One of the initiatives that Better Angels Convention organizers left us with is the "4 by the 4th" challenge: sign up four new BA members by July 4, 2019.
As I've shared with a few people stuff about the conference over the last few days, I recognize a truth: Better Angels impresses me. I liked that Convention a lot. I like the workshops I've seen and participated in. I think the work they do is legitimate and important.
Maybe, I think, I should try to get some signups.
But.
I hate hate hate the idea of proselytizing. I spent countless hours as a kid screwing up enough courage to broach some truly cringe-worthy conversations with friends and strangers about "getting saved." Like: on more than one occasion, twelve-year-old, introverted me approached a total stranger and asked if they were saved. (I can't hear myself say those words in memory save in the voice my mother used when she was trying out some "cool" bit of jargon--and failing miserably to carry it off.)
My aversion to evangelizing probably led me to study evangelical outreach techniques generally. And sure enough, lots of the literature of, by, and for evangelicals about outreach acknowledges that the process is soaked in awkwardness.
It doesn't help that we live in a society full of tell-your-friends recruitment schemes and multilevel marketing (i.e., pyramid scheme) strategies. Back in 2015, designer Frank Chimero tweeted that the phrase "Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" should be named one of the universal, all-purpose New Yorker cartoon captions (alongside "What a misunderstanding!" and "Christ, what an asshole!"). We've all gotten such push invites. We've all deleted them. It's creepy and mechanical, unctuous and insincere, making us feel like nothing more than a mark.
My father once preached that we get inoculated against proselytizing in this culture. We get just enough of something (Christianity, in the case of my father's sermon) to develop antibodies capable of recognizing and rejecting it instantly. The ubiquity of conversion attempts sours the appeal.
So I'm wary of asking folk to join me in this thing I like that I think is good. That's part of my reticence.
The other part of my hesitation, though, comes from the drawbacks I see to the Better Angels approach. I mentioned the other day about how a lot of my friends and colleagues react to the notion of depolarization and civility with revulsion: how dare you expect me to make nice with bigots and nazis?
Or, as one of the people I spoke to at Better Angels put it, "I'm just having a lot of trouble with this"--this in her case being all the walk-on-eggshells circumlocutions blues and moderators go through to avoid alienating reds. Moderators are trained, for example, to avoid uttering or affirming statements that code "blue," such as "Humans are the primary cause of global warming." Such statements are points of ideological contest for reds. They activate teamist dynamics.
But it's also unambiguously true. Humans cause global warming. Global warming constitutes one of the biggest threats to humanity we can perceive. No action to mitigate those effects can get off the ground without base-level acknowledgement of that truth. It hinders the cause, then, to regard that basic assumption as charged enough to avoid or politely bracket away.
Things get even more complicated when the bracketed truths involve things like race, immigration, sexuality, gender, or any of the other cultural flashpoints. (Reds, I'm sure, have their own list of statements they're frustrated at not seeing easily agreed-upon in BA for the sake of civility.)
I have some reservations, then, about how fully I can endorse BA for friends. It's similar, I think, to my reservations about endorsing the United Methodist Church for LGBTQ+ folk right now. I've had great experiences, but it's not perfect. It's work. It's not for everyone.
Still thinking, in other words.
More tomorrow,
JF
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Monday, June 24, 2019
Processing Better Angels Convention
Back home in Baton Rouge, thank goodness. Alan's happy. The cats are pleased.
And life continues beyond the anti-polarizing heterotopia of the Better Angels Convention.
Case in point: at the airport, I checked one of my standard progressive/lefty blogs, Lawyers, Guns & Money. In a post titled "Banning Trump Supporters from Non-Political Sites," LGM regular Paul Campos shared a link from knitting/crocheting site Ravelry--specifically its new policy banning posts supporting President Trump or his administration. "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy," reads the Ravelry statement. "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."
Campos offers his own commentary:
Most commenters also endorsed the equation between "supporting Trump" and "white supremacist." Posters diverged slightly about whether this judgment includes "people who voted for Trump in 2016 (because he was the Republican)" or just "people who still support Trump." For some commenters, there's a little leeway given; for others, any Trump voter deserves to be "up against the wall."
A few posters ventured questions or disagreements with Campos. "Would we be OK with a union or other organization doing this? What are the limits?" Such questions were interpreted as trollish derails rather than good-faith inquiries. (This interpretation could be right. Comments are usually judged and responded to by folk who know the asker's history; sometimes that history suggests such inquirers are just sealioning).
One poster contested the Trump voter=white supremacist argument, insisting they know lots of Trump voters who aren't. That view cut no mustard with the LGM community. Actions speak louder than words, went the criticism. You can say you're not really white supremacist (write the commenters), but when you support a guy who strikes ethno-nationalist chords in his rhetoric regularly and whose policies demonize and immiserate people of color, well...?
In other words, at the airport I found myself (virtually) immersed in just the kind of single-color, polarized space Better Angels tries to disrupt. The LGM community, by and large, would likely be among those who would respond to news about BA with disgust: giving space and voice to evil = endorsing evil.
I read such voices--as I read those of similarly polarized communities on the right--because they represent a non-BA viewpoint. Dipping into that Schmittian friend/enemy world, taking its measure, listening to its point of view, keeps me realistic. It puts the anti-polarization ethos of BA into perspective, makes it stand up and defend itself. It keeps Better Angels from becoming (for me, at least) the same kind of echo-chamber of unquestioned/unquestionable assumptions that BA would accuse LGM of being.
It also lets me flesh out my own defenses of BA-ish initiatives in the face of LGM-like criticisms. "How do you live in the real world," asked some posters, "if roughly half the country is evil?" I think that's a really, really good question. The responses from the LGM community that didn't instantly dismiss that question ran something along the lines of "So? There are plenty of times in US history where half or more of the citizenry were evil. You can still do politics."
I'm struck by that willingness to accept that half or more of the populace is--not just misguided or ignorant or duped, but--plain evil. They can't be reasoned with; compromise with them is betrayal. They need to be ostracized, expelled, made to disappear (de facto or de jure). And to be clear, right-wing communities manifest exactly the same polarized mechanisms. The world isn't just full of fools; it's full of demons. You gotta live your best life among the devils.
I see a slippage between "they did a bad thing" and "they are a bad thing" common to just about any in-group's assessments of out-group actions. Ravelry, as some commenters (and even Campos himself) note, didn't ban Trump supporters; they banned comments supporting Trump. But the title of the post mentions banning supporters; the comments mainly run in that vein. In practice, the hating the action/hating the actor distinction proves about as fragile as conservative evangelicals' "hate the sin/love the sinner" rhetoric. Declare your hatred of homosexual acts often and vehemently enough, and all anyone sees is how much you hate homosexuals.
A lot of the distinction between BA and LGM (and I'm of course oversimplifying this comparison for now) boils down to the ethics of compartmentalization. BA relies on the capability and morality of compartmentalizing fundamental disagreements. Pro-lifers and Pro-choicers (BA would say) can and should work, live, socialize, and flourish together even as they diverge sharply on a life-or-death issue. Other communities balk at that notion. Some political positions (they would say) have all-or-nothing consequences. Some positions can be, must be, litmus tests for possible/ethical coexistence.
Tricky.
More tomorrow,
JF
And life continues beyond the anti-polarizing heterotopia of the Better Angels Convention.
Case in point: at the airport, I checked one of my standard progressive/lefty blogs, Lawyers, Guns & Money. In a post titled "Banning Trump Supporters from Non-Political Sites," LGM regular Paul Campos shared a link from knitting/crocheting site Ravelry--specifically its new policy banning posts supporting President Trump or his administration. "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy," reads the Ravelry statement. "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."
Campos offers his own commentary:
... Supporting Trump makes you a white supremacist, whether you think of yourself as one or not. Trumpism is an authoritarian ethno-nationalist movement, whose core principle is that America is and should be a country run by and for white people.
Therefore bans of this sort are not only defensible, but affirmatively good. White supremacy should be opposed in every legal way possible, which means Trumpism should be opposed in every legal way possible.
Social ostracism in general is a powerful tool, and should be employed against Trump supporters at every opportunity. This includes telling Trump supporters on non-political websites such as these that their political affiliation is beyond the pale, and needs to be hidden if they wish to socialize with people who oppose white supremacy.The LGM commentariat mostly aligned with Campos, cheering Ravelry's decision (and decisions of other websites/forums). The support runs the gamut from "Yeah, fuck those fuckers!" and "I hope they all get stabbed with knitting needles" to "Social ostracism is the best these supremacists can expect" and "It's good that sites are making it harder for open white supremacists to spew their bile." (NB: Throughout this post I paraphrase the gist of comments rather than linking to or quoting them. I'm not interested in engaging specific commenters here, or else I'd have commented on LGM myself. I'm only working through my thoughts on some of the general positions raised there. For the conversation itself, see LGM post.)
Most commenters also endorsed the equation between "supporting Trump" and "white supremacist." Posters diverged slightly about whether this judgment includes "people who voted for Trump in 2016 (because he was the Republican)" or just "people who still support Trump." For some commenters, there's a little leeway given; for others, any Trump voter deserves to be "up against the wall."
A few posters ventured questions or disagreements with Campos. "Would we be OK with a union or other organization doing this? What are the limits?" Such questions were interpreted as trollish derails rather than good-faith inquiries. (This interpretation could be right. Comments are usually judged and responded to by folk who know the asker's history; sometimes that history suggests such inquirers are just sealioning).
One poster contested the Trump voter=white supremacist argument, insisting they know lots of Trump voters who aren't. That view cut no mustard with the LGM community. Actions speak louder than words, went the criticism. You can say you're not really white supremacist (write the commenters), but when you support a guy who strikes ethno-nationalist chords in his rhetoric regularly and whose policies demonize and immiserate people of color, well...?
In other words, at the airport I found myself (virtually) immersed in just the kind of single-color, polarized space Better Angels tries to disrupt. The LGM community, by and large, would likely be among those who would respond to news about BA with disgust: giving space and voice to evil = endorsing evil.
I read such voices--as I read those of similarly polarized communities on the right--because they represent a non-BA viewpoint. Dipping into that Schmittian friend/enemy world, taking its measure, listening to its point of view, keeps me realistic. It puts the anti-polarization ethos of BA into perspective, makes it stand up and defend itself. It keeps Better Angels from becoming (for me, at least) the same kind of echo-chamber of unquestioned/unquestionable assumptions that BA would accuse LGM of being.
It also lets me flesh out my own defenses of BA-ish initiatives in the face of LGM-like criticisms. "How do you live in the real world," asked some posters, "if roughly half the country is evil?" I think that's a really, really good question. The responses from the LGM community that didn't instantly dismiss that question ran something along the lines of "So? There are plenty of times in US history where half or more of the citizenry were evil. You can still do politics."
I'm struck by that willingness to accept that half or more of the populace is--not just misguided or ignorant or duped, but--plain evil. They can't be reasoned with; compromise with them is betrayal. They need to be ostracized, expelled, made to disappear (de facto or de jure). And to be clear, right-wing communities manifest exactly the same polarized mechanisms. The world isn't just full of fools; it's full of demons. You gotta live your best life among the devils.
I see a slippage between "they did a bad thing" and "they are a bad thing" common to just about any in-group's assessments of out-group actions. Ravelry, as some commenters (and even Campos himself) note, didn't ban Trump supporters; they banned comments supporting Trump. But the title of the post mentions banning supporters; the comments mainly run in that vein. In practice, the hating the action/hating the actor distinction proves about as fragile as conservative evangelicals' "hate the sin/love the sinner" rhetoric. Declare your hatred of homosexual acts often and vehemently enough, and all anyone sees is how much you hate homosexuals.
A lot of the distinction between BA and LGM (and I'm of course oversimplifying this comparison for now) boils down to the ethics of compartmentalization. BA relies on the capability and morality of compartmentalizing fundamental disagreements. Pro-lifers and Pro-choicers (BA would say) can and should work, live, socialize, and flourish together even as they diverge sharply on a life-or-death issue. Other communities balk at that notion. Some political positions (they would say) have all-or-nothing consequences. Some positions can be, must be, litmus tests for possible/ethical coexistence.
Tricky.
More tomorrow,
JF
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Better Angels Convention 2019 Day 4
So. Cancelled flight=stuck at a St. Louis Hotel. It's not bad, really. I miss home and Alan.
But--a quick anecdote about Better Angels. After the last session ("Depolarizing Within" with Bill Doherty--I'll need to process that later), I got an Uber for my red friend and three other folk. We spent the ride telling the driver about Better Angels.
"We're trying to get liberals and conservatives to talk to each other respectfully," one BA (a red, I believe) explained.
"Good luck," laughed our driver. We described some of the typical BA activities. The driver then shared some of his own political frustrations: kids aren't being taught critical thinking, teachers are imposing views, etc. It was strongly red state in tone, but it was not the standard repartee one expects from an Uber driver. I doubt it's usual for him to be so frank (I could be wrong); he even apologized for going on to us. He had gathered, however, that it was safe for him to share, that we'd not judge him.
Cool as that was, the anecdote I mean really starts when we get to the airport, drop everyone off--and I realize I've left my computer bag (and my computer and tablet) on the curb at Washington U. Amazingly, I felt no panic--at least not the kind of panic that would consume me in just about any other context I'd left my computer somewhere. I was embarrassed, frustrated with myself. (There's always the old This is it. The rot. The early onset dementia... voice.) But I felt a bit like I had left my computer with my family. Such a hokey thing to say, that. But I felt sure that someone had my back.
The Uber driver was kind enough to take me back to the U. On the way back, I got a call. Someone had found my bag and put it somewhere safe. I fetched it. The Uber driver (so nice!) took me back to the airport (I added a huge tip). Another BA person called to make sure I'd gotten the bag.
I don't know that I've ever felt such trust at a conference.
And I'm very glad I got my computer back, lol.
More tomorrow
JF
But--a quick anecdote about Better Angels. After the last session ("Depolarizing Within" with Bill Doherty--I'll need to process that later), I got an Uber for my red friend and three other folk. We spent the ride telling the driver about Better Angels.
"We're trying to get liberals and conservatives to talk to each other respectfully," one BA (a red, I believe) explained.
"Good luck," laughed our driver. We described some of the typical BA activities. The driver then shared some of his own political frustrations: kids aren't being taught critical thinking, teachers are imposing views, etc. It was strongly red state in tone, but it was not the standard repartee one expects from an Uber driver. I doubt it's usual for him to be so frank (I could be wrong); he even apologized for going on to us. He had gathered, however, that it was safe for him to share, that we'd not judge him.
Cool as that was, the anecdote I mean really starts when we get to the airport, drop everyone off--and I realize I've left my computer bag (and my computer and tablet) on the curb at Washington U. Amazingly, I felt no panic--at least not the kind of panic that would consume me in just about any other context I'd left my computer somewhere. I was embarrassed, frustrated with myself. (There's always the old This is it. The rot. The early onset dementia... voice.) But I felt a bit like I had left my computer with my family. Such a hokey thing to say, that. But I felt sure that someone had my back.
The Uber driver was kind enough to take me back to the U. On the way back, I got a call. Someone had found my bag and put it somewhere safe. I fetched it. The Uber driver (so nice!) took me back to the airport (I added a huge tip). Another BA person called to make sure I'd gotten the bag.
I don't know that I've ever felt such trust at a conference.
And I'm very glad I got my computer back, lol.
More tomorrow
JF
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Better Angels Convention 2019 Day 3
Another long but productive day.
So, everyone attending Better Angels (the "delegates" from each state) have name badges with lanyards. Each lanyard is color-coded to the delegate's ideological side--red or blue. Various activities--breakout groups, planning sessions, feedback times--all make use of the identifiers to help us break out of echo chambers. "Find someone of the opposite color" is a common instruction.
Such IDs make every casual interaction charged with significance. You're either reaching across the aisle or talking with a coalition. There's meet and greets involved in every conference. But here we're encouraged (not even explicitly) to be extra outgoing, make ourselves known to strangers, and build some connections. You'll see plenty of blues hanging with blues and reds hanging with reds. But the red-blue interactions are really what the organizers want.
I made friends with a red from Alabama (I'll keep his exact info mum for now). We hung out a lot. As we did so, we found ourselves framed by various BA photographers on the lookout for cross-party pals. Eventually we got pulled aside for an interview. I'll post that if/when it's made public.
I've found the red/blue lanyards useful in the inevitable "so what do you do as a theatre prof with Better Angels?" question. I say I read the event through a performance lens, pointing out how so much of BA's Convention involves us performing--or suppressing our performances of--our political leanings. We perform them via lanyards and speeches. But, in fishbowl exercises and in listening more generally, we all consent to the emotional labor of schooling our expressions and responses. Thus the common complaint in red-blue workshops: it's so hard not to roll your eyes!
Such emotional labor is, like civility itself, a vexed enterprise. Marginalized groups usually are made to perform more such labor than privileged groups, so asking this labor of them is no small thing. Most everyone seems up for the challenge, though. I've met and had rewarding conversations with so many people.
Do rewarding conversations solve polarization? Of course not, not alone. But they are something other than affective polarization. They establish a modest little utopian space of realized moral imagination. That it can happen--at least on small scales--disrupts the idea that polarization is inevitable.
More tomorrow,
JF
So, everyone attending Better Angels (the "delegates" from each state) have name badges with lanyards. Each lanyard is color-coded to the delegate's ideological side--red or blue. Various activities--breakout groups, planning sessions, feedback times--all make use of the identifiers to help us break out of echo chambers. "Find someone of the opposite color" is a common instruction.
Such IDs make every casual interaction charged with significance. You're either reaching across the aisle or talking with a coalition. There's meet and greets involved in every conference. But here we're encouraged (not even explicitly) to be extra outgoing, make ourselves known to strangers, and build some connections. You'll see plenty of blues hanging with blues and reds hanging with reds. But the red-blue interactions are really what the organizers want.
I made friends with a red from Alabama (I'll keep his exact info mum for now). We hung out a lot. As we did so, we found ourselves framed by various BA photographers on the lookout for cross-party pals. Eventually we got pulled aside for an interview. I'll post that if/when it's made public.
I've found the red/blue lanyards useful in the inevitable "so what do you do as a theatre prof with Better Angels?" question. I say I read the event through a performance lens, pointing out how so much of BA's Convention involves us performing--or suppressing our performances of--our political leanings. We perform them via lanyards and speeches. But, in fishbowl exercises and in listening more generally, we all consent to the emotional labor of schooling our expressions and responses. Thus the common complaint in red-blue workshops: it's so hard not to roll your eyes!
Such emotional labor is, like civility itself, a vexed enterprise. Marginalized groups usually are made to perform more such labor than privileged groups, so asking this labor of them is no small thing. Most everyone seems up for the challenge, though. I've met and had rewarding conversations with so many people.
Do rewarding conversations solve polarization? Of course not, not alone. But they are something other than affective polarization. They establish a modest little utopian space of realized moral imagination. That it can happen--at least on small scales--disrupts the idea that polarization is inevitable.
More tomorrow,
JF
Better Angels Convention 2019 Day 2
Wuff. Full, intense day. Happily, I found a reliable source of latte-nated caffeine, so it was endurable.
Some quick take-aways:
I went to a morning session about abortion mainly to see if and how this often intractable issue might strain the civility mechanisms Better Angels prides itself on. It did, though the session was for most people still productive. One of the most pronounced tensions came from within the red group. Most of the reds were by their own account nuanced in their views of abortion (though all still seemed to the right of any of the blues). One red, though, carved out a position far more conservative than any of the others.
Basically: it was "clear" (they said) that the fertilized egg was fully human, both biologically human and a civic person possessing inalienable rights. Not recognizing that, in this person's view, threatened everyone's standing as rights-bearing citizens. Arguments for the welfare of whoever was pregnant with this full person, they said, boiled down to mere inconveniences. We asked more from young men drafted for Vietnam, this person said. Surely women can give their all. The person making this argument was tired and frustrated, simply fed up with the fact that people were still talking about this as if it were questionable.
Aside from my alarm at the Handmaid's Tale kind of vision this conjured (drafting women into forced childbirth), I came out of the session reflecting that Better Angels faces an odd tension. For some, BA is great because it enables debate on these difficult issues that require debate. For others, BA is offensive because it entertains debate on these black-and-white, morally clear issues that ought never be debated.
I also went to a training for Better Angels Debate Chairs. I'll write more about that form another time. It's pretty different from a lot of the other BA curricula.
The final event was a discussion between Ray Warrick, Cincinnati Tea Party leader, and Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter New York. This event--Newsome particularly--strained BA's civility engine. I don't mean that Newsome was uncivil; he was charming and charismatic even when delivering hard-hitting arguments. I mean that he presented some unvarnished accounts of the murders of unarmed black men like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile. They were murdered, he said, and the people responsible (police officers in Garner's and Castile's cases) got off. "This," he said, "is just Truth." He spoke out of anger and impatience at White America's standing to one side while black people were being oppressed.
He was powerful, convincing. Even Warrick averred that the murders had happened. "It's undeniable."
Other truths Newsome delivered: Christopher Columbus perpetrated genocide. The US has concentration camps at the border. Human-caused climate change threatens the planet. These, too, he said, are simply undeniable. And, his biggest theme: white oppression of black Americans exists and persists.
He's right, of course. That's obvious to me. But most or all of those statements fall into the category of utterances that Better Angels moderators are taught to avoid for fear of alienating reds. Don't weigh in on whether climate change is caused by humans, they tell us. It's just not going to get you anywhere useful with your red participants. I think that's true enough.
But, to live in Newsome's world, to be an ally with him and BLM, affirming the truths he uttered constitutes the entry-ticket price. You can't fight systemic racism if you deny racism exists, or if you conveniently define racism as something only isolated bigots practice.
What do you do when the necessary truth alienates half the people you're working with?
More tomorrow,
JF
Some quick take-aways:
I went to a morning session about abortion mainly to see if and how this often intractable issue might strain the civility mechanisms Better Angels prides itself on. It did, though the session was for most people still productive. One of the most pronounced tensions came from within the red group. Most of the reds were by their own account nuanced in their views of abortion (though all still seemed to the right of any of the blues). One red, though, carved out a position far more conservative than any of the others.
Basically: it was "clear" (they said) that the fertilized egg was fully human, both biologically human and a civic person possessing inalienable rights. Not recognizing that, in this person's view, threatened everyone's standing as rights-bearing citizens. Arguments for the welfare of whoever was pregnant with this full person, they said, boiled down to mere inconveniences. We asked more from young men drafted for Vietnam, this person said. Surely women can give their all. The person making this argument was tired and frustrated, simply fed up with the fact that people were still talking about this as if it were questionable.
Aside from my alarm at the Handmaid's Tale kind of vision this conjured (drafting women into forced childbirth), I came out of the session reflecting that Better Angels faces an odd tension. For some, BA is great because it enables debate on these difficult issues that require debate. For others, BA is offensive because it entertains debate on these black-and-white, morally clear issues that ought never be debated.
I also went to a training for Better Angels Debate Chairs. I'll write more about that form another time. It's pretty different from a lot of the other BA curricula.
The final event was a discussion between Ray Warrick, Cincinnati Tea Party leader, and Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter New York. This event--Newsome particularly--strained BA's civility engine. I don't mean that Newsome was uncivil; he was charming and charismatic even when delivering hard-hitting arguments. I mean that he presented some unvarnished accounts of the murders of unarmed black men like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile. They were murdered, he said, and the people responsible (police officers in Garner's and Castile's cases) got off. "This," he said, "is just Truth." He spoke out of anger and impatience at White America's standing to one side while black people were being oppressed.
He was powerful, convincing. Even Warrick averred that the murders had happened. "It's undeniable."
Other truths Newsome delivered: Christopher Columbus perpetrated genocide. The US has concentration camps at the border. Human-caused climate change threatens the planet. These, too, he said, are simply undeniable. And, his biggest theme: white oppression of black Americans exists and persists.
He's right, of course. That's obvious to me. But most or all of those statements fall into the category of utterances that Better Angels moderators are taught to avoid for fear of alienating reds. Don't weigh in on whether climate change is caused by humans, they tell us. It's just not going to get you anywhere useful with your red participants. I think that's true enough.
But, to live in Newsome's world, to be an ally with him and BLM, affirming the truths he uttered constitutes the entry-ticket price. You can't fight systemic racism if you deny racism exists, or if you conveniently define racism as something only isolated bigots practice.
What do you do when the necessary truth alienates half the people you're working with?
More tomorrow,
JF
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Better Angels Convention 2019 Day 1
I'm in St. Louis--in a dorm room at Washington U--the night after the first half-day of the Better Angels 2019 Convention.
Better Angels is a national, secular group led by David Blankenhorn aiming at depolarizing America. They specialize in facilitated interactions between "reds" and "blues." The "red-blue workshop," their signature activity, consists of a day of structured activities. Reds and blues (about 7 each), led by two moderators, go through a series of exercises designed to get them honest, get them thinking self-critically, get them listening to their ideological opposites, and finally to get them talking to the other side.
I've been researching Better Angels for about a year. Last fall I went to several red-blue workshops in different parts of the country as an observer. Earlier this year I completed training to become a moderator myself (I have yet to moderate a workshop).
When I tell people about Better Angels, I get one of two reactions. Either the enterprise seems self-evidently praiseworthy or transparently unethical.
The praisers tend to align with Better Angels' own rationale for acting. Political polarization is tearing America apart. BA can help make these disagreements less toxic, more productive. The goal, BA insists, is not finding a "happy medium" where disagreement evaporates, nor is it embracing some stress-free nirvana of puppies and rainbows. Rather, as Blankenhorn has clarified, the goals involve "accurate disagreement" (making sure the disagreements aren't based on false stereotypes) and face-to-face (rather than distanced/digitized) interactions that make dehumanization difficult. Those who find BA laudable affirm these goals.
The condemners hear a bit about BA and read a glaring subtext: can't you be a little less angry? And usually, the "you" equals some kind of marginalized or structurally oppressed group. Can't you be less angry, black people? Women? LGBTQ folk? Immigrants? Native Americans? and so forth. Such movements have to do work overtime simply to make their plights known and noticed by the powers that be. To get there, they have to generate tons of energy, passion, and outrage/anger. No one cares about a problem no one's upset about.
Yet the majority's initial reaction to criticism/outrage tends to take the form of anger at the outrage--that is, anger at those saying stop killing/hurting/exploiting/mistreating us--rather than attention to the cause of the outrage. This shoot-the-messenger mentality often fuels a kind of patronizing call to civility: Maybe people would listen to you more if you wouldn't yell or block highways or sit at lunch counters or have die-ins? Or even: I wonder if it isn't your attitude that's creating a lot of the problems for you rather than this supposed mistreatment you keep screeching about?
Mind you, I don't think BA endorses anything of the sort. But, if you're a front-line activist for a marginalized group who spends twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours fighting the majority's apathy or skepticism about the life-and-death struggle you're going through... Well, a call to love thine enemy and approach each other on equal grounds can seem like the majority's same old willful ignorance repackaged and rebranded as the solution for what ails America today.
It's hard to care about depolarization, in other words, when unarmed black men are being shot/mass incarcerated, when children are taken from their parents at the border, when the planet is burning, etc.
The hope of Better Angels is that it can get people to value a kind of civility alongside their political convictions. The audacity of Better Angels is that it asks people to value a kind of civility alongside their political convictions.
More tomorrow
JF
Better Angels is a national, secular group led by David Blankenhorn aiming at depolarizing America. They specialize in facilitated interactions between "reds" and "blues." The "red-blue workshop," their signature activity, consists of a day of structured activities. Reds and blues (about 7 each), led by two moderators, go through a series of exercises designed to get them honest, get them thinking self-critically, get them listening to their ideological opposites, and finally to get them talking to the other side.
I've been researching Better Angels for about a year. Last fall I went to several red-blue workshops in different parts of the country as an observer. Earlier this year I completed training to become a moderator myself (I have yet to moderate a workshop).
When I tell people about Better Angels, I get one of two reactions. Either the enterprise seems self-evidently praiseworthy or transparently unethical.
The praisers tend to align with Better Angels' own rationale for acting. Political polarization is tearing America apart. BA can help make these disagreements less toxic, more productive. The goal, BA insists, is not finding a "happy medium" where disagreement evaporates, nor is it embracing some stress-free nirvana of puppies and rainbows. Rather, as Blankenhorn has clarified, the goals involve "accurate disagreement" (making sure the disagreements aren't based on false stereotypes) and face-to-face (rather than distanced/digitized) interactions that make dehumanization difficult. Those who find BA laudable affirm these goals.
The condemners hear a bit about BA and read a glaring subtext: can't you be a little less angry? And usually, the "you" equals some kind of marginalized or structurally oppressed group. Can't you be less angry, black people? Women? LGBTQ folk? Immigrants? Native Americans? and so forth. Such movements have to do work overtime simply to make their plights known and noticed by the powers that be. To get there, they have to generate tons of energy, passion, and outrage/anger. No one cares about a problem no one's upset about.
Yet the majority's initial reaction to criticism/outrage tends to take the form of anger at the outrage--that is, anger at those saying stop killing/hurting/exploiting/mistreating us--rather than attention to the cause of the outrage. This shoot-the-messenger mentality often fuels a kind of patronizing call to civility: Maybe people would listen to you more if you wouldn't yell or block highways or sit at lunch counters or have die-ins? Or even: I wonder if it isn't your attitude that's creating a lot of the problems for you rather than this supposed mistreatment you keep screeching about?
Mind you, I don't think BA endorses anything of the sort. But, if you're a front-line activist for a marginalized group who spends twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours fighting the majority's apathy or skepticism about the life-and-death struggle you're going through... Well, a call to love thine enemy and approach each other on equal grounds can seem like the majority's same old willful ignorance repackaged and rebranded as the solution for what ails America today.
It's hard to care about depolarization, in other words, when unarmed black men are being shot/mass incarcerated, when children are taken from their parents at the border, when the planet is burning, etc.
The hope of Better Angels is that it can get people to value a kind of civility alongside their political convictions. The audacity of Better Angels is that it asks people to value a kind of civility alongside their political convictions.
More tomorrow
JF
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Battles, Wars, and the Kingdom of God
A friend of mine sent me a blog post today from a group called Mainstream UMC, a coalition of Methodists invested (pre-February 2019) in passing the One Church Plan and now (post-February 2019) in exploring What's Next for centrists and progressives in the UMC.
In the post, "A Texas-Sized Wakeup Call for the WCA," the the group's Exec Director Mark Holland cheers the election of mostly (68%) centrist/progressive General Conference 2020 delegates in Texas's four annual conferences. "Thanks to the Wesleyan Covenant Association for freely publishing their slate of preferred candidates in most conferences," he writes, "so we can see how they did: they…were…crushed.: These conferences also elected majority centrist/progressive delegates for the Jurisdictional Conference in 2020. With those results, the South Central Jurisdiction (eight states, twelve annual conferences) looks like it will be at least 2/3 stocked with people who oppose the Traditional Plan. The Rev. Dr. Holland is understandably pleased with this result, noting the disappointed reactions of WCA leaders in some ostensibly super-conservative Texas conferences.
I'm pleased about these results, too. I've heard indications that other US Jurisdictions have mirrored this trend (with the possible exception of the Southeastern Jurisdiction). It's heartening to see how the odiousness of the Traditional Plan has prodded centrists and progressives into (re)action. Electoral and legislative strategizing on our part helped translate that reaction into results.
But I'm wary of cheering too much for three reasons.
First, although I don't think these results are false or meaningless, they're still only the latest news in a long-term, ongoing struggle. Politics--especially democratic politics--change constantly. Instability defines the game. Results from one struggle get overturned in the next one. That's the scary thing about ostensibly immutable, eternal values in democratic systems: they're only as stable as the support they're given from vote to vote, legislature to legislature.
As Stanley Fish once quipped, democracies all have a self-destruct button installed in them in that they can always vote to un-democratize themselves. Dystopian worlds--or, less melodramatically, schisms--always lie only a couple of votes away. We voted in the Traditional Plan. We can vote it out (conceivably), but nothing really stops us from voting it or something worse right back in again. So the killjoy in me responds to electoral good news with a bit of, "That's great! What's next, though?"
Second, I note that our victories here aren't all that sweeping. Progressives and centrists like me were quick to point out how the margin of victory for the Traditional Plan was, by any standard, pretty thin (55%ish). As William Willimon noted in the wake of St. Louis, "Every pastor knows not to go into a building program with less than 60 percent of the vote." When 40% of your membership is dead-set against the plan you adopted, you have to wonder about the viability of the plan. I'm not sure that advice changes with the 70% progressive/centrist victory in Texas.
I'm curious about the extent to which splits like this in Methodism occur between churches (70% of churches are anti-Traditional Plan, 30% are pro-) or within congregations, between parishioners. Are we sorted into red churches versus blue churches, in other words, or or are we more a denomination of purple churches? Is it more the case that 3 in 10 churches in the US want the Traditional Plan or 3 in 10 members? Is resistance to the Traditional Plan proof that we're mostly blue or that we're mostly, stubbornly purple? (Perhaps these results indicate that the Traditional Plan foists an all-or-nothing redness on purple congregations that they viewed as a step too far?) These are vital questions, I think, and not ones that surface results from Annual Conference votes necessarily illuminate.
Finally, cheering too triumphantly (and I'm not suggesting that Rev. Holland does this) can shift our attention away from our ultimate concerns as Christians. Research on polarization suggests that humans fall very easily into a kind of "teamism" in which we get more invested in winning for our team (or, really, defeating the other team) than in realizing our goals. At the UMC Next meeting, many of my colleagues from other Annual Conferences expressed their weariness at constantly having to fight for their dignity and standing in the Methodist Church. Someone at my table (from New Jersey, I think?) mentioned that the struggle isn't merely tiring but addictive. The danger, she said, is that we come to view fighting and struggle as a permanent posture rather than as one means to get to who and where and what we want to be.
What we want to be, of course, is the kingdom of God, the beloved community. When the world sees our community, Jesus warns us, it should say, See how they love one another! "By this shall all know that you are my disciples..." My pastor father used to tell his parishioners that this was the most dangerous verse in scripture. Christ grants to the world--to non-Christians--the ability to measure our discipleship. They get to hold us accountable, to judge whether we're practicing what we preach. And the ruler they use to measure us isn't our good intentions. It's not our rationalizations for how loving we're really being no matter what the appearance. The criteria rests in how they see us engaging with each other.
Whenever I find myself cheering a win on "our side" or lamenting a win for "their side," I have to pause for a little Christlike killjoy reality check. What does the world see when I cheer or jeer the results of our latest struggle? Where is the Kingdom of God in how I respond to victory or defeat? Where is Christ manifested in the ways I talk about my siblings in the Wesleyan Covenant Association?
Don't get me wrong. I think my "side" does move us closer to the Kingdom. I think the world is already judging Christians harshly for how shoddily we treat LGBTQ+ people (to say nothing of how it treats other marginalized groups). We must repair that witness. I'm by no means saying this struggle is unimportant or that we can simply cease arguing, agree to disagree, etc.
But how I live out this struggle matters: how I strategize, how I describe the "other side,"--and how I cheer.
More tomorrow,
JF
In the post, "A Texas-Sized Wakeup Call for the WCA," the the group's Exec Director Mark Holland cheers the election of mostly (68%) centrist/progressive General Conference 2020 delegates in Texas's four annual conferences. "Thanks to the Wesleyan Covenant Association for freely publishing their slate of preferred candidates in most conferences," he writes, "so we can see how they did: they…were…crushed.: These conferences also elected majority centrist/progressive delegates for the Jurisdictional Conference in 2020. With those results, the South Central Jurisdiction (eight states, twelve annual conferences) looks like it will be at least 2/3 stocked with people who oppose the Traditional Plan. The Rev. Dr. Holland is understandably pleased with this result, noting the disappointed reactions of WCA leaders in some ostensibly super-conservative Texas conferences.
I'm pleased about these results, too. I've heard indications that other US Jurisdictions have mirrored this trend (with the possible exception of the Southeastern Jurisdiction). It's heartening to see how the odiousness of the Traditional Plan has prodded centrists and progressives into (re)action. Electoral and legislative strategizing on our part helped translate that reaction into results.
But I'm wary of cheering too much for three reasons.
First, although I don't think these results are false or meaningless, they're still only the latest news in a long-term, ongoing struggle. Politics--especially democratic politics--change constantly. Instability defines the game. Results from one struggle get overturned in the next one. That's the scary thing about ostensibly immutable, eternal values in democratic systems: they're only as stable as the support they're given from vote to vote, legislature to legislature.
As Stanley Fish once quipped, democracies all have a self-destruct button installed in them in that they can always vote to un-democratize themselves. Dystopian worlds--or, less melodramatically, schisms--always lie only a couple of votes away. We voted in the Traditional Plan. We can vote it out (conceivably), but nothing really stops us from voting it or something worse right back in again. So the killjoy in me responds to electoral good news with a bit of, "That's great! What's next, though?"
Second, I note that our victories here aren't all that sweeping. Progressives and centrists like me were quick to point out how the margin of victory for the Traditional Plan was, by any standard, pretty thin (55%ish). As William Willimon noted in the wake of St. Louis, "Every pastor knows not to go into a building program with less than 60 percent of the vote." When 40% of your membership is dead-set against the plan you adopted, you have to wonder about the viability of the plan. I'm not sure that advice changes with the 70% progressive/centrist victory in Texas.
I'm curious about the extent to which splits like this in Methodism occur between churches (70% of churches are anti-Traditional Plan, 30% are pro-) or within congregations, between parishioners. Are we sorted into red churches versus blue churches, in other words, or or are we more a denomination of purple churches? Is it more the case that 3 in 10 churches in the US want the Traditional Plan or 3 in 10 members? Is resistance to the Traditional Plan proof that we're mostly blue or that we're mostly, stubbornly purple? (Perhaps these results indicate that the Traditional Plan foists an all-or-nothing redness on purple congregations that they viewed as a step too far?) These are vital questions, I think, and not ones that surface results from Annual Conference votes necessarily illuminate.
Finally, cheering too triumphantly (and I'm not suggesting that Rev. Holland does this) can shift our attention away from our ultimate concerns as Christians. Research on polarization suggests that humans fall very easily into a kind of "teamism" in which we get more invested in winning for our team (or, really, defeating the other team) than in realizing our goals. At the UMC Next meeting, many of my colleagues from other Annual Conferences expressed their weariness at constantly having to fight for their dignity and standing in the Methodist Church. Someone at my table (from New Jersey, I think?) mentioned that the struggle isn't merely tiring but addictive. The danger, she said, is that we come to view fighting and struggle as a permanent posture rather than as one means to get to who and where and what we want to be.
What we want to be, of course, is the kingdom of God, the beloved community. When the world sees our community, Jesus warns us, it should say, See how they love one another! "By this shall all know that you are my disciples..." My pastor father used to tell his parishioners that this was the most dangerous verse in scripture. Christ grants to the world--to non-Christians--the ability to measure our discipleship. They get to hold us accountable, to judge whether we're practicing what we preach. And the ruler they use to measure us isn't our good intentions. It's not our rationalizations for how loving we're really being no matter what the appearance. The criteria rests in how they see us engaging with each other.
Whenever I find myself cheering a win on "our side" or lamenting a win for "their side," I have to pause for a little Christlike killjoy reality check. What does the world see when I cheer or jeer the results of our latest struggle? Where is the Kingdom of God in how I respond to victory or defeat? Where is Christ manifested in the ways I talk about my siblings in the Wesleyan Covenant Association?
Don't get me wrong. I think my "side" does move us closer to the Kingdom. I think the world is already judging Christians harshly for how shoddily we treat LGBTQ+ people (to say nothing of how it treats other marginalized groups). We must repair that witness. I'm by no means saying this struggle is unimportant or that we can simply cease arguing, agree to disagree, etc.
But how I live out this struggle matters: how I strategize, how I describe the "other side,"--and how I cheer.
More tomorrow,
JF
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