‘Take one more step’: How curiosity can bridge political divides

Mónica Guzmán’s political beliefs were vastly different from those of her parents, fueling a family-sized version of the rancorous national divide. Rather than turn away, though, she dug deeper and retained their close-knit connection.

The longtime journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize juror works for Braver Angels, a national nonprofit devoted to political depolarization and developing strategies for bringing people together.

Inspirations for her work include authors like Valerie Kaur and Amanda Ripley, she says, but a key influence was also her high school ethics teacher, who helped her understand that “every truth that really matters is an open question.” 

She spoke with the Monitor recently about her new book, “I Never Thought of It That Way: How To Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.”

How did you come to this book and this work?

There were a couple of threads. One of them was my work as a journalist, having so many conversations that were about understanding people rather than judging them or arguing with them. Another one was because I’m a liberal Latina who is the daughter of conservative Mexican immigrants who voted for [Donald] Trump, and after 2016 that became really interesting – both in our household and out in the world! And the third thread was my own experimentation in bridge building, not just in journalism, but also in community work. There was an event in 2017, where I led about 20 Seattleites to a rural county in Oregon that had [voted] opposite us in the 2016 election. That event – getting curious with the people who had opposing views – was life-changing and the beginning of an obsession around bridging the political divide.

Why do you focus on listening and understanding instead of changing people’s minds?

I believe that the most important thing we can do for our democracy is to talk with people who disagree with us, rather than about them. Talking about people but never with them, in a climate of fear and distrust, further separates us from each other. To me, that is the deeper threat to democracy.

How can we get better at seeing each other?

One thing I think is really powerful is to ask “how,” not “why.” How did people come to believe what they believe? When you ask how, you’re more likely to be in a place where judgment doesn’t play a role, and you can walk alongside someone’s story. And then maybe you’ll see things that you wouldn’t have anticipated.

Shouldn’t we try to change people’s minds if their beliefs are based on disinformation?

That, to me, is by far one of the biggest challenges that we face today. I was the vice chair of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics committee for a couple years and take very seriously the [journalistic] tenet to minimize harm, and misinformation is harmful. But there are a lot of very questionable beliefs that millions of people believe. While I personally have very little doubt about the reality that I live in, there’s a lot that I don’t understand. And what I don’t feel I understand is other people’s perspectives. So if I am in a conversation with somebody who starts to say things that for me are just categorically untrue, I lift off of that conversation into another one. I don’t tell them they’re wrong. I don’t argue those facts. To me, getting into the information back-and-forth is almost never productive when someone holds those beliefs very deeply, especially if there’s no relationship or no trust built. So instead, I make it a different conversation. What about their path is different from mine? What about their path is something that I can totally relate to? What I find is that I can almost always relate to something.

Do these conversations have to be in person? 

They don’t have to be in person, but only in person can people bring their full tool set. The tool set is not just words. We tend to think that our words are our meaning. But we’ve [also] got our voice, our tone, gestures. You can see sometimes goodwill in someone’s face, and it wouldn’t come across in an email. And goodwill matters a lot. Humor matters a lot, right?

Is social media ever helpful instead of harmful for this understanding?

Social media is extraordinarily helpful, because it puts us in easy contact with people who are not like us – but we have to choose it, because the default pattern on social media is to help us find people who are exactly like us.

Do you need a thick skin for this work?

I think more than a thick skin – it’s just patience, and the faith to know that what is most important is to maintain our links and relationships to people who hold different beliefs. It is really hard to wake up tomorrow and be a Zen master of curiosity everywhere you go. Fortunately, that’s not what is required of anyone. What is going to make a huge difference in people’s lives and in our whole society is for people to just take one more step. Whatever your circle is, just go to that edge, and ask one more question. It’s going to be us taking these steps, and they’re going to feel small and ordinary, but they are anything but. It’s going to change the world.