The joy of learning from people I diametrically disagree with (I recommend the practice)
I’ve written before about a practice I’ve come to see as a part of maturation: reading and studying people I disagree with—the more opposition, the more I value the learning. I mean more than just learning their views. I mean empathizing with them, learning the sources of their views, and reaching a place where what they say makes sense.
Reading, learning, and understanding don’t mean agreeing or supporting. On the contrary understanding to the point where they feel understood enables you to lead them. For example, if a pro-choice person says a pro-life person just wants to control women’s bodies or a pro-life person says a pro-choice person wants to kill babies, each has undermined their ability to influence the other.
When I tell people who agree with me that I’m going to talk to people they disagree with, they often respond with fear or trepidation. They respond to my talking about sustainability leadership to people at Heritage or Cato like it’s Star Wars and I’m considering joining the dark side. I think they think talking to someone they disagree with risks joining them, as if all humans don’t share overwhelmingly more common beliefs and goals than opposing ones, or as if my beliefs are that fragile.
To clarify, to learn from others, I do have to listen with my mind open to learning I’m wrong about something I thought I was right about. Otherwise, I’m less listening and more trying to win or persuade.
A couple recent examples
Regular readers know I consider sustainability necessary for liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. I’m in the middle of reading a book called Green Tyranny, which traces environmentalism to Nazi Germany, then to Sweden and modern Germany. It connects it with violent revolution and anti-democracy.
Environmentalists who call those they disagree with deniers or skeptics won’t read a book like it. They’ll only attack it. I find it fascinating. I also find it important to learn from, precisely because we disagree on many things, but more because I didn’t know a lot of things in it. People read the book. The author isn’t mindless or evil, as I suspect environmentalists would consider.
How can I talk to someone who reads that book or others like it if I refuse to read it? Well, a lot of voters agree with it. If you disagree with them, but they keep winning elections, do you want to keep losing? What if you are wrong about something that someone you disagree with gets it right? What if you lived when everyone thought the earth was flat?
There’s plenty in the book I didn’t know. I also see plenty I know that the book misses. How would I know specifically what if I didn’t read it?
Learning about people I disagree means I’m going to learn something.
Another example: I’ve written about how living more sustainably in the US means I increasingly feel like I’m in Monticello listening to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson didn’t free his slaves, which led to his legacy expanding slavery, since it showed he supported the institution in practice.
His legacy expanding meant more slavery, which meant later people expanding beliefs beyond his. One big example was John C. Calhoun, who became known for his speech declaring slavery not just a necessary evil, as Jefferson saw it, but as a “positive good.”
I started learning more about Calhoun and he’s fascinating. He’s not just some evil genius or duped fool and we are no more or less human than he was. Therefore, he came to say those words for reasons that we can understand. Again, learning and understanding don’t mean agreeing and supporting.
Besides my being guaranteed to learn things I didn’t know, which is joyful in itself, I can connect to people I wouldn’t have otherwise. How else do you expect to influence them?
Meanwhile, I see environmentalists learning only more of what they already know, which undermines their ability to influence. It’s also a more boring life only to talk to people we already agree with.
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