psalms (1958). Here’s Lewis:
I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself. It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. When you took the problem to the master, either he was so fluent in the whole subject that he could not understand the difficulty, or he had forgotten what it was like to be puzzled by it. The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten.
As a teacher, I love this quote. I love that teaching is a reflective practice. You’re always a student of the profession, even as you become a seasoned professional. It’s a dynamic job that you can always build upon. You never arrive, which can be frustrating at times, but in the end I think is what makes it such a worthwhile pursuit. Teachers inspire curiosity and the good ones continue to be curious themselves.
Our experience is valuable but how does it compare to a beginner’s mindset? What limiting beliefs have emerged as a result of our self-confidence in our abilities and our experiences?
As it were, the very next chapter I read in Rubin’s book was entitled “Beginner’s Mindset.” In the chapter, he tells a story about the board game Go, which is said to be around 4,000 year old.
Go is one of the most complex games ever created by humans. There are more possible board configurations in Go than there are atoms in the universe. Back in 2014, the artificial intelligence research company DeepMind started development on an AI system that would be capable of solving complex problems. They called it AlphaGo and intended it to take on the best Go players in the world. But the way they designed AlphaGo to learn the game was unique. DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis described it like this:
Traditional games engines comprise thousands of rules handcrafted by strong human players that try to account for every eventuality in a game. The final version of AlphaGo does not use any rules. Instead it learns the game from scratch by playing against different versions of itself thousands of times, incrementally learning through a process of trial and error, known as reinforcement learning. This means it is free to learn the game for itself, unconstrained by orthodox thinking.
Two years later, AlphaGo had taught itself enough to take on legendary Go player Lee Sedol. More than 200 million people from around the world tuned in for the televised event. During the game, AlphaGo made a series of unconventional moves, which culminated in move 37, a completely unique and creative move that no human professional would ever have made. Professional Go player Fan Hui said the follow of move 37:
Move 37 goes against all conventional teaching and no experienced human player would ever have played it. In fact, we know from AlphaGo’s calculations there was just a one in ten thousand chance of a player selecting that move. It was a moment of inspiration that came from its unique approach to the game. Unlike the way I — and all other human players — approach Go, its decisions are unencumbered by the tradition, theory, and teaching of human play. Instead, it learns the game for itself, giving it the opportunity for fresh thinking and leading to a unique ‘free spirited’ style which in turn has unshackled human players from tradition and allowed us to also think differently about the game.
AlphaGo’s success speaks to the power of a beginner’s mindset that isn’t limited by culture, tradition, or experience. It’s a fascinating story, which you can read more about on this Google Arts & Culture page. There’s also a documentary about it that’s available for free streaming here.
Rubin concludes with this about the AlphaGo story:
There’s a great power in not knowing. When faced with a challenging task, we may tell ourselves it’s too difficult, it’s not worth the effort, it’s not the way things are done, it’s not likely to work, or it’s not likely to work for us. If we approach a task with ignorance, it can remove the barricade of knowledge blocking progress. Curiously, not being aware of a challenge may be just what we need to rise to it.
Jason Kottke references this too, in a post called “Ignorance and the curious idiot.” Bringing it back to Ted Lasso, Kottke writes about how the creative team initially came up with the idea for the show—they wondered, “What if we did a show where the main character was an ignorant guy who was actually curious?” Kottke goes on to link curiosity with paying attention, and paying attention with love.
I like the idea of emptying ourselves so we can learn, of seeking simplicity in the midst of life’s complexities, and of paying attention as a form of love. I like remaining curious, suspending judgment, and having a beginner’s mindset.
In the end, there’s so much we don’t know and that’s okay. Maybe it’s enough not to know. And maybe it’s better to know that much than to think we know more than we actually do. One of my favorite songs from the Canadian band The Sadies is “Why Be So Curious?” I think it’s a good and peaceful place to wrap this up. The lyrics go like this:
Feelin’ me the sun, glow so big and warm upon everyone Be the tallest tree, grow as rain falls down upon everyone Look at the clouds and the stars as they glow Why be so curious when nobody knows… The truth
Hear the birds all sing, the most beautiful things hear what they sing Feel the love you feel, don’t poison the well with worry and fear Look to the simple and be like the snow Why be so curious when nobody knows… The truth
Watch the river flow, as you get right in and feel the love flow Move along the way, float with care and ease off to the seas
Look at your fingers and look at your toes Why be so curious when nobody knows? Nobody knows… The truth
Anyone can see that we are living in a politically divided country—so divided, in fact, that it often feels like we inhabit two alternate realities. As each side gets more and more entrenched in its own camp, I wonder how we will find a way forward. Can the United States of America become united once more? Was it ever?
I used to teach US government to adult immigrants and refugees who were learning English while studying to earn their high school equivalency degree. It was a fun subject to teach because there were so many visual representations of government that I could incorporate into the class to support concepts and reduce language demands. I remember showing them a basic diagram of the political spectrum, much like this one:
The US government, I would explain, is made up of two primary parties that are both needed to keep us somewhere in the center of the spectrum—the sweet spot. If you swing too far left or too far right, bad things happen. I’ve seen variations of the political spectrum, for example, that label the center as “life” and either end as “death,” or the center as “freedom” and either end as “oppression.” I wanted my students to understand that democracy in the US depended on both parties working together in an ongoing cycle of give and take. While each side of the spectrum—left and right—represents a separate ideology and offers a different vision of how government should be enacted, both balance each other out in an effort to solve problems common to all of us. I would talk about how our founders developed a pretty incredible system and my students were eager to learn about it.
Today, it seems that our system is in the danger zone. We are increasingly more polarized and less prone to engage in productive civic discourse with those on the other side of the spectrum. While technology has given us an incredible amount of access to information and connects us to different parts of the globe, it has also made us more isolated and insular in our worldview, susceptible to the algorithms and echo chambers that prevent us from engaging with diverse perspectives. The very nature of our virtual discourse can distance us from those personal interactions that allow us to truly understand someone else’s story. What’s more is that truth is constantly being undermined through the spreading of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, to which greater portions of our population are falling victim.
It’s difficult to find the space to genuinely listen to each other in the midst of so much noise. We often discuss the right to free speech, but in an article on the right to listen, author Astra Taylor writes:
We’ve been slow to see that, if democracy is to function well, listening must also be supported and defended—especially at a moment when technological developments are making meaningful listening harder.
Whenever I struggle to find my place or direction in life (or become disillusioned by politics), I find it’s best to simplify—to cut out the distractions and narrow in on the basics. Like with my students, visuals can help. Here’s a more detailed view of the US political spectrum:
I like this visual because one of the first things you notice is the many ways in which the left and right preserve a balance in our government. The left, for example, looks to the future, while the right looks to the past. If I remove myself, for a moment, from my own political beliefs on specific issues, I can see how each orientation might be useful in certain situations. It makes sense. I think this idea of momentarily “stepping out” of your belief system is important.
In his TED Talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, psychologist Jonathan Haidt proposes the idea that we are not born with a blank moral slate. Rather, we each possess five foundations that make up the “first draft” of our moral mind. Liberals and conservatives modify these first drafts in different ways as they experience life and go on to develop divergent manifestations of these same moral ingredients, illustrated here:
Liberals value care and fairness above all else while challenging the foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Conservatives, on the other hand, value all five foundations, but more so authority, sanctity, and loyalty, at the expense of the others. To have a healthy and stable world, Haidt argues, we need them both—the change towards a more just society that liberals seek to obtain and the stability of our establishments that conservatives seek to preserve. But he highlights a problem—our moral values unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth. In other words, the value system we develop predisposes us towards division, a fact that our current use of technology is only exacerbating.
To overcome this division, Haidt proposes moral humility—the ability to suspend judgement and extend empathy towards those who are outside of our group. He refers to it as “stepping out of the moral matrix.”
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worse disease.
This is no easy task. We all have things we are for or against, and many of us will defend or reject them passionately. Opening ourselves up to hear another perspective is an act of moral humility that combats the pride that blinds us. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C.S. Lewis is talking about a top-down positionality between God and humanity. We might also apply this idea to left-right positionality between liberals and conservatives. Just as the proud individual is blinded to the God above them, so might the proud liberal be blinded to the conservative on the right, or the proud conservative to the liberal on the left.
I think part of the solution lies in turning towards one another—in opening our eyes and seeing each other. In doing so, we might find a common ground to stand on. Any time I have overcome a blindspot in my life, it has been through getting proximal to the person I was blinded to and learning from their experience. We cannot show someone empathy if we do not see them.
In the video below, Brené Brown eloquently explains the process of extending empathy to others. She talks about the impact empathy has on those who are struggling as we come alongside them and identify with their struggle. It’s interesting to view this video with a political lens. How can we come alongside someone from an opposing political perspective who is simply looking for the government to help resolve an issue they observe, be it personal or societal? Maybe it’s the same issue we ourselves care about.
The effects of entering these personal spaces in a tangible manner are indeed powerful. This past summer, a group of students from the University of Pennsylvania participated in a traveling Political Empathy Lab (PEL) that put their empathy skills into practice through connecting across political difference. The students themselves represented diverse political leanings and the mutual understanding they cultivated with folks leaning opposite of them reveals the impact of empathy:
Research shows that people’s attitudes towards the opposite political party gets better if they perceive they are being genuinely listened to by a member of the other party.
One student discusses three important aspects of relating to others—belief, behavior, and belonging. Typically, if a group of people share a belief, they will also share a sense of belonging. In the absence of a shared belief, however, you can instead focus on your behavior to create a sense of belonging. The Political Empathy Lab showed that behaving in an empathetic way can foster a sense of belonging across differing political beliefs.
Showing someone empathy may even go so far as to persuade them. In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini writes about the reciprocity principle, which states that if someone receives a gift from someone else, it is human nature for the person receiving the gift to feel an obligation to repay the person who gave it to them. He goes on to describe many areas of life where this principle applies, including politics. Cialdini provides a great example of how Lyndon Johnson used the reciprocity principle to effectively gain support across party lines during his presidency. He writes:
Political experts were amazed at Lyndon Johnson’s success in getting so many of his programs through Congress during his early administration; even members of Congress who were thought to be strongly opposed to the programs were voting for them. Close examination by analysts, such as Robert Caro in his influential biography of Johnson (Caro, 2012), has found the cause to be not so much Johnson’s political savvy as the large score of favors he had been able to provide to other legislators during his many years of power in the US House and Senate. As president, he was able to produce a truly remarkable amount of legislation in a short time by calling in those favors. It is interesting that this same process may account for the problems some subsequent presidents—Carter, Clinton, Obama, Trump—had in getting their programs through Congress. They came to the presidency from outside the Capitol Hill establishment and campaigned on their outside-Washington identities, saying that they were indebted to no one in Washington. Much of their early legislative difficulties may be traced to the fact that no one there was indebted to them.
I would wager that extending political empathy to our adversaries could do the same—showing empathy to someone and receiving it right back as a response. Living in a world with more empathy would not be that bad.
In fact, I recently learned about the Apple TV+ series Dark Matter, inspired by the book of the same name, which involves the main character entering a black box that contains doors to alternate realities. An opinion piece on media literacy and empathy describes one of the episodes from the series:
During one episode, he opens a door to find an idyllic world. People are living in harmony, technology is highly advanced and problems like poverty, war and pollution seem to have been solved. When he asks a person living in that reality how all this was accomplished, she lists three concepts: people agreeing on basic facts, committing to use technology in a way that does not destroy the environment or humanity, and valuing empathy.
We obviously have many problems facing our nation, and there are many avenues available for us to fight our way forward toward a better day. Yet I would suggest, as I did to my US government students way back when, that cooperating with one another is another avenue, one that we are taking less and less as our elected leaders and We the People become more divided.
I think we are misguided if we paint any one group as being composed of the same individuals. As with any group, there’s a great deal of variation. I can step outside of my moral matrix, as hard as it is, to know that there are good people who voted for Trump—family members, coworkers, neighbors, community members. There are people within my circle and outside of my political camp to whom I should try and show empathy, even as I should join the fight to stand up for those who will be negatively impacted by extreme right-wing policies. It seems a contradiction, but that’s what makes our system work. It’s the contradiction of the US system. We fight and we cooperate. If we remembered this, maybe we’d get more done, maybe we’d come back to the center, and maybe we’d find the balance that we all need.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wenninger is an educator and writer. He teaches language and culture and writes about his thoughts and experiences here.
