6.26.26 - Friends and Politics
I have friends on a lot of areas of the political spectrum. This is, in large part, because I score high on trait openness, which is one of those stable characteristics in the "Big Five" model some of you may know from Psych class. I also am pretty extroverted and just like people a lot (my girlfriend and I are a great example of where gender essentialism doesn't hold--I'm interested in people and she's interested in things. I'm the one who gossips about social stuff she talks about work problems and what she's learning in school).
But it was also a conscious decision. I actively tried to make friends with a lot of different people throughout my life, and I think I've accomplished it.
My childhood friends and undergrad mates are the sort of normie, institution skeptical, liberal in spirit, "both sides are fucking stupid" disillusioned Gen Zers that range from right to left. Most are second-gens but the only ethnic thing they have in common is relatively low ethnic affiliation (friend group is comically diverse). So I would say they are idiosyncratic in that sense. Actual party breakdown of childhood friends maybe 60/40 D to R.
Mom is a Gen X hippy dippy lib. Dad best described as an MSNBC lib.
My girlfriend's parents are probably emblematic Trump voters from a swing state. Very good people but just very disconnected from the "imperial core" that they buy most conspiratorial narratives.
And then there's more ideological camps of people I consciously associated with through online communities and school. Libertarians make up the largest portion. Then hardcore neoliberals. Then there's some NatCon types (I have the hardest time with these folks). FedSoc people from law school. And one law school friend who is the only Nikki Haley voter I've ever met in the wild. And then a few very SJW lefty people I am acquainted with--I don't really have a huge problem with these people but they're generally a bit skeptical of my vibe so we usually have cordial but not close relations. And finally, there are 2-3 people I would characterize as political extremists who have somehow achieved the rare feat of having ME find their views odious.
Among these people, I have people who are terminally online, people who work for legacy media, people who work for various think tanks and advocacy orgs, and people who work in government or party politics. Suffice to say, I've been fortunate to develop a pretty broad cross-section of the political map.
But having the friends isn't enough. I have genuinely spent hours and hours with people from each of these camps just *talking* and asking questions. I'm a talker by nature, so the second part is a conscious effort. I ask as many questions as I can. Mostly "why?" over and over again. I push thought experiments on these people that push their beliefs to their limits. I try and get to the real heart of our disagreements. This has been conversations ranging from the merits of place-based investment (one I had with an old classmate today) to whether multiracial democracy "works" (I'm bullish, my NatCon friend is not).
Anyways, I won't reproduce these wide ranging conversations--so what point am I trying to make? What have I learned from these life long efforts? Let me try and list them out.
1. People are just going to disagree and basically nothing--no set of words, no arguments--can bridge a lot of these gaps. There is no actual shared truth we're all circling towards imperfectly and that if we all had the same information we would all converge towards. We are operating under different, often irreconcilable value systems. And sometimes one just has to win over another. This is a hard pill to swallow. 2. Most people who care enough to think about politics at all are generally good natured and have good intentions. By that, I mean they want most people to be doing OKAY or better than they are now. If there were no tradeoffs they would push the button that increased world happiness. This seems obvious, but considering how bad things have gotten in the past (Fascism, Maoism, etc.) this is a positive finding. But still even this bare minimum js not at 100%, and I have met people (unsurprisingly, the extremists) who are OK with or even desire to HURT other people. So that's bad. 3. Understanding others isn't always satisfying. Sometimes you get to a place where both of you are able to describe what the other believes, accurately and honestly, where the other side feels actually understood ("yes you've described my beliefs and reasoning exactly, you're on the money") and it doesn't feel like a breakthrough. It only affirms how separate you both are--understanding can make you feel alone. 4. Most people are too prideful to change their minds in response to something you say. I don't know if I can recall one instance where someone said "huh, since you put it that way, maybe I wasn't wrong." This is something I don't empathize with because I do it all the time. But I've never encountered another person who has (except ONCE but that guy was actually RIGHT in retrospect and I was wrong IMO, and he had some kind of depression which probably made him not defend his position as strongly as he should have). 5. People are not curious about other people's inner worlds and we should fix that. This is the main one. I am very often asking people some version of "why do you believe that?" or "am I right that you think that X? why?." I think that we shuld al be doing that more in these trying times. Not because we're going to reach any real epiphany or bridge a gap--most of the times we don't (at least in that instance). But because relating to fellow humans is intrinsically good. Understanding for understanding's sake is good on its own terms. Even if it accomplishes nothing. 6. Some people are stupid and that's okay. Thinking about things like second and third order effects, separating procedural and legal fairness from substantive justice (and understanding that these values are at odds), understanding complex tradeoffs--these are all hard things to grasp which are essential to have any meaningful and defensible political view. They are skills that rely on a kind of reasoning that in part, are endowed on people unequally, but in larger part, are just not developed in most people. This is fine. Just have to accept it for what it is 7. You have to love people no matter what. Something I've learned from talking to all sorts of people is you just have to genuinely love them first before you'll ever understand them. Love can't be contingent on you getting an outcome or understanding you want. Because love is necessary for there to be understanding at all. Put less abstractly, you can't aay hey I won't love X person unless they hold Y values. Because you could never know about what values they hold without loving them a little bit. There's this thing I read that comedians don't do good impressions of people they hate. To do a good impression (which is really the highest form of understanding realized) you have to get them, which means you got to like--LOVE--them. knxnts
knxnts