Throughout much of human history, ideology has served to legitimate conflict.  The opposing side has either been characterized as hideous savage or unsophisticated rube, but the result has been the same:  a framework broadcast by radio, pamphlet, or blog to legitimize everything from the most violent atrocities to the seemingly more mundane dismissals of those who do not see the world just as we do.

Here in the U.S., we prefer to view ourselves as far more sophisticated than, say, our Rwandan or Sudanese counterparts.  Though we might not care to admit it, many people here view those groups as savages.  And while the physical violence enacted in those places has been profoundly macabre, the ideological energy that has driven that violence has been little difference than the seemingly minor incivilities that ideologues create here.  Tea Party protestors spit on black Congressional representatives during the recent health care reform vote.  Highly educated parents who decide that they want to keep non-organic vaccines from potentially defiling their precious children show no such regard for their neighbor’s children.  Extreme liberals or conservatives who are so sure that they know what is best for everyone else that they will apply extreme characterizations to those who forward the opposing viewpoint—confident that finding ways to undermine their opponent’s credibility will ensure that their opponent’s view gets no consideration.  And, indeed, this approach often works.

Left or right, there is a turgid Party Line that must be towed, lest one face public humiliation.  On the Left, any attempt to question explanations of global warming, or, worse, to challenge Acceptable ideas for addressing it will yield the dreaded “Denier” label.  Indeed, the simple use of the term “global warming” will elicit a quick and patronizing correction in some circles:  “It’s climate change.”  On the Right, any acknowledgement that global warming should be seriously addressed will draw similar denunciations.  Though it has been more than a century since this nation has seen large-scale internal violence, this ideological incivility is no less corrosive to our national fabric.

This nation was founded on the ideal that people from a range of backgrounds and perspectives could come together here in this place and find both opportunity and free expression, be that expression word or act.  For many, this ideal still holds true.  For some, it has never quite held true—but still it has remained an inspiring and solemn promise.  That some who have enjoyed the ability to pursue this ideal most liberally might poison the well from which all of us nourish our hopes and dreams is despicable.

At the end of the day, while I might disagree vehemently with your ideas, I will not only defend your freedom to express them but I want to hear and understand them.  That is why I work for the Interactivity Foundation.  We are a small organization, but we are doing work that I believe is has the power to truly enrich our democracy.

Done well, we allow a small group of citizens to come together to share a meal and to have the chance to really hear and consider opposing points of view.  Facilitating such discussions can sometimes be challenging because people are often inclined to argue or, worse, to try to shut down an “unacceptable” view, as if simply hearing such a view is anathema.  Indeed, there is, too often, a religious venom to the bite directed at The Other View.  True believers act as if hearing a contrasting view will sully their ideological purity.

Here at IF, we aspire to model a different approach, whereby citizens can rely upon an skilled facilitator to amplify a range of viewpoints.  This allows participants to leave a discussion with a better understanding of and respect for both their own and their fellow citizens’ points of view.  In fact, most of our participants, given the chance to really hear a range of views, leave the discussion with a profound appreciation for the opportunity to have had such an exchange.  They even report having adjusted their own views in a somewhat different direction.  That, more than anything, gives me hope that a stronger democracy can be had here and that the promises of opportunity and free expression might still hold true.

Where to begin with his stories? Underage Navy veteran of World War Two? Progressive supporter of the farm implement strikes round and about Moline, Illinois? Budding investigative reporter of the early Civil Rights movement, after a detour through a fine arts program? Aide to a visionary municipal leader? Communications advisor to many officials and causes? Or citizen activist on matters large and small? Or picking up the Habitat for Humanity hammer at seventy-plus in the delta country of Mississippi?

This week of fond remembrance has helped me see that he was much more than the sum of these parts. I realize now that he was one of those who I regard as a model of active citizenship. He was constantly engaged and looking to leave things better than he found them. He certainly had a point of view: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In the wake of shared difficulties (usually reactions from powers-that-be to our assaults on the status quo) he would assure me that one significant measure of a life was the types of people one had managed to make angry. In the wake of problems solved he was just as quick to point out that another measure of a life was the diversity of people one could work with. Let’s say Owen was blessed by abundance in both categories.

It was this abundance in his friendships, partnerships, and information sources that made me think of him as one of my models of civic engagement. For over forty years he participated in a weekly luncheon discussion of issues of the day. His conversation partners in these luncheons included Republican and Democrat leaders, business executives, government administrators, old Milwaukee socialists, labor union officials, peace and civil rights activists, and clergy. But at the end of the day those partners were exchanged for cab drivers, machinists, office workers, and nurses. He could bring something to and learn something from both conversational environments.

Owen had an abiding interest in helping people understand how government worked and what policy meant in every day terms. If you were his favored political candidate he could not abide ill-informed comments out of your mouth. If he was backing your cause he did everything he could to help shape a clear and compelling message based on facts. He held us all to high standards.

Wisconsin noted the passing of another notable character this week. One of the four co-conspirators of the bombing of the Army Math Center on the University of Wisconsin campus in 1970, Dwight Armstrong, died at 58. Owen and Dwight were both opponents of the Vietnam War. They obviously had very different ideas about how to shape public opinion about that fracas. Oddly enough their paths crossed a number of times in some fairly unusual ways, including Owen calling in a labor union favor to have Dwight transferred to a less dangerous cell block in the prison where he was doing time for a methamphetamine manufacturing conviction in the 1980s. No doubt some large part of Owen probably thought of Dwight as a total knot head. At the same time, he knew full well the passions of the time and the chain reactions of bad decisions that young men seem so prone to. Owen was a compassionate grouch.

Owen would have probably found it amusing and predictable that a week after he and Dwight died that the Sunday New York Times devoted forty column inches to Dwight. Owen tallied zero inches in the national record. But here in Wisconsin, Owen’s legacy runs deep. He shaped conversation and touched lives. He taught so many how to talk and argue in ways that brought out the best in them. And he never so much as touched a bomb after his World War Two service.

Well, small-scale actions can have big effects.  Ask most people and you’ll likely find that there has always been someone who did or said something that opened their eyes to a new possibility or that helped turn their lives to a new direction. Many of us can think of a teacher who changed our lives. Or maybe it was a coach, a pastor, a relative, or a family friend. We can often recall the moment when it happened. Perhaps in a particular class session or in an after class conversation. Regardless of the details, we’ve all had these kinds of experiences, these moments of personal encounter and insight, and these are always a matter of human life at the small scale. We don’t usually have these kinds of illuminating, and perhaps life-altering, encounters in a mass group.

Now my point isn’t to say that participation in an Interactivity Foundation discussion group will change your life. We can’t promise that it will be a life-changing event. My point is that you shouldn’t hold the small-scale of these discussion experiences against them. Quite the opposite. Rather than seeing the small-scale of these citizen discussions as an impediment to their capacity to foster significant insights or to nurture positive change in our lives, you might see how the very human scale of these experiences actually increases the likelihood of generating such insights or fostering such change.

The StoryCorps project that airs on NPR is full of autobiographical stories of such transformative personal encounters. Recently they aired a story from Olly Neal (you can listen to or read his story here:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113357239). Neal recounts how, as a disaffected African-American high school student back in 1950s Arkansas, he was drawn to a book in the school library: it had a woman in risqué attire on the cover and its author, Frank Yerby, was African-American. Rather than risk his tough-guy image with his peers, who’d disparage him for reading, Neal decided not to check out the book. He decided to steal it instead. He returned the book a couple of weeks later—only to find that there was another Frank Yerby book on the shelf.  So he stole that book as well. And, as you might guess, when he returned it, he found yet another Yerby book on the shelf, and so on. Only some years after his graduation did he learn that the school librarian, Mildred Grady, had witnessed his “theft” and had correctly guessed that he needed to avoid the blow his reputation would take if he was discovered to be a book reader.  So she and a colleague took it upon themselves to make the long drive to Memphis to find more Yerby books to replenish the shelves and encourage his reading (remember, this is Arkansas in the 1950s, well before the advent of Amazon). Neal did become a book reader—and a law school graduate, ending up as an appellate judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. He credits this relatively small-scale act on the part of Mildred Grady for helping to steer him in this positive direction.

Of course can’t guarantee that all your encounters in Interactivity Foundation discussions will be so transformative.  We’re not claiming to measure up to the Mildred Gradys of the world. We’re just trying to pay attention to the little things that can really count. We’re just making some space for a human scale of discussion, which just might have the possibility of really counting for something big.

For the second, you might think of a group of seven citizens seated around a table, working with a neutral discussion facilitator, discussing how our society should approach health and healthcare. While they clearly disagree with each other, no one is shouting. They clearly have strong feelings about these topics, but no one is trying to shut down or exclude those who think differently. And while some of their comments, at least initially, use the same words as the slogans chanted in the large town hall meetings, the group takes time to think about what these comments could mean. They start to envision what kinds of consequences might ensue if we took these different ideas seriously. And with some prompting, they start to discuss how and why others might think differently about these topics.  This discussion, as you might guess, was a public (or citizen) discussion sponsored by the Interactivity Foundation.

There are many ways these two kinds of citizen discussions diverge. Right now I’d like to focus on the different attitudes of discussion that they embody. Every discussion has a different attitude, a distinct way that the participants relate to each other and their participation in the discussion.  Each kind of discussion is pervaded by its own spirit.  The spirit of this summer’s Congressional town-hall meetings has been almost overwhelmingly one of fear:  fear of change, fear of losing one’s place in society, fear of losing control of one’s own life, fear of the “other.” People are scared of losing what they have or what is familiar. Fear motivates people to fight for “mine.” It precludes being open to others.  We feel like there are scarce resources, so we have to fight for what is ours and eliminate our opponents.  When we’re in a state of fear, we have tunnel vision. We focus on what’s in front of us. We can’t think broadly or see new possibilities.

The spirit of an Interactivity Foundation discussion is predominantly one of generosity. Generosity is an attitude of openness, in this case, openness to what others might think or feel, and openness to where those ideas might lead. Generosity can spring from a sense that we’re in this together, that we have shared resources, and we’ll make more of them if we work together. Rather than fighting against each other for waht’s “mine,” the attitude of an Interactivity Foundation discussion is to explore together what could be—even when we’ll never agree about what should be. Now this doesn’t mean that fear is banished or that there’s no negativity. With any topic, and especially one like health, there will always be issues that come up, that provoke fears.  With any good discussion, we are going to encounter beliefs that seem wrongheaded or even repugnant to someone in the group. But if the participants engage with a spirit of generosity, those divergences will be brought up, explored, and allowed to play out—without animosity or recrimination.

When you think about engaging in a public or citizen discussion, you might ask yourself which of the above two examples most appeals to you:  the rancorous shout-fests that seem tailor-made for cable TV or the quiet meeting where diverging perspectives are collaboratively explored? If it’s the second, then think about the attitude of generosity that is necessary for it to be successful. Fear is easy enough to provoke. True generosity takes patience and deliberate effort to put into practice.

In our work together, it’s vital to adopt an attitude of  “yes-and,” a spirit of creative generosity and innovation.  This is one way to embody generosity of spirit, a core aspect of our approach to discussions.  Let me share a snippet from Stephen Colbert, who offered this as general advice to the 2006 graduates of Knox College; it is particularly good advice when it comes to thinking about how you should approach our discussions:

So, say “yes.” In fact, say “yes” as often as you can. When I was starting out in Chicago, doing improvisational theatre with Second City and other places, there was really only one rule I was taught about improv. That was, “yes-and.” In this case, “yes-and” is a verb. To “yes-and.” I yes-and, you yes-and, he, she or it yes-ands. And yes-anding means that when you go onstage to improvise a scene with no script, you have no idea what’s going to happen, maybe with someone you’ve never met before. To build a scene, you have to accept. To build anything onstage, you have to accept what the other improviser initiates on stage. They say you’re doctors—you’re doctors. And then, you add to that: We’re doctors and we’re trapped in an ice cave. That’s the “-and.” And then hopefully they “yes-and” you back. You have to keep your eyes open when you do this. You have to be aware of what the other performer is offering you, so that you can agree and add to it. And through these agreements, you can improvise a scene or a one-act play. And because, by following each other’s lead, neither of you are really in control. It’s more of a mutual discovery than a solo adventure. What happens in a scene is often as much a surprise to you as it is to the audience.

(Colbert’s 2006 Knox Commencement Speech )

This attitude lies at the heart of our approach to exploratory and collaborative discussions.  It’ll shape what we do together in the Summer Institute, and it’ll shape what your students do when they engage in student-centered discussions.  When we engage in this kind of generative discussion, we don’t really have a script.  Sure, there is a general structure and an overall arc of development, but we don’t know exactly how things are going to develop or what insights will emerge along the way.  We’ll likely end up at places that are a surprise to us.  Places we’d never likely have found on our own.  We won’t know in advance whether some lines of discussion may lead us astray or whether, by such meandering, we’ll actually come upon important discoveries, discoveries we might never have found without such a detour.  Adopting an attitude of saying “yes-and” will do much to boost the creative potential of our discussions.

In my email I mentioned a section from Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, where he gives a quick illustration of the importance of the attitude of “yes-and.”  It is from a part of the book on “the Structure of Spontaneity” (pp. 111-117) that is particularly apt for what we’re doing (actually, the whole book sheds a lot of light on the kind of social cognition and thinking that is vital to discussion facilitation).  The section on the Structure of Spontaneity  is quite applicable to what we’ll be doing together.  It might help you in thinking about your approach to our discussions.

–Jeff Prudhomme