Sometime in the last few years, I floated an idea to Beth and a few close friends for a concept called, “What’s True?” It could be a radio program, a series of articles, a book, or a podcast whose purpose is to bridge the partisan divide by showing people coming to agreement on what are facts (and, by extension, what constitutes opinions.)
The concept for the show is super simple. Two hosts try to come to agreement on things that are true with the audience watching/participating.
They start with a simple statement like “This glass contains water.”
If both agree that “this is water” is a fact, they might proceed to “Many species need water, to live in it and to consume for good health.”
And if they agree on that last statement as a fact, the hosts would move to the days final agreement: “Therefore, it is important to make clean water available at no or a low cost to all living beings.”
Ahhhh.
My goal goes beyond the important act of recalibrating our acceptance of what is true to something even more important: we need to retrain ourselves how to have peaceful conversations.
In the summer after the pandemic, a camp director told us that her campers had forgotten how to be friends with each other. Due to social isolation, they had lost the ability to communicate and negotiate. “They forgot how to take turns, be patient and build friendships,” she told us.
The philosopher, author, podcast host and app maker, Sam Harris, says that there is nothing more important to our success than conversation, yet “we live in perpetual choice between conversation and violence” that has turned into a zero sum game.
I think it’s incumbent upon us, especially now, to return to a state of questioning and curiosity. Our beliefs, says Harris, and our thoughts are often based upon stories we are told that are then hardened into beliefs. He calls this view of reality “paper thin.”
This does not mean that people who are belligerent, greedy and warring are to be tolerated equally. The price of admission to a better tomorrow must include bringing down the heat. Often this means that people on the fringes will not want to play ball with us.
For example, I can imagine someone saying, “It’s not my fault that someone in Africa or Flint doesn’t have clean water available. Let them move!”
In my view, these folks have not passed the entrance exam necessary to participate in the conversation…yet. If their impulse is to flip over the Monopoly board when they’re losing the game, I would refer them to a qualified therapist.
IMHO, something like 80-90% of us have a desire and an ability to agree on basic, common, sensible facts and values – and that’s a great start.
But the reason “What is True?” is needed now is because a large number of us, maybe most of us, have lost trust in one another. We have become used to a binary that has been pounded into us over and over by political parties, a widening gap between rich and poor (or the diploma divide) and a media system that feeds on conflict and horse races instead of peaceable discourse. We have been taught that there are winners and losers.
We don’t have to agree to that, though!
My simple hope is that we can learn to be friends, again. It starts with a willingness to move away from our fear of the other and cautiously, steadily towards love.
- Humans love
- A simple form of love is meeting and sitting, having a meal, taking a walk, agreeing that puppies are cute or watching “What is True?”
- If we walk away happy, we can agree to meet again. And then again. And think, “this is a good way to be. I like it better this way.”
I don’t know if I’ll make the show, but I do hope we can find our way back to love.
