Gracious reader,
This week, we’ll explore:
Notes from UK / European book tour: birthday celebration, English House of Lords book talk, and London book launch!
Guest post: Want to win the culture war? Be kind
House of Lords Book Talk
Yesterday was my 32nd birthday, and what a birthday it was! We arrived to London the 14th, so had a rather leisured birthday morning the following day. I then arrived at the English House of Lords with my family. The conversation about the book was very well attended and received by the public and Life Peers Present. One million thanks to Daniel Hannan for hosting and facilitating such a thoughtful dialogue!
One member of the English House of Commons asked whether some amount of division and polarization was good – isn’t that a premise of democracy? We must accentuate our differences to some extent so voters know the difference in policy and platform
We also discussed examples of places around the world where division and challenges to civility seem to be more tame, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. What cultural or institutional factors might allow their politics to be tame compared to the US, UK, or the European political arena?
It was a packed room, and the ideas of my talk and book were very well received.
And then, following the event at Their Lordships House, Young Voices hosted a book dinner with media, civic leaders and more.
It was a wonderful way to spend my birthday!
This week, if you’re in the London area, consider joining us for more conversation and cocktails at these events this week in London!
Living Freedom Forum: The Dilemmas of Civility
Alexandra Hudson, Noah Khogali and Samuel Rubinstein
Wednesday 17 April, 7:00pm, Ideas Matter
Young Voices UK Presents: An Evening with Alexandra Hudson
Tuesday 16 April, 6:30pm, Institute of Economic Affairs
Also, here are the details for the events in France next week. Do feel welcome to share with any across the channel you think could be interested!
Next week, join us in Paris, or feel welcome to forward to people in Paris you think might enjoy the events!
Tuesday April 23
15 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris Fondation des États-Unis, Grand Salon
April 24
Marymount international school x Tocqueville Foundation event.
Unbundling People and Experiences
A central argument in my book, The Soul of Civility, is that we are inherently interconnected as human beings. Even when we think we’re acting in ways that affect only us, often, we aren’t. Everything we do, everything we are, affects those around us.
One way in which this interconnectedness plays out is through the vicious, and virtuous, cycles that are put into play when we interact with others.
Referred to as the “kicking the cat” phenomenon, one person’s thoughtlessness or cruelty to us in a way great or small causes us to lash out to the next person we encounter.
Conversely, one person’s graciousness can be a gift that keeps on giving. It can fill us up and cause us to be more proactively kind to the others we meet throughout our day. I call this phenomenon “the mellifluous echo of the magnanimous soul.” One magnanimous soul, one person who consistently acts with graciousness and kindness toward others, has the potential to create a mellifluous echo that brings beauty and joy across time and place.
My friend Julian Adorney recently wrote a reflection, which you’ll find below, about our tendency to bundle people together based on our past experiences. Our actions have a chance to break through the stereotypes people have of us.
Every moment of every day, we are each representatives of the groups we’re part of: our faith, our gender, our political tribe, our geography, our race. People might have encountered others who look or think like us before, and had a bad experience. They might have been hurt in a breakup and think “all women are horrible!”
They might have been subject to racism and think “all white people are racists!”
If we can show them a better experience, we can break their labeling and challenge the stereotypes that they might have about people like us, or at least second-guess their assumptions.
And we might be able to make the world a more gentle, welcoming and open place for all.
Enjoy Julian’s reflection below, and leave a comment to tell us what you think!
Want to Win the Culture War? Be Kind
A guest post by Julian Adorney
I was at dinner with a C-level executive of a major liberal media company. "All conservatives are assholes," the executive said.
I was a little taken aback, but recovered. I asked the executive if there was a specific event in his past that made him think this way.
"Absolutely," the executive said. "My dad was an asshole, and he's a conservative."
It's not just this one executive. I've heard from people across the political spectrum who express anger and distrust towards the other side. Almost every one of them, when asked about the root of their anger, tells a story of how a member of the other side badly hurt them.
The reason for this is something psychologists call generalization. What is generalization? It's how we have contact with a member of a group and then assume that the entire group resembles our one point of contact. If a conservative is unkind to us, then we're prone to see all conservatives as equally unkind.
This tendency shows up in other areas besides politics too. We often see the world through the lens of our wounds. If you’re black and you’ve experienced discrimination, you might be more inclined to see all bad things that happen to you through the lens of racial discrimination. If you're disabled and one person at school bullies you explicitly because of your disability, then you might be more inclined to attribute future bad treatment to a similar prejudice.
So what can we do about this? As recipients, we can work to stop mind reading. Just because someone shares superficial traits with someone who has bullied or mistreated us does not mean that they will do so as well. Or, if they do, it doesn't mean that they have the same motive. Some people might be bigoted towards black people or disabled people. Others might just be indiscriminate jerks. Still others might have noble intentions and may just be having a bad day. The person who looks at you coldly as you pass on the street might harbor negative thoughts about you based on your gender, ethnicity, etc. Or they might be going through a messy divorce and simply have a hard time smiling that day.
When we refuse to generalize, we give the other person the gift of seeing their humanity. We also deal the original bigot who hurt us a blow, by refusing to let them color our perspective of the world.
But the real power behind the idea of generalization comes when we consider our impact on other people.
Whether we realize it or not, every one of us is a walking brand ambassador for our political group. When we're rude to a member of the other tribe, it's like showing them a negative advertisement for our group. It’s as if Nike were to market its shoes by showing how well they help people kick puppies. Who would be more likely to buy their shoes after seeing that?
Of course, it's tempting to think that even if we're turning a few people away from our tribe, we're doing even more damage to the other tribe. After all, aren't our insults and clapbacks cutting them down? But social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that this isn't how it works. In a real war, he points out, we can kill our enemies. But in a war of words, the worst that our insults can do is mobilize our opponents. "The harder you attack them [your political opponents]," Haidt says, "the stronger they get."
But if we have the power to energize the other tribe, we also have the power to poach their members and so weaken them. If we have the power to hurt our group's reputation and turn people away from our tribe, we also have the power to bring them in; through deliberate acts of kindness and shared humanity, we can move those same people towards our group.
Take Dave Fleischer, founder of the Leadership LAB at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. He’s been extraordinarily successful at changing people's minds on fraught political issues of the day, including gay marriage and trans rights. In David McRaney's book How Minds Change, McRaney documents a conversation that Fleischer—a gay man—had with a committed homophobe about gay marriage. Instead of wagging his finger or lecturing the man, Fleischer joked around with him. "He could see that he and I could have a good time talking, even if we didn’t agree," Fleischer said. Remarkably, this simple conversation—which put aside facts and logical arguments in order to emphasize their shared humanity—proved powerful. "Over the course of the conversation, he did begin to change his mind [on gay marriage]," Fleischer reported.
As Mónica Guzmán, senior fellow of the nonprofit Braver Angels and author of I Never Thought of It That Way, told me in an interview, "People can hear best when they're heard."
"The kindness of receiving people's ideas openly, of listening to them and trying to understand them before jumping in to judge them or react to them," she says, "tends to unlock people…Research into intellectual humility and receptiveness in conversation shows this over and over." The bottom line: when we show people the kindness of truly listening to them, we stand a much better chance of moving them to our side.
One common retort is that this may work for people near the middle, but our political opponents are too far gone. Their walls are too strong, their minds are too closed, and they cannot be persuaded. But this isn't true. In fact, showing kindness to our political opponents can be so powerful that it can even help them to escape from a cult.
Megan Phelps-Roper is probably the most famous person to ever leave Westboro Baptist Church. How did she escape such an insular and self-reinforcing environment? She started talking to people who not only disagreed with her worldview, but were actively targets of it. And yet, they were kind to her. As Phelps-Roper stood at a protest holding a sign that read, “God Hates Jews,” a Jewish man began joking and laughing with her—even bringing her a gift of halvah. As she was actively attacking his identity, “he recognized my humanity,” Phelps-Roper said.
This is why it's so important to treat our opponents with civility and respect. We never know what kind of positive impact we can have. By offering Phelps-Roper an olive branch instead of a raised fist, the Jewish man was able to reach someone who most of us would have written off as too far gone.
As humans, we're drawn to characters much more than we're drawn to ideas. Describing how cult members from Phelps-Roper to 9/11 Truthers changed their minds, McRaney says that a central ingredient was "people on the outside who listened and showed them counterarguments wrapped in kindness." "An engaged, curious, and compassionate listener," McRaney notes, "is far more persuasive than any fact or figure."
One reason that it's so important to be kind to members of the political out-group has to do with group psychology. As McRaney documents, a person doesn't leave their in-group because they change their mind. First they leave their in-group, and then—freed from the stultifying effects of echo chambers and endless reinforcement of dogma—they start to change their beliefs.
But in order to leave their group behind, they need two things. One, their group has to act in a way that's inconsistent with their core values. And two, there has to be another group nearby that they believe will see their humanity and welcome them with open arms.
We can't control the first condition (though it's fairly common in 2024, with extremists on the left and right both engaging in immoral behavior). But we can control the second condition. And when we treat a person with kindness, we plant seeds that it's okay for them to leave their in-group and come join ours. As McRaney puts it, when talking about people who had left Westboro Baptist Church, "they couldn’t leave their worldviews behind until they felt like there was a community on the outside that would welcome them into theirs."
It's common to talk about the culture war as an actual war. In war, being ruthless and even immoral can help you win. But perhaps a better metaphor for the culture war is that it’s a popularity contest—we're trying to make as many friends as possible. This is more or less what our tribe is actually doing. On a grand scale, we're trying to recruit as many new people into our in-group as possible. And in a friend-making competition, the person with integrity, who truly cares about the person he's talking to and treats them with deep kindness and respect for their humanity, will almost always win in the long term.
Subscribe to Heal the West by Julian Adorney here
Notes from the book tour
Last week it was back to Boston to assemble at the Portsmouth Abbey School for a lecture.
This week I’m thrilled to be in Europe! The first leg of this tour has stops at St. James’ Place, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Academy of Ideas, and Oxford University.
In The News
The Greenfield Recorder out of Massachusetts connected with The Soul of Civility, read more here.
Featured here is my conversation with Yascha Mounk and how civility can be used as a tool for pursuing justice.
Public Discourse picked up my essay, The Miracle That Saves the World, published here.
Agreed. If the aim is to change minds and hearts rather than to "win," kindness and empathy are essential tools.
“we're drawn to characters much more than we're drawn to ideas.” Indeed. Why is that? Well, because historically ideas were conveyed through “stories.“ Think about the word “persona.“ It implies “characters.“ In fact, I would recommend to everyone the 1974 book by Claude Steiner “Scripts People Live.” That was the first book. My wife and I read together that year when we got together. Our cultures “script“ us to become the “leading actors“ in our lifelong 🎻🎻🎻 melodramas. One of my favorite Claude Steiner riffs is that of the “rescuer – victim – persecutor triangle.” I, the benevolent rescuer take it upon myself to intervene in the life of a victim, and when the victim does not comply with sufficient gratitude to with my entreaties , I then arrogate to myself permission to persecute the victim. This extends beyond individual transactional analysis psychology all the way out to entire cultures. My American culture today is mired in extreme “persecutor“ mode. To the extent I live a “scripted” life, I am not really free. I cannot engage in beneficent moral agency.