Mind to Mind

Political conversation in a new age.

When we used to talk about “meetings of the mind,” we assumed that agreement would follow from sharing ideas through serious conversations.  We assumed that we already held the right ideas in common so that new information would be compatible with what we already “knew.”  As always some of us had more information about the “world” than others.  In the past that actually made serious conversations, “over the old cracker barrel,” more productive as we filled in each other’s “gaps.”  My “news” fit into your “news” and visa versa. 

That may not now be the case. 

Today we see the world differently because the information that we have about the world is not the same.  From such information we have formed different judgments, opinions and beliefs. 

The sources of our information are more and more social media influencers. 

Today my opinions clash with yours in fundamental ways.  One or both of us has “false information.”  Our ideas about the world repel each other.  My explanations seem false, because they are based on information that contradicts what is already “in your head.”

That is to say, my “influencers” are not your “influencers” and that we learn less about the world from studying the same subjects in school than we do from absorbing ideas from different social media silos. 

The implications of this are serious.  Meeting people where they are, is no longer about visiting your neighbor over the back fence.  It is not about socializing in common places.

It has always been true that our actual meetings take place inside each other’s heads, that is when we visit with each other, we visit each other’s understanding of the world.  When we lived in communities that drew their information from the same ‘springs,” we enjoyed minor disagreements.  They gave a little laughter and spice to conversations.  With many fundamental questions we came to agreement and we left others “for another day.” 

Today, we need a new language for political conversations.  It is still in development.  We need to blunt the sharp edges of language.  We are not sharing information, which often meant “pounding some sense” into the other person.  We are discovering the nature and shape of our disagreements.  We seek islands of common ground.  We explore bridges “over troubled waters.”  Attacks simply escalate warfare.  We use the tools of probability.  We confess the limits of our understanding.  We reach out to expected and unexpected futures, where our differences become less relevant or no longer impediments.  We begin with respect for each other’s ideas.  We do not dismiss at the outset another’s hopes.  We encourage dreams and value inspiration and imagination.  We share stories not agendas.

There is, however, a danger in this way of thinking.  It is not this simple.  We also need to take seriously not just the differences, but the actually deficits in each other’s understanding of the world.  Again, in the past, we could get by with much less information about history, geography, science and technology.  We got by with something we called “common sense.”  Our familiarity with art, music and craft gave us the ability to see things as patterns, to develop a natural ability, a knack some would say, to handle the “everyday.”  It was a humble, if powerful, kind of unconscious thinking.. 

Now we need to further empower our ability to think abstractly.  We can not leave such “mastery” to others.  That is the root of totalitarianism, deference to those who claim to think for us, with their models, abstractions and data analytics.

We “save” our democracy by both restocking our experiential knowledge by deeper and further gathering of information and by mastering today’s methods and approaches for shaping experience into insights and ideas. 

All that, while we walk with mutual respect the narrow, treacherous, paths of agreement with each other.

I write several times a week and there is an archive of my writing over the past several years that is available through substack. All is free and easy to access.