Excited for the winter holidays but dreading certain items at the dinner table?
Stanford scholar Dan Edelstein shares his five tips for civil discourse. (Image credit: Getty Images)
There are ways to disagree without being disagreeable, said Dan Edelstein, the William H. Bonsall Professor of French and professor, by courtesy, of history and political science in the College of Humanities and Sciences.
Edelstein teaches Citizenship in the 21st Century class, part of Stanford’s Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) core curriculum. COLLEGE provides first-year students with citizenship skills such as civil discourse.
“To be successful citizens, we must understand what is required of us in our interactions with others and what our expectations are,” Edelstein said. “One of the main goals of the citizenship class is to normalize the fact that people don’t always agree and highlight why it’s so valuable. In fact, disagreement is a feature, not an error of democracy.
It’s not only important to encourage diversity of viewpoints so that new ideas can emerge, but also to confront ideas we don’t agree with, as it “forces us to clarify and refine our own thinking,” he said.
Those on social media or watching the news often see only one form of dialogue, which is debate and involves trying to persuade others of one’s point of view with little exchange of ideas, Edelstein explained.
“Really what we want our students to practice, and what I think we need more of in our country and in democracies around the world, is deliberation,” Edelstein said, citing the work of Stanford scholars James Fishkin and Larry Diamond. on deliberative democracy. “It’s a way of framing a disagreement to keep the conversation alive and moving it forward, rather than turning it into a clash of views.”
Here are some tips Edelstein shared about the disagreement:
Be willing to change your mind. “To move from debate to deliberation, it’s really your state of mind that has to change. When we are debating, we are fast, excited and passionate. That’s a terrible state of mind if you want to be deliberative. You need to keep an open mind and be more thoughtful about things. You have to slow down, not let your emotions run high over what someone says when you don’t agree with them. It’s saying to yourself, ‘Okay, I don’t agree with that, but I’m going to listen anyway.’ And sometimes you may even find yourself agreeing with an idea or point that you previously rejected.
Be curious about why other people feel the way they do. “Even if what the person across the table is telling you seems completely orthogonal to everything you believe, it can still be interesting to find out, why do some people seem so swayed by a completely different world view than yours? It’s important not to write people off as stupid or inferior, which can happen when we get heated up and respond more based on emotional than reflective reaction.”
Avoid labels. “If I don’t agree with you and the first words out of my mouth are ‘Well, that’s dumb’ or ‘I think that’s stupid,’ then I’m being nasty. What our colleagues at the Deliberative Democracy Lab have found is that if you refrain from names and labels and instead talk about ideas and politics, then, with a few exceptions, you can often have an open conversation with someone who comes from a different background. different politician. Point of view.”
Share your experiences. “When we bring things back to what we know from experience, what we’ve been through, what we’ve seen, then it makes these conversations more interesting and maybe a little more harmonious. If someone says something outlandish, you might respond, “That’s not really my experience, in fact my experience has been quite the opposite.” Or, ‘Oh, where did that happen? You know, that sounds really amazing to me. None of my friends seem to have had that experience. ”
Hear what others are really saying. “Deliberation requires actively listening to what people are saying and not trying to counter them to prove that you are right and they are wrong. We emphasize defining active listening as a very specific type of listening. It’s active in the sense that you have to constantly check yourself to stay in this more deliberative mode, rather than have a knee-jerk or repulsive reaction to what someone says.”
Source: news.google.com