When I first ran across this linked story, I felt equal amounts of recognition and frustration – reluctant resignation that the author, Robert Graboyes, is mostly right, and anger that Graboyes is mostly right. I debated even including it in this newsletter. But even though I don’t agree with everything he says, it’s worth reading, and I’m curious about what you think.

Pundits pontificate about our hardening divisions – around politics, education, the economy, race, religion – anything possibly debatable is now debated with both sides needing to annihilate the other. I don’t think it’s our differences that are necessarily all that new, but the demonizing ways that we express them are. The melodrama and hyperbole get people’s attention, views, readers and likes. There’s a market for anger, getting audiences riled up is good for ratings and revenue, and it makes talking heads a lot of money. I understand that a lot of mostly White, straight men think that they’ve been drawing the short straw for too long. And I get that technology and culture is changing life too much and too fast for a lot of people – we’ve probably gotten a few things wrong as a result. But, at some point it became acceptable – and now it’s required – to label the “other” people as not only wrong, but dangerously evil, stupid and not worth the trouble of considering.

One of the behavior changes that we teach in the work we do is how to avoid getting dragged into polarizing debates by acknowledging valid opposing ideas and not just demonizing the people who hold them. If there’s any hope of finding common ground, we better start talking to each other; the stakes are way too high now. Disagreements are as old as Cain and Abel, but eventually, we figured out that there’s gotta be a better way than murdering your brother. It’s something to relearn.

If we quit talking, we’ll never understand each other, and that leaves all of us wide open to exploitation. Those nefarious characters who are driven by power, money and revenge will continue to exploit the angry and victimized among us by convincing them that the “other” is the problem. Truly trying to understand each other is key.