It's time to talk: On politics and other difficult conversations

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I read an article this week by someone I've loosely followed for a few years. I've liked a few of his pieces, but (at least until this particular article) never had strong opinions about his work.

The gist: he doesn't believe disagreements over politics should lead to strain within relationships, that relationships and family should come before politics.

Really? Always?

But what about your values?

What if your family are a bunch of racist bigots?

What if your family support policies that put your health in jeopardy?

What if your family want to go scorched earth and burn everything to the ground?

But besides that, if you can't discuss politics with your family, the people you should be closest to, then where will you discuss them? With strangers? Or worse, with no one?

Discussing politics (and anything else difficult), like writing about it, helps form our opinions, helps bring our blind spots to light, and helps us work through complicated issues that aren't black and white.

Not being able to have civil debate and conversation with each other, compromise, and make decisions that move us forward (together) is exactly what's gotten us (in the US at least) into this mess.

So not talking about things is the exact opposite of what we need to do.

Have we forgotten how to do that? Yeah.

Do we need to practice? A lot, yeah.

Will we get it wrong as we do? You bet, and we'll have to know that going into it.

But talking about it is our only hope.

Ignoring our problems and just pretending we're one big happy, ignorant family with no problems is not going to help.

I've been as guilty of being Pollyanna as anyone, especially in the first half of my life. It's gotten me into a whole lot of trouble—with a big ol' helping of health problems to go with it—all from swallowing problems and not speaking up about them. It just doesn't solve anything. In fact, it makes things worse.

One of my favorite quotes hangs on the wall of my office. It's from Moonrise Kingdom, when the lead character Sam says, "I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about."

I feel like that's the posture we have to take when dealing with each other around politics (or anything else that's at all difficult). We don't have to agree on 100% of everything, but we do have to figure it out.

We have one planet, and we all have to live here. The little tyrants and dictators of the world can try to blow up everyone else and have it all for themselves, but that won't get them very far.

Best case scenario, we're all here making our messy best efforts to muddle through together, which means we have to talk with each other and figure out how to keep things moving forward however we're able.

Not talking's not an option.

Not-all-inclusive caveats:

1. Of course there are some people whose minds you'll never change, who'll always be racist bigots, etc. Dialogue was never possible with these people.
2. You have to be willing to have a two-way exchange yourself, too, as hard as it can be sometimes.