Humainologie creative dialogue and short story writing festival and a book synopsis for tonight

“While there is life, there is hope.” - Eddie Redmayne in the role of Stephen Hawking, from the movie “The Theory of Everything”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhvKxbetUyI

“You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. …If I want to fly, I’ll find a way to fly.” - Paul Dano in the role of Dwayne Hoover, from the movie “Little Miss Sunshine”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VbYokM9dY4

“And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” - Tom Hanks in the role of Chuck Noland, from the movie “Cast Away” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKLVAeI7MU8

Our topic for tonight is Race, Equality, and Self Awareness, to be facilitated by Joy, Joyia, Rachel, and James. Below this message, I have appended a synopsis of a book that will be useful both for our dialogue tonight and for the Dialogue and Democracy Game we plan to launch in Calgary. We’ll take ten or fifteen minutes tonight to move our planning for the game forward.

Our theme for the month of April is amor fati, love of whatever happens. Life is very wabi-sabi, beautiful exactly because it is so broken and mended and transient. Movie scenes like those from which I have quoted above can show the audience how that is possible, how we can love life because of its flaws, its setbacks and its challenges. As we move toward our Humainologie Short Story Writing Festival http://www.humainologie.com/short-story-festival/ you could look for a favorite amor fati movie scene as a good source of ideas to get started with writing your own short story for the festival.

The creative dialogue tonight, Wednesday April 28, to be facilitated by friends of Christina, will start at 6:30 PM but you can join us as early as 6:20 PM. Here’s the link provided by Shinobu.

Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue Time: April 28, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Apr 28, 2021, 9 occurrence(s) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83720756307?pwd=WVU2OGo3ZjMzWVMwdlVZUzY1RVMwdz09 Meeting ID: 837 2075 6307 Passcode: 12345

Just keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise.

Arthur

Book: (James Hoggan with Grania Litwin) I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up (Second Edition, 2019)

The author set out with a “beginner’s mind” to write this book, and “interviewed more than 70 political pundits, philosophers, moral psychologists, media gurus and social scientists…” all of whom agreed that “today’s public discourse is an enormous obstacle to change….” Hoggan explains: “Toxic conversations stall our ability to think collectively and solve the many dangerous problems that are stalking everyone on earth.”

The book has two parts. Part I “The Polluted Public Square” (Chapters 1-14) examines “how we all pollute the public square, and how we can make space for healthier dialogue.” Part II “Speak the Truth, But Not to Punish” (Chapters 15-25) examines “how to communicate more effectively and disagree more constructively, using the language of emotions and deep values.”

In Chapter 1, “Like Ships in the Night” (with Daniel Yankelovich and Steve Rosell) we are reminded that when mistrust contaminates communication, everything becomes more difficult. If I want to communicate collaboratively for the common good, then I must take personal responsibility for building trust. “The approach should be: the burden of proof is on us; performance should exceed expectations; promises should be few and faithfully kept; core values must be made explicit and framed in ethical terms; anything but plain talk is suspect; bear in mind that noble goals with flawed execution will be seen as hypocrisy, not idealism.” Dialogue can build trust. “During our interviews, Yankelovich and Rosell explained the clear differences between dialogue and debate: in debate we assume we have the right answer, whereas dialogue assumes we all have pieces of the answer and can craft a solution together.” The process can take decades. Importantly, “by working to create a climate of trust, a community of discourse, we build up capital that we can use to deal with tricky issues in the future.”

In “The Advocacy Trap” (Chapter 2) the interviews are with Roger Conner, who teaches a course on non-litigation strategies for social and political change. Good people sometimes do bad things for good reasons, Conner explains. People try to change others’ opinions either by “pushing” (arguing), by “pulling” (persuading), or – less often but more effectively – by “solving specific problems through deep forms of collaboration in which participants may agree to disagree on other matters.” Conner also emphasizes the importance of your attitude toward another person or group (“stance”). It is essential to respect the other, and not let their behavior undermine your respect for them. A good police officer does this with an angry drunk. “Few of us practice this skill of not letting our perceptions control our attitudes, and as a result we hand over control of a vital part of our cognitive machinery to someone else.” Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi did not allow their stance to be determined by others.

Carol Tavris, interviewed for Chapter 3, “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me),” uses the concept of cognitive dissonance to help us understand how, for example, someone can continue smoking despite all the evidence that it’s bad for you. They look for contrary evidence, rationalize their behavior so that they can feel okay, and keep smoking. We all do it, especially if we have invested a lot of time and effort in something. Think of someone whose identity depends on their genius in establishing an oil pipeline company. “People need to feel respected and supported, not criticized.” However, political decisions are essential for progress with action on environmental and other issues, including the changes to laws. Political and legal changes will then lead to changes in attitudes in the society over time. “Self-righteousness is a barrier to self-change, and an impediment to persuading others.” Being passionate about specific issues is important but hold your opinions lightly and be ready to change your views.

Chapter 8, “The Self-Regulating Psychopath,” is based on interviews with Joel Bakan and Noam Chomsky. The behavior of corporations (recognized in the US as having the rights of a “person”) has been such that if a person behaved like that they would be diagnosed as a psychopath. Even if the CEO and others working for a cigarette corporation are decent people, they work inside a system the purpose of which is to make money, and that purpose takes precedence over concerns for people’s health and all else. The corporation acts to get people to buy their product so that the shareholders make money. The increasing political power of the corporation is a threat to our future, and only we can stop it. Joel Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power was made into an excellent documentary film.

Basing Chapter 9 on the outstanding research of British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Hoggan describes “Steve Bannon’s Full-service Propaganda Machine.” Steve Bannon (who became campaign manager for Donald Trump) intentionally used intrusive information from internet users to create a toxic public discourse. A fist fight can draw spectators, and toxicity in the mass media can draw viewers and shape their opinions and their behavior. We have free access to internet because advertisers pay for it, but computer scientist and philosophy writer Jaron Lanier suggests we need to “disallow the commercial incentive and adopt a new business model, like a public library model or a user-pay model like Netflix” if we want to eliminate this intentional toxicity. In his summary of Part I, Hoggan emphasizes two key strategies he had learned: 1) Don’t get into fights; or as George Bernard Shaw had said, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” Hoggan’s way of expressing it is that “after a while, people can’t tell the difference between you and the pig.” 2) Do not be silent. Tell your own story, otherwise you lose by default.

Part II includes the insights and methods of Adam Kahane, who has helped transcend barriers as severe as apartheid in South Africa, by bringing adversaries into a discussion of possibilities. He does not try to convince people to do anything they don’t want to do. “’They don’t need to agree on the solution or the problem. They don’t need to understand each other, trust each other or even like each other.’ But they do have to recognize that the only way to move forward is together.”

A concluding section of the book “From the Heart” (Chapters 22-25 and an Epilogue, “Hope, Compassion, and Courage”) is based on interviews with Karen Armstrong, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others. In the Epilogue we learn “One defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself” (George Orwell). Progressives have a diversity of opinion on how to make progress. Some think attempts to dialogue with right wing ideologues will backfire; and that it’s public apathy that’s the problem and more outrage is needed. Hoggan acknowledges there is no one way that guarantees success, but that both advocacy and collaboration should be aimed for. Deep listening and respect for the adversary are both essential. We can learn from the success of the civil rights movement: Never give up. All our progress notwithstanding, to this day there has been no “ultimate victory” and there is still a lot of work to do. There will always be those who intentionally pollute public discourse. But the majority are waiting for us to clean it up. We must persist.