When Being Right Gets in the Way of Getting Anything Done
There is something increasingly strange about the way people who broadly share the same values talk to one another.
We agree on a lot. We care about fairness. We want people to have opportunities. We want strong communities. We care about clean air and water - everywhere. We want children to have good schools. We believe government has a role to play in making people's lives better. We want people to be treated with dignity.
And yet, somehow, we've gotten very good at finding the places where we disagree, putting them under a microscope and using what we find to create division when we need solidarity.
Sometimes the differences are important and worth arguing about. That's politics. But too often it feels like the argument itself has become the point.
People who are broadly on the same side of an issue - and an aisle - can spend enormous amounts of energy proving that someone else isn't quite on their side. Regularly, they use that energy at high volume, like a bold red arrow emphasizing, "GOTCHA!" There is gratification in having identified and protected the more thorough, virtuous point of view, the granular difference or addition. The distinction becomes more important than the shared objective. A battle over the nuanced caveat takes the place of a victory for the broader purpose. The language gets more precise, the lines get more rigid and the point of view considered acceptable gets smaller.
And then we wonder why nothing gets done.
This is where I think we have lost the thread. If the goal is to change a policy, pass legislation, build a coalition, improve a community or solve a problem, then the question isn't simply, who is right? It's also, who do we need? Who needs to be persuaded? Who needs to be brought along? Who already agrees but hasn't been asked? Where is there common ground? And where are we willing to disagree without deciding that disagreement makes collaboration impossible?
Those are public affairs questions. They're also just practical questions about how things get done.
I've spent much of my career working on complicated issues where there isn't a single audience, a single point of view or a single path forward. The people involved may have very different interests. They may disagree about the problem, the solution or both. That doesn't mean there is no place to start.
One of the things I find most useful about working with people who disagree is that the disagreement often isn't as complete as it first appears. In fact, it rarely is.
Someone may have a very different view of government but near-identical beliefs about what is needed to improve their shared community. Neighbors may disagree about a particular policy but want the same equitable outcomes for the children and families that share their block. A gaggle of policy wonks may object to the way an idea is being presented - and by whom - while agreeing with much of what they are trying to accomplish.
A growing mistake is assuming that uniting behind shared values means pretending the differences don't exist or aren't important.
Nope.
It means allowing for the possibility that a wide-open path toward a shared goal is more useful than red lights and detours as far as the eye can see. If we have to adjust along the way, that's okay. The goal is to keep moving toward greater benefit for more people.
Where I live, there is an ongoing, passionate debate about how our government and our community will address the many issues around people who are living homeless. It's so passionate and complex that sometimes I think we've lost the shared belief underneath it all.
No one wants people to be unhoused. No one wants them to be sick or cold or hungry or unmedicated and dangerous. No one wants encampments. No one wants criminal activity in unmonitored areas. No one.
And yet I've heard vicious arguments break out over how to refer to a population of people who are unhoused.
When we're stuck on what words to use, who can be surprised when people turn away from one another instead of seeking real solutions?
The granular became so much bigger than the whole that we're buried in the grains of sand instead of helping our community dig out.
This is probably what bugs me the most.
There is a tendency, particularly among people who are already politically engaged, to treat disagreement as a reason to move away from someone rather than a reason to understand them better. But if we're serious about accomplishing something, that can be exactly backward.
The person who doesn't use our language may still be an ally. The organization that doesn't share every one of our priorities may still share most of them. The person who thinks our preferred solution is wrong may have identified a problem we haven't considered. The person we are tempted to dismiss may be someone we eventually need.
Instead of embracing the exasperation - and often baffling solidarity - of being "opposed," why not keep kicking over rocks until everyone finds something they can embrace together?
That's not capitulation. It's strategy.
I think we sometimes confuse values and tactics. Two people can share fundamental values and still disagree profoundly about how to achieve them. That disagreement can be productive because it forces better thinking, exposes blind spots and ultimately can make an idea stronger.
But when we start treating differences in tactics as evidence that someone doesn't share our values, we lose people who might otherwise be working alongside us.
Now the coalition is smaller, the job is harder, and remind me again: who won?
Maybe the better question isn't, are you with us? It's, what are we trying to accomplish, and who can help us get there?
Maybe it's not self-sorting by party or zip code but by willingness to collaborate for something better that we agree on. It wouldn't have to be perfect. It would only have to share a single starting block and a shared agreement that when the flag drops, we will start.
That doesn't mean abandoning principles. It doesn't mean becoming so focused on coalition-building that nothing matters anymore. It means remembering that the point of having values is to do something with them.
People who share most of the same values but spend all their energy fighting over the remaining differences are the antithesis of progress, community and momentum. If we let that approach continue to grow without a sturdy reality check, there won't be enough people on any "side" with the ability to get anything done at all.
Those "gotcha" moments haven't created a richer whole. They've built barriers that drive people away from engagement, from listening and from caring.
And if you had to be right so badly that you took down a bunch of like-minded allies to prove it, ask yourself what you actually won.
If your point of view made your community smaller, it wasn't progress. It was retreat.
We all lost.