Listen "Books Driving Change: Peter Coleman and The Way Out"
Episode Synopsis
Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Matthew Bishop with Books Driving Change. And today I'm talking with Peter Coleman of Columbia University, one of the co-founders of the Difficult Conversations Lab, which explores what do we do about toxic conversations, a subject that hopefully won't refer to the conversation we're having together now -- which will hopefully be a very positive conversation. But, obviously, we are at a time of increasing polarization in the world. And a lot of conversations seem to end up being more counterproductive than productive. Peter has written a book called The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization, which is something that anyone listening to this podcast will want to know the answer to. So Peter, can I just start by asking you in one sentence, given the audience that this podcast has of people engaged in trying to bring about positive change -- why should they read the book?Peter Coleman (PC): Well, thank you, Matthew, for having me. So the reason I wrote the book is that I feel that there is significant misunderstanding of the nature of the problem of what I call “toxic polarization”, which is unlike typical forms of polarization -- it's more extreme, it's more entrenched, it's more long term. And so what I offer in the book, and I think is relevant to your listening audience, is a different theory of change. Typically, how we think about addressing things like political polarization is that we go after key pieces of the problem. But we don't understand how the problem works as a whole, as a system, as a series of forces that kind of align and feed each other in complicated ways. And this book offers an alternative theory of change, it contrasts our typical kind of scientific approach of looking for the essence of a problem, and says this problem of toxic polarization has many essences. And more importantly, these essences align and feed each other in complex ways that really make it, as a cultural phenomenon, highly resistant to change. And so it's important that we understand how problems like these, wicked problems, actually do change, and what to do about them based on science. And so that's why I wrote this book -- to offer this alternative theory of change.MB: And it is an optimistic book, fundamentally, which is interesting because you start talking about how everyone's feeling so miserable now, and this is actually a reason for optimism. Why do you make that point?PC: Well, because one of the things we've learned from the study of deeply divided societies that actually do come out of this time and pivot into a more constructive direction, is that there are a couple of basic conditions that often are associated with that kind of change. One is that there is a sufficient level of misery within the political middle -- what in ripeness theory they call a “mutually hurting stalemate”, where you are sort of exhausted and fed up and really don't want to continue to engage in the same way, and you want to do something different. And certainly in America, but in many places in the U.K. and around the world, there is a growing, exhausted, middle majority that's fed up with the political vitriol that we see, the dysfunction that we see, and really seeking an alternative. So in that way, the ground is ripe for a movement that offers people a vision for how to change. But in addition to being miserable, they need to have some clear sense of what to do. What is the alternative? What are the steps? And that's why I wrote this book.MB: I'm very struck by how you are coming at this -- as someone who, as you talked about in the beginning of the book, grew up in a very difficult situation. You weren't in a well-to-do family, your father was being pursued by violent men, I think you say for gambling issues, you ended up getting your Ph.D. after a long and difficult process and welfare support, and all sorts of things in a single-parent home. And you know many people. You identify as much with Trump supporters in some ways as you do with his critics. About halfway through the book, you say, “Dear reader, I hope half of you are Trump supporters and half of you aren't”, or words to that effect. This is such an unusual voice at the moment, given the politics that we're seeing in America, and as you also say, around the world. How do you feel we can get beyond this pro-Trump/anti-Trump mindset and get to some of these underlying systemic changes that we need?PC: My journey to some degree is unique, because I was born in a place and at a time with folks that were disenfranchised, and I was as a young person I kind of worked my way out of that. And now I live this Columbia University professor on the Upper West Side of Manhattan [life], which is a very progressive arena. So I've experienced both worlds, and have empathy for both worlds. And ultimately, I think that's the question -- is how do we create some kind of trusted process or system where people can rediscover the empathy that we have for one another, and rediscover some sense of unity and connectedness? And again, what I propose, or what I argue, is that this is hard. We are, in some ways, in a mass addiction. I see toxic polarization as a bio/psycho/social/structural process like addiction. It's something that's within us, it’s, in some ways, [something] we’ve embodied in our neurological structures -- how we see the world, what we react to emotionally. So there's a kind of basic internal component of this, but then there are psychological components. And it's embedded in our relationships -- who we speak with, who we don't speak with. It's embedded in the media that we do and do not consume, in the internet spaces that we do and do not travel to, and even physically where we go in our life. So there are many levels and layers to this trap that we're in. And it's not going to be something easy to escape from. It's not just that we decide, Okay, I've had enough of this, I'm moving on. We definitely need to have that. But we really need to recognize that this is going to be hard work. And some of the folks that have read the book have suggested, Wow, this is hard work. And the answer is yes. John Paul Lederach, a colleague of mine who does a lot of peace building around the world, once in Northern Ireland said to a Northern Irish audience, “It's probably going to take you as long to get out of this conflict as it did to get into it.” And he said, he almost got thrown out of the room. Because people don't want to hear that, they want to hear that there are simple solutions. What I lay out is a sequence of processes, strategies, steps, that can move us in a much more positive direction. But they're not simple answers to this complex problem that we're embedded in.MB: One of my takeaways from the book is, and you also refer to it in various points in the book, this notion of “complicate things” as a way to to help. Because there is a tendency to think quite simplistically about this. Those of us that are saying, “Let's try and heal the divide, or let’s try and put a Trump voter in a room with a progressive and the hope that they'll figure things out.” And it's all quite naive. Where do people tend to go wrong when they try to take that approach?PC: So that approach is based on something called “contact theory'', which Gordon Allport developed in the ‘40s and ‘50s, to break down racism in this country. And it is the basic idea that if you have groups of people that have no contact with each other, no connection to each other, that sometimes just bringing them together and having them realize that each one is a human with kids and interests, and they like music, and they like to dance, and they start to rehumanize members of the other group. And that can have a transformative effect. And that's a very powerful theory and model that's often used in intergroup disputes. But when you have groups of people that are deeply passionate, deeply ideological, and living in parallel opposing media echo systems, then just saying, Go off and have a cup of coffee in the same room and chat with one another, can easily backfire. And in fact, if you push some of the people that encourage such interventions these days, they'll tell you those stories of these well-intentioned, well-designed interventions that blow up and that backfire. And in fact, there is Pew Research suggesting that when people get together across political divisions these days, the vast majority of us leave those conversations more frustrated, more alienated from the other side. So it doesn't help, typically, under these conditions, to just bring people together. And so what I argue is that we need to know what the science tells us. Contact theory has been studied over 500 times for decades. And what we know is that there are certain conditions where that works. And there's certain conditions where it doesn't work. And when you're dealing with true believers, it doesn't work, it's insufficient.MB: And you illustrate this at the start of the book with this discussion, or description, of an effort around the anti-abortion/pro-choice debate in Boston, where a number of leaders on both sides were brought together, and they met together over over a period of time, and it seemed to make a difference. Can you just explain what was the magic sauce in that approach? PC: I think tenacity, courage, and perseverance. So there was an incident that happened. Boston in the ‘80s and ‘90s was a very divided place. It's highly Catholic, 36% Catholic population. And the abortion debate was very hostile and intense in that community and becoming increasingly so. And then in 1994, there was a horrific shooting that took place in a couple of women's clinics -- women were shot dead, harmed, injured, and it was a rupture. And it really kind of destabilized the status quo. And so the Archdiocese and the Governor and the Mayor were all calling for sort of talks. And how do you change a culture of vitriol and hate through talks? It seems to be an almost impossible thing to do. So there was a group called the Public Conversations Project. And I tell this story in the beginning of the book, because I think it's a great parable for our time. We too, in the pro-Trump/anti-Trump world or pro-Brexit/anti-Brexit world, we are true believers in some ways.MB: The abortion issue is coming back up on the agenda in America in a big way, in that true believer way, is it not?PC: Absolutely yes, it's being triggered in multiple states simultaneously. So, it is a parable of our time. But what happened was, this group called the Public Conversations Project had been doing dialogue processes with pro-life/pro-choice groups, bringing them together before the shooting. And so they had a network there. And what they did is they reached out to three prominent pro-life leaders and three prominent pro-choice leaders, and they said to them, “Would you consider just coming together for a couple of weeks, and have some conversations in order to prevent further violence and kind of bring the temperature down?” And all of these women were afraid of the other side, literally. The pro-life women met in a Friendly's restaurant and prayed to God that they would be forgiven for sitting down with these evil murderers. And the other side was very afraid of their reputation and their physical safety, especially in the wake of this violence. But they agreed to come together, they talked for about a month, and albeit difficult, it went well enough that they decided to go to the one year anniversary of the shooting. And the conversations continued. And they actually had in-secret dialogues, clandestine dialogues, between these six people and the facilitators that their families and communities did not know anything about for five and a half years. And then in January of 2001, they came out publicly in the Boston Globe, they co-published an article called Talking With the Enemy -- which I'd recommend that your readers or your listeners read. And they talk about this experience and how it changed them and their relationships and their understanding of the issues. And ironically, and I think, importantly, they all to a person became further apart on the issue of abortion. Their attitudes on the issues became even more crystallized, so that they still fundamentally differed on the issue. But their relationships and care and respect for one another, and care for their community, and the rhetoric they used in their activism, all changed fundamentally. And that interaction with those six women and two facilitators had first and second and third order effects in the Boston community in how activism around these issues were taken up and what the rhetoric was. And ultimately, they think even sort of affected the movement more broadly in terms of bringing down the temperature of hate and vilification of the other side.MB: That goes to one of your points about, Let's get away from the actual point of dispute in these situations and think more about the context, the broader context, that things are operating in, and find common ground in the context, which you can build on. PC: They were able to recognize that they all cared for women -- young, pregnant, teen pregnancy. That they had common interests about violence and keeping violence at bay in the community and protecting one another from that. They could actually write grants together. And ironically, this was 25 years ago, and today, they're still friends. It's still a group of people that celebrate births and deaths and come together when they need support. So they grew very fond of one another. And they fundamentally differed on this issue. And that is the essence here. It is when policy becomes personal and becomes ideological. [For example when we] take things like “Let's build the wall” or “Not build a wall” as the slogans for immigration, we lose a sense of the immense complexity of immigration policies and over simplify the issue that positions them. And then we're nowhere, that's when we get stuck.MB: So what would you draw as lessons from that for today and how the abortion debate might play out less harmfully, then some people feel it will do now, in America?PC: What I do in the book is try to use the evidence-based science that has been done by our group and by other groups, and pull out five basic principles of what helps to basically navigate the wa