What if your hopes were my fears?
Empathetic conversations for a better society
When I was in high school, I participated in Citizen University’s Youth Collaboratory. It was a one-year civics and leadership program for students in 10th or 11th grade. Throughout the year, we worked on personal civic projects and met altogether three times in different locations in the U.S.
At one of those gatherings, we did an activity involving two U.S. maps. On one map, we were asked to place Post-It notes that expressed our hopes for the country. On the other map, we stuck Post-It notes that expressed our fears for the country.
After all the Post-Its were placed on the maps, the facilitator asked, what happens if we reverse the maps? What happens if you meet a person for whom your hopes are their fears, and your fears are their hopes?
It was an odd question that shocked many of us. We then gathered in small groups to discuss. I remember one young woman spoke about her being a lesbian and was distressed at the thought that some people would be afraid of her hope for LGBTQ acceptance. She said something like, “They’re afraid of me! Me! A young woman!”
Then I said to her, they’re not afraid of you exactly. They’re afraid of their world turning upside down. What they’re afraid of is an abstraction, a monster in their mind. The facilitator then indicated that that was the key takeaway from this exercise: that the shared psychological experience of hopes and fears, even when the contents are contradictory, can form the foundation for understanding one another better.
At least this is how I remember this incident. It’s very hazy in my mind. I forget the exact words that anyone said, including myself. I was also a very different person then. I did not identify as queer — although I sometimes wondered if I was asexual. I was a kid who worried about political polarization and our loss of empathy for one another. Correspondingly, I had a habit of trying to empathize with everyone, including those whose interests were against mine. Now, I realize that ideological polarization is not necessarily a bad thing — though I would still say that emotional polarization often is 1 — and that without strong political commitments for myself, I fell too easily for both-sides-ism.
Would the current me, having embraced various social identities that are marginalized in society, have the psychological flexibility to make that same discovery that high school me did in the hopes and fears exercise? I’m not so sure. But I do know that the empathy I had, though at times problematic, is also a crucial skill for connecting with people and potentially changing their beliefs. People won’t want to change if they’re being attacked. But if they feel understood, they can become more curious to learn more.
As a radical leftist, how do I practice compassion towards people of other political orientations, even when they are working against my existence? One key thing to understand is that no one is born awakened. We’re all conditioned by society to uphold neoliberal, capitalistic institutions and ideals. And we all experience resistance to change, especially change to our belief systems. But underneath that web of beliefs, we are all humans just trying to survive and live well.
Our true enemies are not people, but rather the delusions in our minds. It takes continual inner work to escape the grip of these delusions and avoid being trapped again. A lot of politics today is quite delusional in a lot of senses — for example, the mass paranoia towards immigrants and anyone else considered “other.” No person or group is immune to these forces that play on the vulnerabilities of our psyches.
Some of my most satisfying conversations when canvassing were with hardline Republicans. Even if I couldn’t change their minds, I could understand how they tick, and they might be talking with a trans person or a leftist knowingly for the first time in their life. And in order to change as a society, we need more of these conversations between people who disagree. It’s definitely really hard and vulnerable — I’ve been delaying on confronting my otherwise progressive neighbor again about her Zionist beliefs — but it’s necessary for our relationships to grow.
The difference between ideological and emotional polarization: Ideological polarization is when two groups of people increasingly develop more and more contrasting belief systems or ideologies. Emotional (or affective) polarization is when two political groups increasingly develop more and more animus against each other and more and more loyalty to their own group. See this Wikipedia article.