I was first introduced to podcasts in 2014 by my friend Ted. Like I am with everything new and trendy, I was initially resistant to the idea of listening to people talk for hours about random topics. I am not a very good judge of the things that i will find interesting if I have never shown interest in them before. Much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the long discussions that I heard, and soon I expanded my podcast library. On a typical week, I listen to between 7 and ten hours of podcasts which often inspires me to read on topics I would have never thought of and writing on topics I only subconsciously knew were related. Twitter and Instagram continue to inject themselves into the lexicon of minimalist communication; podcasts are the indifferent extroverts that balance the discussion.
Because of the number of people who can participate in online discussions, it is very hard to hear what is being said. This isn’t metaphorical rhetoric, it is literally difficult to listen to a point because people are yelling over–or even at–one another. Many people are too busy reciting talking points to actually hear what is being said. We treat the world of free-thinking individuals as though they are all siblings accusing us of taking the last pop-tart. Conversations of the type quickly digress to the person who can whisper-yell the loudest while not waking up the parents.
While listening to the conversations in podcasts I started to feel a little bit lonely. I was enjoying the dialogue that I was hearing, but something was missing. I struggled through hundreds of hours of podcasts trying to figure out what gave me the lonely feeling. And then it occurred to me, as much as I was enjoying listening to others speak, I wasn’t participating and I didn’t get to ask my own questions. I realized that I needed a place to ask questions, explore my opinions, and be told I was wrong so that I could reexamine my ideas.
The problem is, there just aren’t enough in-person venues that allow people to take their opinions out for a test drive. There are a few places this type of discourse is happening: institutes of higher education, think-tanks, and research departments. Book clubs and writing groups, to an extent help to fill this void, but those are narrow interests that don’t service the greater population.
Many people have dropped out of community oriented social groups and instead take part in social acquaintanceships. People hashtag themselves into #politics, #religion, and #anyoneofthemanytrendingsociallabels. Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone argues that people have interacted less over time–opting to spend money instead of spending time with people in their community. Putnam may have had a point about the decline of social behavior. Many people would blame the decline in social interaction with the increase in social media. But blaming social media and the technology that allowed it to happen is oversimplification of the problem.
I don’t pretent to know what the actual problem is, I haven’t done the research and the books I have read on the topic peaked in popularity before the internet age was sufficient enough to garner correlation. Nonetheless, the question that kept coming to mind was: “How do we get more people to participate in intellectually challenging and engaging discussion?” In response to this question, I did the thing most people do–I Googled some semblance of the question in hopes of finding someone who has already created the step-by-step guide. It turns out, there isn’t a guide. So, without any real framework, and without any of the intended outcome, I started a few of my own social experiments.
Food for Thought is a lunchtime discussion group with the motto, “all you need to participate is an opinion.” The group is not very big (it averages about 8 people, and has attracted more than 20 at times), but the discussion is lively and the people are engaged, often times building upon one another’s arguments with personal examples. Over the course of 18 months, I have hosted nearly 30 discussions. One of the most memorable discussions was that of an individual relating their experience as a prisoner of war while discussing the book All Quiet On the Western Front. The raw emotion manifested in voice and body language could never be replicated. The transient nature of the group created a constant new vantage point within each meeting. With the small group of regulars, enough was carried forward from each discussion that the group didn’t have the feeling of starting over.
Later on, a Leadership Engagement Series was borne out of the fact that so many of us have chance interactions with good leaders (and bad ones–though they happen with such frequency, they feel very little like chance). The series was my attempt to reduce the role chance played in interacting with good leaders. I brought in proven leaders who would candidly answer a range of questions that in one way or another pertained to leadership. The panel members shared great insights, personal stories, and left the audience with perspective and a new framework of leadership.
These events provided a lot of answers, but the initial question continued to nag at me. The events were not anything special; a time and a place to meet and a topic to discuss. I walked in with a fairly in-depth understanding of the literature and a list of questions. Leading the discussions is one of the few places I feel completely at ease. It was really much simpler than I thought it would be to get started, but it was much harder than I expected to get people to participate.
At this point, many readers believe I have already lost focus of the point of this blog, to discuss policy, science, and technology–and only on the second post. But this experiment has made my very aware of why the discussion about policy, science, and technology is so hard. Its a group of topics that can be seen as controversial on their own, and can cause societal upheaval with little effort. Just the mention of social media and privacy in most circles will elicit a tirade of negativity towards the social media companies and the government that has failed to take substantial action toward regulation. After a great deal of reflection, I have come up with a few lessons lessons (the missing framework, if you will) and a call to action.
1. Focus on the people reluctant to have the conversation. People who are willingly participating in organized conversations are the people who would have the conversation anywhere. Take away the excuses of conversation avoidance by incorporating the conversation into another event, or centered around a topic. Give a firm time and place that way people can plan the conversation in to their day. The people who need to challenge their ideas are likely to be the people who would see an invitation to bring their opinion and think about all the times their opinions were invited and then shot down, which leads to number 2:
2. Make it welcoming. For people to feel welcome, the format of the discussion has to be welcoming to those who may disagree. As a matter of practice, disagreement should be encouraged. To be successful at this, a few ground rules must be established. (A great outline for disagreeing comes from Paul Graham in his essay How to Disagree.) The type of rules and the way they are enforced will determine the types of individuals that participate. Most importantly, a neutral arbitrator of the conversation should be established before it begins. The arbitrator should be someone who, while not personally partisan, can play the partisan role when needed.
3. Personal attacks stymie conversations. In an early event, an individual expressed an opinion that was contrary to the generally accepted principles of the group. Instead of exploring the thoughts behind the idea, individuals transposed Godwin’s Law from the internet to interpersonal communication. No one who disagrees with you is a Nazi for doing so. More importantly, name calling does not inspire an open sharing of ideas.
4. Don’t engage with people you agree with. For policy to be effective, not just as it applies to science and technology, but as it applies to all aspects of society, it must be discussed with everyone who has an opinion. It doesn’t have to be an opinion you agree with–I would encourage you to find a group you disagree with and engage in civil discourse. It is through the interaction with people we treat as human beings that we learn the most (and, not surprisingly, this method allows us to pass on the greatest quantity of information).
5. Be consistent and take enough time. This is the hardest thing for people to do in a society where every meal is photographed and captioned. There will always be a competing priority; to make discourse effective it must be a priority. Set aside a large chunk of time and remove all distractions. Instead, fill every moment of it with volleys of questions and answers. Intellectual curiosity is a horrible thing to waste.
Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame stated that almost no one who creates does so alone. Even if a person covers a canvas with only their own brush strokes, the inspiration was probably drawn from a conversation, or a book, maybe a walk down the street. But it wasn’t created in a vacuum. Life is inspiration, and those who explore it most live it to the fullest.
My challenge to you is to schedule a welcoming event with people you disagree with. Repeat the event numerous times and without replicating the flame wars of internet comments sections. I implore you to create your own venue for exploring opinions–all of them, not just your own. Make sure that whatever you talk about, it is something you are passionate about. And finally, don’t forget to invite me.
Convergence: Policy, Science, and Technology 