Does it matter if conversations with political opponents are decreasing?
I’m wondering if and how it may be possible to facilitate discussions between people and others with opposing views.
The reason is that it seems like a fundamentally important aspect of a well-functioning tolerant and pluralistic society. In her book Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy, Political Scientist Diana Mutz discusses evidence indicating that the more people engage in political discussions with those who disagree with them, the more likely they are to recognize the rationale behind opposing points of view and the greater tolerance they show to those who hold such views.
The Internet offers a great opportunity for people to connect and discover new things, but it seems like most of us have found our way into echo chambers, a topic of so many recent books and popular articles. Cass Sunstein’s book #Republic discusses in particular how the Internet is “driving fragmentation, polarization, and…extremism.” (Aside: I speculate that it’s generally tougher for us to dismiss opposing views as illegitimate when we’re required to engage with them with people we interact with regularly.)
We might have some chance of being exposed to opposing views through our local communities, but there too we’re finding ourselves in less politically diverse communities, something Mutz also discusses in her book. Tyler Cowen describes trends in self-segregation in this video:
If regular discussion with people who disagree with us is an important part of getting along, I wonder if it’s possible to facilitate that.
Schools and other organizations invite speakers and promote discussions and maybe that that has some value in exposing people to people who hold views different from their own. I worry that it’s insufficient in the face of global trends in segregation.
In the past few years, I’ve seen various projects trying to get Republicans and Democrats to get tea or coffee together or just talk on the phone, an organization called Tea with Strangers, articles about informal and formal events related to skipping small talk, and read about organizations trying to get viewpoint adversaries to talk to one another. I mention the latter groups because I suspect they may result in people talking about values and views that are in opposition, if not opposing political views directly.
I’m left wondering if we do enough of this if it will add up to something or if we’ll become increasingly polarized and fragmented. I see opportunities for small-scale but relatively time and resource intensive efforts to support increased conversations on a local level but I can’t imagine what could be done that would counteract the bigger trends.
