We’ve become increasingly apathetic towards one another. Ruth Conniff writes that it’s time to reconnect with one another, get out of your heads, and reconnect with humanity.
We’ve grown more distant from one another. Ruth Conniff writes,” It’s time we get back in touch with each other, get out of our heads, and reconnect with our popular humanity.” We’ve grown more distant from one another. Ruth Conniff writes,” It’s time we get back in touch with each other, get out of our heads, and reconnect with our frequent humanity.”
We’ve become increasingly apathetic towards one another. Ruth Conniff writes that it’s time to reconnect with one another, get out of your heads, and reconnect with humanity.
In the United States, a battle against reality has been ongoing for much of the past ten years. This situation makes it challenging to envision constructive civic conversations, democratic agreement creation, or a cessation to politically charged conversations stirred by election skeptics, conspiracy theorists connected to COVID-93, and the Republican chaos faction in Congress. As the world grows more divided, social scientists, political coordinators, and reporters are beginning to concentrate on methods to get out of stubborn political deadlocks. In his book titled How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion that was released last year, David McRaney, a journalist and podcaster, detailed various studies and initiatives by researchers and activists. These have shown the powerful impact that deep and empathetic listening can have on altering an individual’s mindset. McRaney explains that the political approach called “deep canvassing” was instrumental in changing Californian’s views on LGBTQ+ rights in the early 2000s. This method helped sway dissenters who had earlier disapproved a ballot initiative to acknowledge same-sex marriage. It also played a role in the disapproval of Donald Trump in his 2020 re-election campaign. The secret to persuading people to alter their views in both situations was through empathetic conversations that counteracted the “us against them” mentality. These discussions subtly nudged individuals to recognize contradictions in their own thought processes. In-depth canvassing discussions targeting LGBTQ+ topics, initiated by the Los Angeles LGBT Center, have demonstrated notable influence, causing a shift in some voters’ opinions towards gay marriage and transgender rights. In 2020, People’s Action conducted the same experiment in battleground states, deeply canvassing hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters and successfully influencing, on average, a 3.1-point shift towards Joe Biden. Psychiatrist Karin Tamerius has undertaken comparable efforts, establishing the Smart Politics organization. Its objective is to use therapy methods to train liberals on how to conduct more productive dialogues with their conservative family members.
