To Be Less Polarized, We Must Humanize (with Esther Perel)

ugly crying, just wailing tears intermittently throughout Saturday. Not because all the country's problems are solved, far from that, but because now I believe we have a fighting chance to build a democracy word of us all, a democracy that works for us all, something we've been striving to achieve for this country's entire history, never quite made it. Plus, it was nice to see people flooding the streets, not to protest unjust police, but to celebrate the exercise of

people power. We set records, y'll, even those who voted differently from us, we showed up and we used our power. Well done, citizens, as of this recording, with some vote counting still happening, but not enough to change the outcome. A record seventy four million people voted for Joe Biden for president. It's the most votes any US presidential candidate has ever received. The second most votes ever received went to Donald Trump in this same election. So we are

a nation decided, and we are a nation divided. The seventy million votes for Trump aren't just numbers. They're people, people we work with, live with, and love. How do we do that? How do they do that? How do we citizen with people who think so differently from us? These aren't just questions for Biden voters, but for Trump voters and non voters too. We're all in the same country together. I've got just the person to help us with that. In this our six and final episode of

season one, what you mean you're could have stopped? There's an episode break. There's a season break. Huh, Yeah, that's right. We're wrapping this thing. More on the future of this show on the other side of the interview, that's what we call it, Deezer. Meanwhile, in this episode, we had taken it back to the beginning and our very first episode.

Valerie Coo reminded us of the power of revolutionary love in How We Citizen, and she helped us see that holding relationships with others is a key part of what it means to citizen. In this episode, I spoke with one of the world's most insightful voices on modern relationships. She's a psychotherapist and best selling author of two books,

Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs. Her TED talks have garnered over thirty million views and counting, and she executive produces and hosts two of her own podcast, How's Work and Where Should We Begin? She likes putting questions in the titles of her podcast, and I liked

putting questions to her in our podcast. Yeah, we brought in a relationship therapist, a certified relationship therapists, to help us close out this season as we try to build and heal relationships with the people in our country and in our lives who made very different choices during the election. I'm gonna tell you right up, this is one of the those episodes you gotta listen to the whole thing, and you're probably gonna want to listen a few times.

Here is my conversation with as their parrel one of our pillars of what it means to citizen is, you know, showing up and participating and being an investing in relationships because we don't citizen alone and includes being a relationship with ourselves but also with others. Your work is there is anchored in the idea of relationships, and I'd love to know your take on what does it practically mean

for someone to invest in a relationship? What does it mean for us to invest in relationships with people around us? You know, traditionally there was a way that looked at societies and divided them between task oriented societies and relationship oriented societies. To ask oriented often meant the priorities were given to time as a finite unit, to achievements, to accomplishment, to what can be measured, to what can be quantified,

and so forth. And relationships where basically everything having to do with loyalty, legacy, harmony, discords stuff that is really qualitative rather than quantitative. Maybe I should have started with that very simple sentence. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. And this is true both at home and at work. So no matter what you do, at some point you will ask yourself at the last moment did I love and was I loved?

That will mean that you had invested in your relationship, no matter what else you've done. Some people call it the difference between a resume and a eulogy. Mhm. We often here and we even in the show, we promote the idea of investing in a relationship, of putting your relationship first, of giving to the relationship. What does that mean practically speaking? What does that look like? You know? Let me put it like this growing up, this is

for everybody here. What messages did you receive about relationships where they're central in your family life and in your culture or were they're more peripheral. And if they were central, what were the messages that accompanied it? As in, you can trust people, people are there to help you. You belong to a group. Your needs just are not just your own, Your achievements are not just your own. You are part of a larger network of connections or where

you talked more rely on your own to fit. Nobody will ever tell you what to do as best as you can tell yourself. Self reliance and autonomy one set of models about relationships or loyalty and interdependence. Another set of messages about and everybody here will pretty much be able to know what was the emphasis of the messages. Not always spoken by your parents like that. You know, sometimes just by the sheer circumstances of your life, you

had to learn autonomy and self reliance versus interdependence. But to me, this distinction about how we frame relationships and therefore how we invest in them. This is a very useful frame. Mm hmm. Hearing that, I jump immediately to national characterization and you know, Western, Eastern, US, other parts of the world in terms of the individual focus, and you only have your self to rely on Protestantism. Yeah, there you go. So there's the origin. It's a combination

of capitalism and Protestantism. You know, this notion that you are at the center. It's an I versus a we. Do I conceive of myself as an eye that reaches out to we? Or do I conceive of myself as part of a we in which I try to develop an eye? Yeah, And it's not either or. There's a relationship between those two. There's a relation. And many of

us have lived in both cultures. Many of us have absorbed both systems, both their values attached to many people today in the world have grown up in one place and moved to another, you know, inside the US as well, so we inhabit sometimes more than one value system when

it comes to relationships. Give you a great example when I came to the US and I was working a lot with mixed marriages, interracial, intercultural, inter religious marriages, and many times the person was struggling between their ideology of love, which was free choice, enterprise, and their loyalty to the family, to the religion, to the culture, you know, to the

larger forces. And people would say, you should do what's right for you, and I knew that that was a very particular frame in contrast with people who lived with the notion that what's right for you never exists separately from how it affects others, you know. So they felt terribly guilty about being selfish about doing what's read and other people. You can't let other people dictate to you. Well, this is a major division cross culturally. This is a

division inside this country, inside families, and inside ourselves. It's a perfect example. I want to talk about division. We've seen an experienced an extraordinary amount of political division in the United States of late especially over the past four years, and we've seen it show up steep into our most

cherished relationships, are family relationships, are intimate relationships. What have you seen in your own practice, maybe amongst your colleagues, about how our political divisions are showing up in our relationships and how the politics has become more personal. One of the basic ways that you experience divisions in relationships is when there is a loss of a shared sense of reality. This is what you've see in couples, in families all the time, when there is you know, no

shared well off facts. And then that's you know, wrote this week that we've ceased to be a country in disagreement and we're now a country of mutual disgust. A deep division is often marked by contempt. Content is often the killer in relationships. You can have criticism, you can have defensiveness, you can have stone warding, you can have gaslighting even but contempt to actually guess that it goes off.

And with content contempt, this kind of the you've lost the basic respect for the other person and for their humanity. That is part of what we have and it's happening inside families as much as it's happening in the society. In the broader sense, people live with a sense of betrayal, and betrayal generally represents the shattering of our shared assumptions. I thought we were in this together. I thought you

had my back. I thought, you know, so there is that and to me, you know, it's an interesting thing to see on a macro level, that which you often see when you work as a couples therapists, which I do, when you work with very polarized couples, in which what else goes into division in a couple. I tend to think of myself as a rainbow. I think you are black and white. I think of myself as complex. I see you as one dimensional. I think that if I

behave poorly, it's because there are circumstances. If you behave poorly, it's characteriological that is part of a of a polarization. I don't really care to listen to you because I experience everything you say as a threat and I'm in fight flight mode, and I think that you know, if we did it your way, you know, it would be a disaster. You are willing to destroy everything which we com planet do you live on? How can you even think like this? And it's mutual. You say the same

thing to me with those words or other words. So that's what happens in a polarized couple is that you have instant escalation and a fundamental belief that the facts actually matter. But at some point the feelings and the form supersede the content. You know, if we start to talk with dismissal, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the economy or about green peace. In the engineer, it the form precedes the content. If what I think is that you have no idea what you're talking about, we

can talk about anything. I will still think that you have no idea what you're talking about. If you think I'm even if you think I don't care, if you think I'm going to bring your demise, it doesn't matter the subject matter. You will have the filter because we see what we expect to see in your experience with these couples. What's the threshold for arriving at a place of contempt and dismissal? How does that escalation happen? How

do you know your past that point? If I fundamentally distrust you and I think that you're just out for yourself, that you don't take my well being into account. I see you as a potential danger. That's part of why I'm going to fight flight. You are a threat to me. You're a threat to me because you're black. You're a

threat to me as you're a man. You're a threat to me because you're rich, because you're poor, or because you're coming to take my job, or because you are bringing indecency into our society, or because you're bringing nationalism and populism into our society. You know, in political reunite has other names than in a marriage, but basically, you are danger. When you are danger, the first thing I do is I defend, and if I can, I attack

a counterattack. I blame blame defense, blame defense, and I deflect. In a polarized relationship, I never think I have the responsibility for anything. It's you who make me do what I do, which I wouldn't do if you were different and didn't make me. And then you can you can translate it into quanity. I am the way I am because of you. If you hadn't done this, I wouldn't be.

So it's what we call hostile dependence. I need you to change, but since you don't, I am angry at you, and the more I'm angry at you, of course, the less you're gonna do, and the less you're gonna do, and the more I'm going to need you to do, you knowder for anything to change, which you're not doing, so I get enraged. So that's a vicious cycle. That's an understatement. But yes, it's a negative reinforcement. Yes, it's a complete negative feedback loop. It's it's the route of escalation.

And when you see it on the national level, it's basically when you watch Trump and Pelosi, that's what you get. So clearly there have been some efforts that you've been a part of that. You've seen that the human species has been through in our relationships before, to also repair, to return from a state of mutual disgust and contempt one of more trust and more partnership rather than threat. What is that road look like, the return to mutual respect in humanity? You know, I will respond to you

on two levels. One is in my practice as a therapist, and then one is really in other things that I have been aware of, not always fully involved with. But I have looked at South Africa, I have looked at the groups that come together as mothers or fathers of Israeli and Palestinian children, people who could hate each other for life, and who decides that they have no choice.

They won't be able to live well and sleep well unless they find some kind of dialogue with those other people, and they come together as mothers and fathers who lost their children, and that supersedes everything about this most intractable political conflict. So take me through the first part. Then as a therapist. So as a therapist, you know, the first thing I say is if you continue to repeat the same thing, the more you say what you say, the more your partner is going to say the exact

thing that you don't want them to say. Meaning we have a knack of drawing from the other side the very thing which we actually don't want. If you continue to say things are really good, things are better than ever, your partner is going to answer they're awful. So if you want to hear something else, maybe you change what you've been saying. So that doesn't mean you say things are awful. That means you say, obviously you have a

different experience. Let me listen very hard, very hard for us to listen to stuff that is fundamentally the opposite of how we see it. But that's the exercise. Then you step out of the kind of calcification of position shows, you know. Then you really start to pay attention of how you treat the other one as welle dimensional and how you think that you are much more layered and nuanced and complex, you know. So that's a big one.

Then you find some common ground. The common ground at this moment is that people feel deeply unsettled and stressed out and exhausted. Well, let's start with that. Why we are stressed out. We may say it's your fault and the other one says it's your fault, like in a relationship, but the fact is none of us are sleeping that well for the moment, you know. Then you go and

you check your perception gap. This notion that people often have in a relationship where they think that the other person is completely on the other side, like there's absolutely nothing we see how to eye here, and yet both of you wan't good for your child. One of you says we need to punish him, the other one says we shouldn't be so harsh on him. You are locked on this one. But the one thing we know is that both of you feel at the loss, and both of you would do anything to get your child to

stop using drugs. For example, this is a classic you know, and people have divorced over it. People. And now the interesting thing is the only way you can only focus on the punishment is because you've got someone here who is actually holding the value of the kindness or the empathy if you want. And the only way that you can only talk about the empathy is because you've got someone here who is talking about the limits. And you actually need each other because basically your kids needs both.

So instead of just thinking you're right, how about you try to be wise? It's better to be wise than right. Yeah. There's a phrase that I started saying the people and some of my own work, which is now, do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? Yeah? And you know that the feeling of righteousness is powerful, but its impact is pretty limited in terms of the

outcomes you want. There's a requirement in the steps that you've outlined to slow down and to want to do it and to want it and to not say you first, why should I you have done nothing? Why should I be nice? You know? That's part of the indignation to right. This is a very critical moment. So yeah, I want to go there because in the United States, we've had years of attempts at outreach, at reconciliation, at deep empathy.

After it felt to me like the New York Times devoted a whole new beat to understanding the quote unquote working class man in America. And I see all of this effort at recognition, at de escalation, at recomplexifying the other into a human I see it coming heavily from the side of liberals and progressive who feels some shame, some guilt, some compassion. We must have gotten something wrong about the country we're living in. So let's go to western Pennsylvania and find a coal miner to talk to

and understand his plate. And I've searched, and I'm not saying it's exhausted, but I have very few examples of that coming from the right end of the political spectrum. I haven't seen the humility demonstrated there to say, maybe we don't understand the country we're in. Maybe we should go to Brooklyn and understand and have a latte with some hipster and see what's really going on. Their mind, or a black person in Alabama and see what's really on her mind. One you can tell me if my

characterization is off, if you've seen something different. I'm happy to be wrong, truly, But beyond that, when one side feels like they're putting all the work in and the other side isn't, how do you move out of that sense and that possible reality. So it's very interesting because this could be a complete description inside a couple where one person says, I bring up all the conversations. I'm

the one who's always asking questions. I'm the one who's trying to improve the relationship, and my partner just sits there and just thinks that you know, he or she is beyond reproach. You know I can do no right and the other can do no wrong. Why should I? And sometimes I say, you don't have to. But the world you want to live in, you could live with yourself if you did. It's the person you want to be now. From there, I can play the metaphor and

the analogy of marriage and relationship ships. But I also understand that when nationalism and populism rises, there's a limit to the analogy. I think that things could completely improve, and your partner may still think that it's because you improved, and you would love to for them to say they made a mistake too, but they actually still think of themselves in this entitled righteous way in which they think

you're the one who came to your senses. And that's where I say, you want to share reality or you just want to say. My partner thinks that our marriage improved because I changed, because I stopped yelling, because I stopped being critical, because I finally saw whatever he or she was saying, And I will say that's how he views it, and I'm willing for him or her to think that I made all the changes. That's actually a compliment. But if I think you are still basically blaming me,

you're still holding me responsible for everything. So before it was you were the problem, now it's you are the solution. You are the solution. Is also implied you were the problem. I have to be able to not care and just say that's okay. I accept the compliment. I did all the work. Basically, my partner thinks completely different than me about what improved our relationship, and I let him think

this way because it serves me. I have an autonomy to my thinking, I no longer need him to actually think like me in order to have a shared reality. And that is a whole other way of going about this different bridge. Yeah, and I don't know if that is done on a national level, but I'll tell you something. There's a story that just happened to me recently that I've been wanting to share. Jack and I have a

flat tire. We're on the highway for four hours. Nobody can pick you up anymore because we're in the middle of this highway. A pickup truck arrives and the guy basically looks at us and he's a foreigner who got asylum who you would think, you know, you're an immigrant with that had this kind of history for sure, bad assumption. He looks at us and he says, they're an elderly couple, that we shouldn't let's go alone to the city. They

only have a doughnut. He drives us for three and a half hours, And for three and a half hours, it's like being with Fox News, every trope, everything, everything. He's screaming. He's so screaming that I'm afraid he's going to run off the road with this truck and our car in the back, and Jack just continues to listen to him, like just kindly listening and so curious like how he did it. You would think it's like masochistic.

But when we arrived, we gave him a big tip and he looks at us and he says, you're giving me money even though you know my beliefs and we are probably be really really quite different than what we think about. And I said to him, I'm not giving your money for your beliefs and giving your money for your behavior. And you were kind, and he says, I think I probably should listen a little more and talk a little less. And I said, I think that would be a good idea. You may actually here's some different

things that would be important for you. Thank you. It really is one of the experiences that have shaped us in the last months because we could have done the you know, shut up and don't talk and you know, I don't want to listen this, but instead we were curious just to see how this whole thing makes sense to him. And it's not easy to sit because you start boiling inside. You know, an occasion, it's very hard to listen to people tell you things that you fundamentally

disagree it and that will affect you. This is one thing we know in the couple, so we just instantly rebut and to actually let it land on us like that and then still be able to differentiate he's thinking from his actions, his kindness, from his racism. Oh, at the same time, holding multiple perspectives like that. I think that's on occasion when you have it, you feel hopeful. I mean. And what you extended to him in that

moment was the benefit of complexity. Yeah, you allowed him to be something more than a Fox News raver, but also a kind neighbor at the same time, and break that contradiction and you a little bit. And the other piece that I'm hearing here is about what it does to you, what it does to the person who stops talking and listens to the person who does some kind of outreach, who prioritizes the preservation of the relationship over

the righteousness of a specific position. But seriously, but don't I think that what makes the difference is if there is a relationship. This is what you asked me before. What does it mean to invest in the relationship for you to just want to understand the white man or what the Republicans think or what the Trump supporters think. You will do it if you have a friend and you kind of say, dude or or woman, doesn't matter,

explain it to me. Explain me what you experience that led to how you think that leads to how you vote. Because you care about that person, you may want to have that conversation, or you may say we have a deep connection, but it stops right here. Like in families at this moment, there are people who will continue to love their brothers, sisters, parents, aunt with whom there is

an app salute block, like we don't go there. We don't go there, but we have enough of the other things that we share, history, tradition, you know, family connections for which we are willing to stay together. Otherwise we will really be living lives in front of our own mirrors. And I think families are good training grounds for this. To see how the same aunt who is a white supremacist.

This is a friend of mine who has seem sus like my mother died, she says to me, and my aunts are white supremacists, but they're the only way that I can stay connected to my mother with people who knew her and I don't know how to handle it, h to which you say, you know, basically, if you only talk about your mother primarily, you just focus on that, and it's a good chance that there's not much else that you will share with them, unless you say, I

can be in the presence of people who think this way, they are a threat to my survival, and I'll find other ways to remember my mother, or you say I'll make sure to see them once a year. I mean it brings us back to the initial relationship conversation about seeing the person with whom you're in relationship as a threat more than as a partner, and that might be a decision that you come to, maybe after trying a

few things before. Then. There are many of us who have parents, have partners, have colleagues who we have fundamental disagreements with, not about what color shade the sky is, but do we take a pandemic seriously or not? Do we believe in the humanity of immigrants or not? Do you know that I used to have screaming matches with my parents every Friday night when we had family gathering. I'm sure that screaming matches about politics. And then they

would say you're young. It's okay to be lefty when you're young. You learned later, right, And that was even more like, you know, you your naive, you know? And I was saying you're immoral, and they were saying you're naive, which is kind of the division, you know, between liberal and conservative here. It's like once he's the other as dangerous and naive, the other one sees the other as morally dangerous. And yet we would finish the screaming match

and we start doing the dishes together. I can't even tell you the rage that would come out of me, like how can you say things like this with what you went through? Who? Who are you? People? Kind of thing? And then to think you my parents, and yet you came back for more every Friday evening, and so did they, and so did they. And I don't know what I make of this, because I hadn't thought about this in a long time. This came up suddenly this week, I

said to somebody. There was the same conversation over and over and over again. Then I started to feel like it created an ambivalent in my relationship between me and my parents, that my parents could be thinking this way. It really is an exercising attachment like who you try to continue to maintain a connection with, what is that connection based on, and where you realize this is dangerous for me and I may need to let go of this,

I may need to just say bye bye. And what I respect about that is it gives you many layers or many options. You know, who am I trying to be in relationship with? What is it based on? And when is enough enough? And those are not binary choices. They exist on a spectrum as you spoke of earlier. It's not do I have any relationship with my aunt

at all? It's what kind of relationship? What kind of context am I willing to allow what topics for discussion or owner off the table for my own sense of safety and well being and for the preservation in whatever form, at whatever level of some relationship with these people who are important to me. Still, that's a that's an exercise, and it's a nuanced one. Um. It's not as simple as friend unfriend. But you know, this thing that you

asked me is very true. As you say before about I see my side in the ways what you say having tried to make sense of the other, and I don't see any curiosity on the other side, to try to meet me, to understand me, to know where I'm coming from. I think this happens in relationships a lot, in intimate relationships. You know, I've tried to understand why he doesn't want to talk, why he's so silent. I've

gone to talk to his parents, I've gone. You know, I'm putting it in a straight context for a moment, but it doesn't have to be yet. It's really one person says, I've tried to understand my partner. I've tried. I've read so many books about you know, why my partner cheated on me. I've read so many books about

why my partner drinks and alcoholism. I've read so many You know, one is completely invested in trying to understand you, and the other is really not interested, particularly in being self reflected ether not just a big being curious about you. That's a dynamic in and of itself. Yeah, there's a lack of curiosity in any direction, which can create a greater sense of contempt on the part of the party that sees itself at put as putting forth a lot

of effort. You're not curious about me, You're not even curious about yourself? What is this? Why do I bother? Three quick ones? One is a national characterization question. You describe cultures that are more based in the eye and cultures that are more based in the wei, and they both kind of allow room to reach in the other direction, but their anchor point feels a bit different. I think the United States, broadly speaking, is based in an eye culture.

And I wondered what your read on the individual and collective culture in the US really is And essentially, are we doomed? Strong word? But to forever try to struggle out of a sense of individuality into something a bit more common and collective, which I think is a requirement for true citizenship. But it feels at odds with the dominant culture. The dominant culture prizes individualism, the dominant cultural prices effort optimism. There is no problem that doesn't have

a solution, even the existential conundrums. Everything has a solution. Break it down to pieces, get to work and fix it. This ethos is kind of core That is something that foreigners often observed about the US. It's like, what do you do as if everything has a solution and an answer immediately? Even in psychology, when I arrived, it was very much helping children to figure out what they want

to do so they can leave the home. And if you were a home in which you wanted to children, not necessarily and giving you an old exams to go to the best college because it was far away, because what matter to you more was to have you keep be able to come home on Sunday for a family dinner and you wanted them close by. You know, you were at arts. Nothing should stand in the way of achievement. No relationships, no family ties, no tradition that stands in

the way of that dominant individualistic piece. Now inside of us there are many, many, many cultures. The question is when you measure yourself against the dominant, then the institutions

represent the dominant. Psychotherapy represents the dominant. Instead of seeing this as an alternative model and as a model that is highly resilient and adaptive, we for a long time would see this as what we would call and meshed families, you know, families who didn't know to let the people leave, and they curtailed the development of the individual because self growth is the measurements rather than people who understand that together is important that there is value in maintaining this

weekly gatherings. That success is important, but not at the expense of family ties. That's a classic example in family therapy where this negotiation takes place between the power of the collective and the power of the individual. It's all the time like that, and intersecting with gender, with race, with religion. I mean it gets layered like this. I think there's a reason we're talking about how the the second epidemic here is not just coronavirus, but it's loneliness.

Loneliness people are disconnected, lonely. You know, there's nobody to turn to enough, and the pandemic has just reinforced that. So we can't talk about the problem of loneliness without connecting it to the emphasis and individualism people think about the long genius will talk about I have done this, and they can talk about their resume and all their rather than I did it with There's always others that

help you wherever you are. No, you're not alone getting there, But the notion that somebody could help me weakens me. The notion that I would need to rely on others. Dependency is such a frightening word to many many Americans who abide by that ethos, it is really and men more than women. That's a place where I spend a lot of time working. Yeah, is there anything you want to add on this subject of repairing relationships, investing in

relationships in the context of deep political division. When people demonize each other, it's doomed. I mean, you can survive, but you're constantly looking over your shoulder. It's an awful way to live, to think that there is threat around you all the time. The other is your threat. And at the same time, I feel like I don't want to see anything that sounds massively naive. You know, when people come after you and want to kill you, they want to kill you, and there is not much talking

with them that will soften them. I want to make that very clear. Otherwise I'm just living in la la land for a minute. I think you will find those from whom you need to really shield yourself, and then you find those with whom you think there's some hope here, there's a possibility, and I'm willing to look for the possibilities.

In the end, every process of reconciliation has demanded people putting down their arms, all of them, and every process of reconciliation has often been done, not every but many by a person that once was completely on the other side. It takes the biggest dictator, It takes Bota in South Africa to actually begin reconciliation. I think Mandela Botta is an incredible lesson for us to go look at because it's men, it's black and white, it's years of oppression.

I mean, I'm not a historian and a political scientist, but that's where I am drawn to go. See people have done it, and did they begin to like each other? Probably two men actually realized that they liked each other more than they thought they would. And from that place they got slightly intrigued, and from that place they decided that actually they have the power to give a legacy to this country that is better than the ship show

that could otherwise take place. And why not do we have that kind of leadership at this point here or in many other parts of the world at this moment. No, No, at this moment, there are people who are going in a different direction. Speaking of going in a different direction, I'm interrupting my own interview here to give you a heads up. But there shortly will take us in a different and more personal direction neither of us expected, as she shares a lesson she learned as the child of

Holocaust survivors in Belgium. Last question topic is something we ask everyone who comes in. We see this word citizen not as primarily about legal status or any kind of status, but about being a verb a set of actions. If you interpret the word citizen as a verb, how do you define what it means to citizens? It's an active verb. So it's a practice that constantly needs to be fine tuned, that constantly demands that we check ourselves. I think it's very easy to think that we are good and the

other people are not. That demands that we on occasion can see what effects do we have on others that on occasion makes us do stuff which we would never have done. You know, I'll tell you one answer about citizens, an anecdote, But I it's so many things that I have not thought about in a while. Sometimes come back, I hitch hike across the US. But almost two months, many years ago, in seventies six, the by centennials, I was eighteen years old. I saw America like I would

never see it again. I was invited in all kinds of homes of people that had never heard of Belgium, that had beliefs and ideas of people that today I would be really disparaging. I would say, I have nothing in common with this. They opened their homes, they fed me, they drove me, really the America that I am not very much in touch with at this moment. But they just saw a hitch hiker and there was something very interesting.

But they just saw me as a person. And on occasion I would say June and I knew they taught Christ killer and I mean, they went on and on like this. But something about the way that they just were, the kindness of strangers, and the fact that it was for a moment removed from ideology and politics, made it possible for us to have some very interesting moments together. And I do think that as I became more informed and more knowledgeable, and more brainwashed as well, I began

to be narrower in my acceptance of these people. Today, if I saw them, I would call them sometimes with all kinds of labels, rather than they were nice people who picked me up on the road. I tried to use that because otherwise I can become bitter and very scared. I have to find ways to humanize other people, to be slightly less scared of them. I think that is a big part of citizenship at this moment, or citizen gree not to dehumanize the other because the more we

dehumanize them, the more frightened we become. And you more than me. We know we don't have the same fear, and we're aware. Thank you for that. You know. In some ways, it's a different type of survival mechanism. There's something that gets triggered in us where we dehumanize another out of a sense of survival. We don't feel safe.

There are monsters, monsters are bad. Get away from monsters, destroyed monsters, and there's another option, which is actually to humanize them more in response to the feeling of threat, so that we're not as afraid. My dad told me this when he was in the concentration camp. He said the old guards were nicer than the young ones. I said, explain that to me. He said, the old ones had more respect for the elderly. They remember their fathers. The young ones had no connection, so the old one hit

you sometimes less hard. He tried to not think that all the guards were the same. I'm sure anybody you know, even today in the prison has makes a distinction between the guards that are nicer and the guards who have clemency and and the guard who doesn't just had the last beat of just sadistic hitting just because they can first as the one who thinks he got you back into the cell and that's enough. This is what I'm talking about it. I'm not saying we need to love

these people and be nice. I just think that there's a way of really looking for the humanity in situations where one would think it's all equal. That's a wrap. I've never talked about this, you know. It's it's very interesting that you know, but I know people must do this. It's like the teacher in the school. You know, which is the mean teacher and which is the evil or sadistic teacher. And there's a range everywhere. Yes, in matters of black and white, there's always gray, and the whitest

white and the blackest black, there's still gray. And you know, I said that's a wrap, but that wasn't quite true. It's more of an observation to share with you, which is the feeling that many of us have about the

other side. I'll speak for myself. I know there are people on the other side of the political establishment in this country who would be happy with my death, and then it's easy for me to then leap to Okay, Well, sixties six million people voted for me to die, and the recomplicating, rehumanizing exercise that I'm trying in my mind right now is to say probably not now. Were they willing to look the other way? Did it not matter as much to them? They interpret these as less literal

and more metaphoric. Cool Where their priority shifted was their attention elsewhere so that they could put their name on a document which aligns with someone who also aligns with someone who does want me to die. Yes, but that is a much different statement from sixty six million people in my unstection, and I think you have to be very careful. We all have to be very careful. It's catchy, and it's utterly ineffective and terrifying and inaccurate. It doesn't

serve I think you're right. You look in the middle of those sixty six there are people who you know, have nine reasons for which they would be completely allied with you, But there is one thing that made them decide to go to the other side, but not because they hate you. Yeah, and then you probably say, what do I have to do all this effort? I get that too, well, I have to if I decide that the marriage, that the relationship in this case, that the society is worth it. Do I want to look over

shoulder for sixty six million people? That's very exhausting. That's one out of two, you know, voters, at least, so that when the person asked me, why should I if I can, and if it's I think so, I say, because it serves you, because it's enlightened self interest to not think sixty six million won't kill me. It's enlightened self interest. Yeah, it's not naividda, it's not foolish faith. Thank you as there and pleasure. Oh good, we've gone places.

Yes we have. What a journey. What a journey. Indeed, as their Perel, I still can't believe we had her on this show. We are so grateful to us there for joining us. Find her on the socials. She's on Instagram under as their Parrel Official and on Twitter at as their Parrel. You can go directly to her website as their Perel dot com E. S. T. H. E are p E R e L dot com and you should be able to tap on all those in the show notes if you're consuming this through a mobile podcast app.

Now time for some actions on the internal front. We've got three things cued up for you. The first, what is your model of relationships? And something for you to think about and sit with yourself. Where you raised to believe in self reliance and autonomy or in interdependence and loyalty. Do you conceive of yourself as an I trying to develop a WEI or is it the other way around? The next internal thing, take inventory of the relationships in

your life. Identify those that are polarized because of politics, and determine which relationships make you truly unsafe that you've gotta let go of at least for now, and then focus on those where you're still committed to some level of relationship where you can still see possibility. And in those relationships, make a choice. Choose to humanize the other person,

Choose to listen. Choose to find common ground, no matter how small, reflects on your own behavior and language throughout this relationship, and ask yourself if you can acknowledge any responsibility for the state of things in that relationship. Just do this with yourself. The last internal action opportunity we have for you is to examine your own perspectives about people who vote differently than you. What about your view or belief about those people makes you fearful of them

or of the consequences of their votes. If these thoughts were reversed, would they sound fair or accurate to you? If they categorized the way you vote and the people you vote with behave? Can you imagine another dimension to one of these other voters as to why they behave or vote the way they do? Can you complicate them in your mind a little bit? All right, All that's super easy. Should be done with that in just like a few seconds. And then on the external front, a

few options here. Three is the magic number still. The first is I want you to choose to deepen one or two relationships with people who have voted differently from you, Just one or two. It's instead of ignoring a loved one who voted away you disapprove of, choose to engage with them. But here's the thing, not with a pile of facts, not with arguments, but instead engage with questions. Go all the way back to episode two with Eric lou And remember when he suggested the question what are

you afraid of? What do you think is going to happen in the worst case scenario in your mind if your side loses this, ask that of this person who you have a relationship with, and add a few more questions what do you hope for and what do you care about? And then the trick is you got to actually listen to what they say. The second external action option is to build that invest in relationships beyond politics. We need more excuses to connect with each other beyond

the explicitly political. In our second episode, again Eric asked us to start or join a club, any club, do it if you haven't already, and if you have good for you. We need to stay connected to others through common interests that we share and invest in those relationships in that arena and the third it's a bit bigger, wider, more diffuse, but it's definitely out there in the real world. I want you to stay engaged and to recommit during this transition. Our kind tree is literally in a transition.

This podcast is in a transition. Voting season is over, but it's always a season too, citizens and depending on when you're listening to this voting season might not even be over because of the special runoff election in Georgia, but you get my drift. I need you to keep showing up, to keep investing in relationships, to keep exploring and understanding your power, and to keep working for the benefit of the many. This ain't over. It's never over.

That's a feature, not a bug of the system as usual. If you take any of these actions, hit us up action and how to citizen dot com, put humanized in the subject line, and share about us on the socials with hashtag how to citizen. Now about this end of season talk, I've been dropping all episode. What you're talking about, Barratune, What you mean you can't stop citizening. We're taking a bit of a pause. This is a wrap on season one, but there will be a season two. There will be

a season two. It's very exciting. It's very exciting to get a podcast renewal. I feel so Hollywood. So there's some things I want to say about this first season. But first I want to reflect back to you a few of the things some of you have said to us. You've hit us up on this email. I haven't shared very often. I apologize for that. Will do more in the second season, but right now I have a few messages to share that reflects a range of sentiment from y'all.

Kelly wrote in I wish I was a high school history a Civics teacher who could teach us this way. My sons are in high school and it's so boring, and I love history, citizenship, Civics classes. This format got me thinking. It gave me resources to use my power more efficiently. I am so pleased to have found this podcast. I am so pleased Kelly, that you found this podcast. Thank you so much. In feedback to the show about

feeding Ourselves, we got this note loving the podcast. So many wonderful guests providing diverse perspectives on a variety of topics with real actionable items to back them up. Thank you,

Thank you. Someone understood the podcast. This episode struck a chord because I'm here in Humboldt County, California, where we have a program called the Little Free Pantry that is similar to the fridge program in l A. Through an organization called Cooperation Humboldt, pantries are installed much like you would see community libraries invisible highly accessible areas so that

people can easily utilize them. This person goes on to write more details about the the shifts and the stocking and who's using the the pantries and it sounds just like the fridge. And if you want to know more about this, if you live in the north coast of California, check out Cooperation Humboldt dot com. And thank you for writing in about that. This is from Gene, who's written us a couple of times. We see all your messages. Jeane,

thank you so much. I've listened to all the episodes of How to Citizen except the new one, which I assume has been remedied by now Gene, and I've been recommending it widely to all my various citizens circles. I will just send a link or suggestion to the markups new citizen browser project. This is at the markup dot org slash citizen dash browser. I think it could beautifully add to what you're already doing. It might make an awesome episode thing. So this is a browser which allows

you to see the flow of disinformation. We didn't talk a lot about technology in this season, but this is a great tip and we'll try to find a place for it in season two, and the last piece of feedback I wanted to share really cut into some of the type of impact that I was hoping in my wildest dreams we might have. I'll just read good Morning. I stumbled across your episode with Phil Goff and Zach Norris on keeping us Safe Beyond Policing. It was excellent

and very informative. I've been following Dr goss work with the Center for Policing Equity and will definitely continue to listen to you. I'm in the process of initiating a citizen survey for our community and we use some of your questions in the internal action section of your show. I'm now a subscriber and look forward to listening to future shows. Keep up the great work. You need to

be syndicated. That message came from someone who works for the County Sheriff's office at a police department in Colorado. That's why we do the show. We want to raise the bar. We want to transform this word citizen from a state of being. Two actions that we do. We want to build bridges and not walls, and the way that Tonika Johnson showed us, we want to see our opponents as just that and not enemies in the way Valerie Carr said, And we want to make our communities

better and safer. And so the idea that someone in law enforcement listened to, that heard what we were really putting down and took the time to write, that's just really moving. Also moving the idea that we need to be syndicated. That we got a subscriber out of it. So tell all your people about the show. If you have thoughts, like to share them with us. If there

are things you want to see us take on. People you know of Citizen ng hard organizations, themes you want us to explore an upcoming season, let me know I like it. If you send a voice memo too, comments at how to citizen dot com. You can type it up, or you can record a thing and ship it off. But the word of mouth really helps podcasts grow, and with this second season, we look forward to growing more with you. Thank you for riding with us on season one.

We'll be back with season two sometime in the first quarter of one. We don't have an exact date yet, and as a chance, we will drop some items in your feed between now and then, maybe some best of maybe some reflections based on your comments. No explicit promises, but I'm not not promising. I'm just saying it's it's possible. Like our democracy, I want you to remain open to possibilities. In the meantime, here are some ways to stay connected. I am me, I am baritun Day at Barton Day.

On the socials. Pick one that's me, I'm there, and you can text me to vote to eight nine four eight eight four four If you put the word citizen in your text that I'll make sure you get updates about the show and things related to the podcast, including when we come back. I'm gonna text people first because it's just the easiest thing to do. We also have a social handle on Instagram. Finally for the show. We're slowly building it up, but it's how to citizen with

barratun Day on Instagram. Send us your thoughts on season one. Constructive feedback and criticism is also welcome. We've seen some of that. Thank you and ideas for where you want us to go. And if you're new to the show, you came in on episode sixteen, you're like, wait, what's over. We've got fifteen more shows tweet and they're good. They're really good. We're very proud of them. So listen back

to the season. We made this show not for the fall of We made it to spur and investment and to all of us showing up, building relationships, understanding our power, and working on behalf of the many. And that's timeless. So I'd love if you revenged the whole thing. But in particular, there are some episodes that I think fall into this transition period we're in as a nation that would help us and help you. The first episode with Valerie Cower on revolutionary Love. Give that a real good

listen right now. She asks us to wonder about others and our opponents, and as you just heard as there say in this episode, to be curious about ourselves and those with whom we have a relationship. And that works on a national scale too. Valerie opened it if they're brought it home, as the same thing said differently real Listen to Valerie. Eric Leu our professor of Civics, the founder of Citizen University, Coach Democracy. I got so many

code names for this dude. Listen to him in episode two again, the episode about making work work for everyone with Saru and Michelle, we have a lot of thoughts about the economy and the economic situation. We're still in this pandemic. Things are still so hard. No relief is yet in sight. Listen to that too, and help reimagine in your own mind what an economy could look like that actually worked for you, How your own worth might be better valued in an economy. Imagine that, and let's

let's go build that. The Youth Civics episode I believe it was episode eight with Zoe and Josh who that's an injection of specific boost, specific booster shot to listen to young folks and as you're virtually gathering or safely gathering and there's more young people in your family around you, talk to him, ask them what they're working on and how you can help. It's a beautiful episode. Tonica Johnson speaking of beauty, the building of bridges and not valls

with her folded Map project. If ever there were a time that we needed to fold the map in our nation, it is right now, So go back and get moved by Tunica. Desmond Meade has another great episode, episode thirteen, on voting. He's down in Florida with the Florida Rights Restoration coalition that got amendment for a past, that got voting rights for storage to people convicted of felonies, and

the legislature put a big dampener on that. And I'm pretty sure that Desmond's desired result in the election in Florida was not achieved. But I'm also confident he is so excited that so many more people got to participate in the process because that's part of what he believes in. Desmond will get you fired and remind you of why we do this, which isn't just about specific electoral outcomes,

it's about activation of us. Lastly, on the recommendation playlist, besides listen to everything, Dr Michael Oster Home episode fifteen, the kindness pandemic that we need to battle, the coronavirus pandemic that we're suffering through right now. It was a really big deal for me to get Dr Michael Olster home on this show. He set the wheels in motion for me to take this seriously on March eleven and to have him help us close out this season. It's

really beautiful and so were his ideas. The humility with which he approached the racial inequities and injustice in this country, and weaving that into the public health challenge of a pandemic. Very elegant, and he's now serving on incoming President Joseph Biden's COVID nineteen advisory panel. He's one of thirteen people, which leads me to think that, you know, Joe Biden has been looking at our guestless who else is he

gonna poach? Take them all? Everyone we've had on this show should help lead this country, and everyone who's been a part of the show, who's listened, who's contributed, should also be so tap us all, President Elect Biden, because you're the president for us all, whether we voted for you or not. What a season, what a ride. Thank you for doing this with me. I will say this for the last time in a little while. How the Citizen with Barritton Day as a production of I Heart

Radio Podcasts. Executive produced by Miles Gray, Nick Stump, Elizabeth Stewart and Barritton Day Thursty, Produced by Joel Smith, edited by Justin Smith. Powered by You