Unlocking Harmony: Mastering the Art of Conversations with Opposing Views
Unlocking Harmony- Mastering the Art of Conversations with Opposing Views
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Flashback to a Fabulous Future. We are on a journey to understand the past so that we can move forward into the future with focus and energy. Today we are going to be talking with Evan Longin. And he has written a book called The Roots of Evil, but I will admit the primary purpose behind my podcast today is to, um, hopefully demonstrate that we can have civilized conversations with people, even if we disagree and sometimes very, I don't know the word I'm looking for right now, but very, not ferociously, it's not a good word, passionately, very passionately.
There we go. That's the word I'm looking for. And let him take a few minutes to introduce himself and his book, and kind of what the premise of his book is, and what he was trying to accomplish by writing his book. And then we'll just delve in, kind of [00:01:00] ad hoc, just asking some questions about some of our backgrounds, and what our, you know, Philosophies on various things are mostly political, I guess, just take it from there.
So, Evan, take a few minutes and let everybody know who you are.
I will try to do that. Thank you for having me. I love the name of your podcast because in my book, if anybody should read it, I try to go back in history and show how ideas throughout the history of our civilization keep returning and instructing us on how things were and how we can improve going forward.
So, uh, we're on the same page there. My, uh, let me tell you about myself. I'm I'm Uh, a old fella. I've, I've been practicing psychology, uh, for 50 years. My book began as an idea about talking about why psychotherapy at times fails. And what I found as I, uh, pursued that idea, is that the same [00:02:00] factors that go into the failure of psychotherapy are at play in our understanding what goes wrong in our society.
So I, I don't think we'll have too much controversy over the idea that one, There are four factors that go into controversy, evil, whatever we want to call it, disturbance in the community. The first one is the use of power over behavior. The second one is the idea that we think binary, like us and them.
We'll always find differences between each other rather than commonality. The fourth one is the control of information. That people don't get all the information they need. to make good decisions. And the fourth one is overly simplistic solutions to complex problems. Now in my, just so this is very relevant to today, um, I was making many [00:03:00] trips to the Middle East where I work with Israeli and Palestinian teenagers.
And we tried to bring them together so that they could actually learn about each other and learn about the commonality in who they are and what their thinking is. They came with very distorted ideas about the other. Um, they really thought those, uh, the other side was evil and hurtful and scary. And what they found out is that they, each group, over the years that we did this, we're more in common than less in common.
So it's exciting to understand that I was brought up Jewish, but I love Palestinians. And it's very upsetting to me today that the idea that being supporting of Israel is conflated with anti Semitism. I, for one, absolutely want Israel to exist. It's part of my background, but I [00:04:00] also want Palestine to exist.
I want people to be free. I don't want us to keep warring over things that should bring us together, not keep us apart. Um, my history as a psychologist, I very early in my career was a fellow with the Division of Legal Medicine. Where I worked with the hundred most difficult adolescents in Massachusetts, they were all in prison and the ideas that governed how we dealt with them didn't work.
I was brought up in psychology and psychoanalytic thinking and wow, I found that. Wow, is that off base? So after that, I did a fellowship in family treatment and ultimately, I have become a, what is considered a postmodern psychotherapist. And in postmodern psychotherapy, the major issue is listening to people.
The dedication of my book is to, uh, a fellow [00:05:00] who was my instructor at the Ackerman Institute when I was doing a fellowship. Paul Franklin, he was a victim of the Holocaust, his family was wiped out, and he taught me that the most important thing we do is, as psychotherapists, is not to judge people, but to learn how to listen to their pain, and each person's pain is as important to them, no matter what we may think is pain or not.
So we have to not judge people. We have to listen to them, and that's what we do in postmodern psychotherapy. So that's a little bit about my history and who I am. I'd love to answer any questions or thoughts you may have.
Okay, um, well let me start with, you know, you said several things in there that I found common ground with, and I think that's one of the most important things in having a meaningful conversation, is to find common ground.
And you said you're an old, old gentleman, well I'm an old lady, so So Good for us. Good for us. I'm
glad we made it. I'm glad we made it.
That's good. [00:06:00] We made it this far in life and I know that oftentimes that um, young people look at old people like, oh you guys don't know anything and I, I will admit, I will admit when I was young I was like, oh you old people don't know anything and all these new ideas and you know, you don't, you just don't understand and Then as I've gotten older, I'm like, Oh, old people have a lot of wisdom.
Yeah,
I'd like to think so.
So yes, that's, you know, that's just all part of growing up. And I think about your example of the Israel Palestine situation, and it is, it's a very unfortunate situation that's been going on for a long time. And one of the things that I've really enjoyed, um, a lot of people have asked me if I feel like this was a real detriment in my life.
was, I, not joking, and I wasn't in the military, but I've moved like 43 times in my life.
Wow.
Yeah, and each time I moved, um, I moved to a completely different, although I [00:07:00] stayed in the United States when I moved, um, I moved to a completely different culture. There's so many different cultures within the United States itself.
And I, my husband read a book, and I can't remember the name of it once, but it was really interesting. It talked about the seven different, um, cultures within the United States. And how, you know, the Irish settled a certain part, and the French settled a certain part, and the English settled a certain part, and how much it impacted the culture in that area.
And I have found that by living in various cultures, and I love to travel, I was a flight attendant for a while, and I don't just want to be a tourist. I want to go experience the culture. I want to get to know people. I want to live in that culture because I think it helps, it just enriches my life and helps me see things through a different lens.
I mean, for example, and this is somewhat political, I mostly have lived in rural areas my whole life, but I've lived in big cities too. And I remember going over to Europe, and [00:08:00] particularly when I was in Rome, and you know, we stayed in a flat, and they have a really small, small, small kitchen, and you take your trash out every day, and you pick up your food on the way home from work, you know, you don't have enough room to, like we go to, I go to the grocery store and shop for a whole month, you know, and, So I come home with a station wagon full of groceries sometimes, even just for me and my husband.
And it just made me realize, because there's this big divide about, you know, what kind of cars should we drive? And coming from rural areas, I was like, I like having a bigger vehicle, number one, because I have to carry all these groceries. But number two, Um, living in Wyoming, distance is huge, you know, um, when I say there's 15 miles between me and the next town, I mean there's 15 miles and there's nothing, nothing but sagebrush between those 15 miles.
We don't have public transportation, um, we don't have a lot of those things and it wouldn't be cost effective to do them. [00:09:00] In addition to that, we love the outdoors, you know, a lot of outdoor things. And so in my conversations with some of the people over in Italy, it was like, oh, I see why you see things through the lens that you do.
You guys have a really good public transportation system. You guys, you have a whole totally different lifestyle. And I enjoyed that while I was there, but I also enjoy living in Wyoming and I also enjoy, you know, that kind of thing. So it, it made me think a lot about all of the different places I've been.
And I, although I've been, I wouldn't say around the world, mostly Europe, my aunt has traveled and she has spent a significant amount of time in Miramar. And she had just gotten home from Palestine when this whole thing broke out. And so I was very curious. Tell me more about this. And her perspective was just amazing, you know, she was talking about the Palestinian people and how gentle and kind and loving they were, and you know, it's not like it's portrayed in the news.
I don't [00:10:00] know how it's portrayed in the news, but they are kind, gentle people, and they have, uh, the same culture, essentially, as the Jews do. You know, Jews and, and, uh, um, Muslims have gotten along for 2, 000 years. In fact, Islam welcomed and protected the Jewish people in North Africa, Spain, into Europe.
What happened was the Balfour Declaration, and in which the British determined that, that they would give some land to create the state of Israel. And it was at that point that people who once were friends became enemies. And you could understand how at the time it was extraordinarily painful for Palestinians to feel safe in and amongst the Jews who were being, after World War II, were being given this tiny strip of land.
And I don't know if people know this, but the Jews originally said to them, any of them who [00:11:00] stay with Israel and are supportive of Israel can stay in their homes. They will not be dislocated. But they were, they were told by other Arabs that they should leave, that they, this was their land and they should not be allowing Jews in.
Unfortunately, those people who left lost their homes, lost their land. However, if you go to Israel, almost 2 million of the population of Israel are Arabs, Palestinians, who were left behind, who stayed behind, and are part of Israel. That's what's up now. There are all kinds of problems with that, but the idea that Jews and Muslims, or religions, are almost the same.
There aren't that many differences. So it's a horror that for these past 70 years, there's so much hurt and killing and divisiveness, rather than doing what we tried to do in our project. Our project was called [00:12:00] ArtsBridge. Doing it in our project was to try to bring them together. and show how they could come up with new solutions.
As you were talking before, the problem in our country is we take a stance much too quickly. I don't know the answer to the immigration problem. I'm not that smart. I don't have enough familiarity with all that goes into it. I know it's very complex and I know that there are people on all sides of the question of immigration who should be getting together and determining and collaborating on a solution to how we solve the immigration problem.
Unfortunately, we would rather fight than do that.
Well, and correct me if I'm wrong. You would know better than I do. I'm not an expert on Israel and Palestine, but I think if you take the warring factions out of the equation and you get the actual people together, the people who actually want a solution that, you know, then you can sit down and have.
meaningful [00:13:00] conversations. And I think Of course,
you know, it's, you know, it's so sad. These people who were, who were slaughtered on October 7th were on the kibbutzes. The kibbutzes in Israel are the most liberal people in the country. Many of those people have been working very diligently to get a third state for Palestine.
And they were slaughtered. Of all the They were the least likely for, uh, Fatah. To fight, uh, the majority of, uh, well, it's not the majority. Unfortunately, the largest, it's much like in this country. So the largest number of Israelis are in the middle. They are pro, uh, a, a creating a state of Palestine. The ones who make up 60 percent to the 40 percent in the middle are the people on the right wing.
who never want, uh, Palestine to be created, and the very ultra Orthodox Jews on the other wing. And they formed a coalition under [00:14:00] Netanyahu to, uh, not allow for a third state, which is really repugnant to the vast 40 percent of the country. So yeah, you're right. If given the opportunity, these people would create an opportunity for Palestinians and Jews, and that's the way it should be.
Well it seems like you're a kind of a history buff, kind of like I am, and you know, if we look back through history, it would seem to me, and the first thing that comes to my mind, because that's what I've been studying so much lately, and it's kind of my passion, is the Revolutionary War. We look, and once again, You had two small warring factions, and the majority of the people were just in the middle, kind of like, leave me alone, let me, you know, whichever side wins, let me know, and I'll come out of my house and sign up, you know, kind of thing.
I, in my opinion, we were very blessed that we, you know, all of this freedom and liberty that we have came out of that, which I do consider an unfortunate, I wish there was a better way to have solved the problem. I read a book years and years ago, and it [00:15:00] was about the Revolutionary War from the. Side of the Britain, you know?
And I was like, wow. Yeah. I never looked at it from that perspective. 'cause we're so conditioned to look at it from our perspective.
Absolutely. I mean, Canada exists because of that . They, they would not fight the British. They, they supported them and many of the, the, uh, colonists who were, were frightened of the revolution went to Canada.
Yeah.
And you know, to the victor goes the spoils and what is it? The other one is the winner's, the one that writes history. So Right. I think sometimes we, well not sometimes, I think more often than not, we get a, um, I wouldn't say a skewed version of history, um, but we certainly get a slanted version of history, and I noticed that the pendulum kind of swings back and forth, and I also do some historical tours here around Charlottesville, and one of my, um, tours that I do is, um, is down in a, um, cemetery.
I get a wide variety, and it's not, these aren't ghost [00:16:00] tours, you know.
Yeah.
Nothing like that. As a matter of fact, the majority of the people that are buried there are, um, both from the North and the South in the Civil War, because it's a very old cemetery. And so the stories that we tell are about both sides.
And oftentimes I get really, you know, older people, um, And I know, being an old person, kind of what they came to hear. And sometimes I get these college students and I kind of know what they came to hear. And what I try to tell people when studying history is we need to realize, and like the Bible is like the perfect example of this.
You want the Reader's Digest super condensed version of thousands of years? Read the Bible.
Well, you know, it's interesting. We have another thing in common. I'm a double Wahoo parent.
Okay.
So, uh, my daughter went to UVA law school and my son was an undergraduate at UVA. Oh, [00:17:00] wow. Being down in your territory is very familiar to me, but I'm going to give you a different example.
Most of the people in my classes, as I go into, Though I'm a psychologist and I'm teaching family relations, most of the people in my classes, um, never heard of the Gnostic Gospels. Are you familiar with the Gnostic Gospels? No. Okay, so this is, to me, this is, this is a rather astounding factor. I hadn't heard of it either until I started doing research.
And the Gnostic Gospels were 80 Gospels to Jesus's teachings and being that were burnt by the formation of the Catholic Church. They decided under, uh, Pope Ignatius, I guess he was the first pope and the founder of what became Catholicism, [00:18:00] they decided that they did not want anybody to describe Jesus in a way that they didn't want to hear about.
And the ultimate example of that was the gospel according to Thomas. Now, People know Thomas as being, uh, Doubting Thomas. That was his term, but they don't know he actually wrote a gospel, and in the gospel, the reason why he's called Doubting Thomas is because he, he testifies that Jesus told him you didn't have to look to God outside of yourself.
God resided in all of us, and all you had to do was believe.
Well, Ignatius didn't like that answer, and so his gospel, along with 79 other gospels, [00:19:00] were burnt, and they were found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1946. And they're still kept in wraps. Most people don't know of them, don't know how to read them. You can find them in the internet under naghamadi. com. Uh, but, but again, we have not provided all the information that people need.
I'll give you one more example from the, the history of the church. One of the great scientists of his time was Galileo. Galileo had confirmed Copernicus ideas that the sun was the center of the universe, not earth, and Galileo, against the advice of the of the church started to talk about the fact that reality is sun is where we circle around and not earth and he was excommunicated and kept in jail [00:20:00] until the end of it.
Well, he was jailed in his home, but he was confined to his home for the rest of his life because he wanted people to know the truth and the truth. comes out over time and it takes different forms. There are people who are determined not to let us know what the church is there, what their ideas are, because We're afraid we'll lose power.
We're afraid that people won't understand, that people will resent us for giving them misinformation. The reality is people want to know the truth.
They do. And, um, this makes me think of, you know, the divine right of kings, as you go back, you know, through history.
Yeah.
They, you know, the church was a government entity in, in and of itself, and it, they didn't want, I mean, this is just, I think this is pretty well documented and, and accepted, they didn't want the average everyday person, thus they didn't want the Bible printed, you know, and all of that kind of thing, and [00:21:00] John Wycliffe, and all, all of, you know, we all know that.
And they didn't want people to know that they could take religion, and I'm using a very generic term, and put it in inside themselves. They wanted to tell people what they should think, what they should feel. Right,
that's exactly the problem. Instead of trusting that people will make good judgments. You know, uh, another favorite story of mine is the story of creation in the Bible.
And that, that story, uh, comes from the Apocrypha. Now, the Apocrypha are the contemporaneous writings to the Bible. The, all of the information that was out there that got consolidated in the Old Testament came from stories from that region of the world. So the original story of Adam and Eve, Uh, was much more elaborate.
For whatever [00:22:00] reason, the wise men who codified the Bible decided, No, we don't want people to know the whole story. It might make them uneasy. So, people think Adam's first wife was Eve. Well, the story starts long before that. Eve. Okay. Are you familiar with this story? No, I'm very interested. Okay, so in the original story now, I don't believe the original story is any more correct than Adam and Eve, but it existed and that's where Adam and Eve came from.
Um, Adam's first wife was Adamah, and Adam and Adamah in Hebrew are, are, uh, man and woman. And according to the original story, they were connected back to back. And Adam and Adamaw went to God and said, You know, all the animals in the, in the garden can see each other and make [00:23:00] love to each other, except for us.
And that just seems wrong. And God thought about it in the original story and said, Okay, I'm going to divide you into Adam and Lilith. Now. You know the name, Lilith? She was made famous by Dr. Fraser, uh, on, on the, uh, on television. Lilith, um, became the second woman that Adam was with, and Lilith was very upset Because she wanted to be on top in lovemaking.
And Adam said, you can't be on top. I want to be on top. And she went to God and she said to God, I want to be the powerful one in this relationship, not Adam. And God said, no, no, I disagree. I am going to make Adam the strong. Well, according to the story, she cursed out God and she went off into the [00:24:00] world.
and populated the rest of the world. Uh, I never knew from having read the Bible, where did everybody else come from? Well, in the original story, they came from Lilith, that she made love with animals and created these failed human beings. Um, At which point, Adam was really upset. He said to God, what am I going to do?
So, so God said, according to the story, I'm going to take a rib from you and I'm going to create Eve. And that, we know the rest of the story. But, it always occurs to me, why don't we know? Even if it may not be true. Even if it may not be any better a story than Adam and Eve. Why don't we at least know that that other story predated Adam and Eve?
Well, I think, I, my opinion is, and I think it goes back to, once again, it's, it's all about controlling the flow of information like you talked about in one of your four points that you made earlier. And for whatever [00:25:00] reason, you know, this is the narrative. And it's interesting because I've never heard what you've just shared with me.
And it certainly challenges, even the story of Thomas, challenges a lot of things that I've been taught in my religious upbringing, and I've been, you know, going to church since I was born.
And,
and that's okay, because I find it, you know, rather, And I will admit, I have to admit, I've evolved over the years.
In years past, I might have taken that story and went, oh, that sounds like a nice fable, you know, kind of thing and, and blown it off. But as I've hopefully matured, I'm a mature adult now. Yes. Hopefully have more. You
impressed me as being that, Cheryl.
Is that I'm curious. Now you've got me curious. And I wanna go more.
Again,
that's the, that's my point. My point is, I don't know. I don't know what's true and what's not true. I don't know whose [00:26:00] side is smarter than the other side. I know we need to collaborate. That's one of the solutions to all of the. dangers in our current community. We have to talk like you and I are talking.
You're sitting here and saying to me, you know, I don't know that this is a fable or not a fable. Either do I. I just know that we as intelligent people better off being informed and deciding how we want to take this information and go forward with it. And I believe there's two important ideas to and I think you do too.
The first one's collaboration. And I believe there are two, two principles that are internal to humankind, that, that they are as genetic as anything else in us. And we're programmed to be curious, to learn, and to, um, create [00:27:00] a better world around us. That's the first principle. The second principle is love.
That's, that's ingrained in our genes, that we have the, the ability and the need to love and follow God. We didn't have that one, we wouldn't have survived. We need to have love of our community, love of God, love of each other. We need to procreate, and if we don't have that inherent in us, then we wouldn't have survived to this point.
So I believe the answer is what you're preaching, that we need to go out, be curious about what's out there, what information, how people function, how they came up with these ideas, and to appreciate each other and not to dismiss one another because we disagree on some matters.
So you're a, you know, psychologist?
Yes. Psychologist. Okay, good. Um, because, and I, I find myself guilty of this, so I, [00:28:00] I'm sure a lot of other people probably fall into this camp. Um, we automatically have bias. when we come into a conversation with anyone.
Yes.
And if you were to say something that, and religion and politics seems to be the things where people hold the most strongly held biases, and you certainly said something, you know, in the story that you just shared, that challenged my religious, uh, upbringing and teaching.
But
I didn't find myself being like defensive, like, oh, that couldn't be. I found myself curious. But yet, there are times when you could say something that would challenge my biases and I would immediately get defensive and I'd shut down and I wouldn't want to hear you. So how do you have a conversation where we can, we can be curious?
Okay, that's a great, great question to ask. What we developed in our [00:29:00] practice, and it's a practice, uh, that I and colleagues of mine worked on along with Uh, some very famous therapists from Europe, uh, called Postmodern Psychotherapy. What we do in, in our, in our practice is listen. So we have a listening team.
I have usually two or three other colleagues who sit and listen to me interview a family. And their job is to pick up on ideas that are being expressed in a family in which there are internal problems. And theirs is not to judge it. Theirs is just to highlight what they've heard and reflect it back for the family to listen to.
And the family is usually incredulous. Wow, you heard us say that? That's really, I wanted people to know that's what I feel. And we would ask them, well, That's how you feel. How do you think that affects [00:30:00] others in your family? And eventually, we would have members of the family sit with the treatment team and listen to other family members.
Uh, one of the famous cases we did was a boy who was in McLean's Hospital, famous psychiatric hospital in Harvard and Massachusetts. And, uh, he had been there for several weeks and thrown out because he didn't. get better. They said he was too resistant to psychotherapy, they couldn't help him, and they referred him to me because We were known for taking on all these difficult cases.
So we had him, when he got out of the psychiatric hospital and come to our session, we had him sit on the treatment team and we said to him, look, you've had a lot of experience. You've just been in the hospital for many weeks. We want you to be one of us on the treatment team. And we're going [00:31:00] to have one of our therapists interview your sister, mother, and father.
And as They were interviewed. All of a sudden it emerged that all this began when the grandmother passed away and the mother became very sad. And he, as he reflected, he said, you know, I heard my mother say something I've never heard her say before. She was very sad. Do you think, and he asked us on the treatment team, he said, do you think it's possible that my behaving badly had something to do with my mother being sad about losing my grandmother?
And we said, wow, what an interesting idea, doc. And he said, but why would I behave so bad? And one of the other therapists said, well, what you're doing such a good [00:32:00] job. Um, What do you think led to that? He said, I didn't want my mother to be sad. I thought it would be better for her to be angry, and we went, wow, and the mother burst out in tears, and she said, oh my god, he's been in a psychiatric hospital, we sent him away, and he was really trying to protect me.
Wow. How is that for a session?
Yeah, well, and this brings me back to something you said earlier too, is why, you know, psychotherapy fails, because
Yes.
Yes. I've, I've worked with a lot of people who have mental health challenges, and you know, they've gone into, whether it be through, you know, pharmaceuticals, or whether it be through therapy, all these different ways of, you know, trying, trying to resolve the issues that they have, and more often than not, I hear, um, in the classes that I've taught, that psychotherapy doesn't work, and so I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of on board with you there, but I've always [00:33:00] wondered why.
Because you have the wrong patient. Listen, I'll give you one more example. Yes. I get this call from a mother who says to me, she, uh, her son, who was 8 years old, uh, who was in the 2nd grade, went back to school after school with a baseball bat and broke out, broke all of the windows on the ground floor of the elementary school.
And. The school, uh, excluded him from school and said he couldn't come back unless he had, uh, gone for psychotherapy. And the, the mother called the physician, the physician sent the boy to me and the mother said, okay, you're going to see my son. I said, well, you know, I have to learn about not only your son, but all of you.
So I would like you to, uh, And if there were any other children, she said, well, the daughter and your husband to [00:34:00] come to the first meeting, she said, no, no, I'm not going to do that. I said, how come? She said, Martin, we're not problems. He's the problem. He broke in the windows. He needs to go for psychotherapy.
Now, at that point, a lot of therapists might have said, sure, just send him. Um, I said, no, no, I can't do that. If you want to get another referral, call your physician and ask him to refer you to somebody else. But if you're going to come to my practice, All of you have to come in. So she said, okay, we'll come the next day.
Well, of course they came the next day, but without the sister. I said, where's the sister? She doesn't need to be here. She, she doesn't have a problem. I'm not going to make her a problem. So I said, okay, um, I need your son then to be my assistant. Um, I, because I usually work with an assistant and I don't have one today.
So we're going to be a [00:35:00] team, your son and I, and we're going to interview dad and you. I don't like this idea. My son can't be a therapist. He doesn't talk. He's a bad kid. He broke out all the windows. What are you doing? You, you're not going to help us. I said, well, give me a shot. You're here. Let's see how this works.
So I said to the little boy, adorable little boy, looking down and kind of meekish. I said, would you be my assistant? He shook his head. He didn't say anything. Yes. He pulled up a chair next to me and I said, could you tell me? What happened before you went back to school that day and the mother said, No, he can't.
He can't tell you that. He's a problem. You're making it sound like there's other problems. I said, I'm just asking questions. I'm not making anybody sound like there's other problems. I said [00:36:00] to him, um, Mom seems worried about what you're going to say. I said, are you going to say something that's going to make her feel badly?
At which point, the father interrupted. He said, of course he is. He came home that day and his mother was passed out drunk on the floor in the kitchen. And he went out, not knowing what to do, full of feelings and broke in the window. And I said, wow, thank you, Dad. And the mother said, I don't want to be part of this.
And I said, well, it sounds like, You are a big part of this, and that we would never get to the bottom of this if we just talked to your son, because he knows he's not supposed to talk. Well, following that session, the mother was hospitalized for her problems, including drinking and, uh, bipolar illness. So, these are examples of why sometimes [00:37:00] people don't get better.
They don't get better if we don't get all the information and we blaming somebody for being in the patient rather than understanding there's usually a reason why they're the patient.
Well answer this question, um, because what I'm hearing is that I can see the significance of having him play the role as your You know, helper, your assistant, but it also seems to me like, and this makes sense to me, I'm not sure this is exactly part of the process, but in my head, it's like, Oh, I'm looking at this problem as a third party, as opposed to being in the middle of it.
When I'm in the middle of it, I'm like defensive. I'm like, ooh, I, you know, I don't know. I, and emotions. I made this little video because I'm, for 30 years I've created, I was an instructional designer and create all kinds of training. And I always tell people, if you want people to learn something, you have to tap into their emotions.
If you don't tap into their emotions and give them, and I don't just mean, [00:38:00] this always just frustrated me so much in all my 30 years of creating learning, is we need to give people a why. Well yeah, but what we do is at the first slide of this online learning, we tell you what your why is.
Yes, that's exactly right.
So, so here we are, Cheryl. What impresses me is I don't know what our politics are or how they're different or not. It doesn't matter. We're both open to the same idea of not judging people, of listening to them. of trying to help people collaborate and finding solutions.
Yes. And I think getting people, you know, when, like I said, when you have, um, when you get people to tap into why they want to learn something, then they're invested in it and they, and they want to learn.
And, but sometimes on the flip side, when, and I always tell teachers this, especially in a school setting, whenever you get angry at a child in a classroom, they automatically shut down.
Oh yeah, [00:39:00] absolutely. Right.
Yeah, you want to shut a kid down faster than anything? Get angry at him. You know, um, my grandson came one day and they were playing with a glass tea set and he's only six.
And, um, my other granddaughter who was two, they were playing and they're on a aisle floor and I should have been paying better attention. I, this was, this was on me, but I was walking. back and forth and I was busy and I kept telling him, you know, be careful because these are glass, be careful, next thing I know, there goes something, drops on the floor, and oh my word, he went flying in the bathroom, closed the door, I didn't even say anything, I didn't even say anything.
Right.
But as soon as our brains go into that mode, it's just, they shut down, and it's, it's a protective mechanism, it's like, I, you know, that's how I, we protect ourselves, and I think, and I, I mean, we know this, we all know this. But I'm guilty as anyone of doing it. is when we're in a conversation with somebody, we tend to [00:40:00] use language that attacks people.
Right. So Cheryl, um, I believe you and I would, wherever we were in the world, be friendly with each other and look to each other as resources, uh, to make the world a better place. Um, I hope before we finish your, the podcast will reach out and buy my book, um, The Roots of Evil. It's on Amazon, it's on 8books, uh, what's the other, uh, big book company, uh,
Barnes Noble?
Barnes Noble, thank you. You can get it, you can get it on any of those sites. I'm trying to get people to look at ideas that might intrigue them, and I think help towards reducing controversy and anger in our world.
Yes, I agree. And I think going into conversations with curiosity, as opposed to, I'm trying to win an argument, I'm trying to [00:41:00] convert you to my ideas.
Right. Curious. It sets the stage, it puts your brain in a frame of mind that it's open and curious. Because I think, you know, if I had felt like you came to me trying to convince me that my religion was wrong, and told me a story that you told me earlier, I'd be like, no, no, no, you, no, no, no. But instead, we just have this nice conversation, we're talking about things, and it just comes up casually through the conversation, and it's like, oh, now I'm curious.
Yeah,
that's it. I mean, I, I, I don't hold myself out to be that kind of expert that could tell you which religion's right, which history is right. I just want to put out there ideas to give people a chance to examine it themselves.
Yeah, and I think there's two, there's always two parts to the equation as we're finishing up here is, I think we, as individuals have a responsibility to try to go into conversations being curious.
And on the flip side, we don't need to convince everybody that we're right.
Right. [00:42:00] That's exactly right. You know, we started out having a conversation, uh, I guess, a month or so ago, Uh, where we are on, have different positions about guns. And, and you made the very good point that people in Wyoming need guns to survive.
You know, I was an expert marksman in the army, but I ultimately became a medic. And I saw a lot of, uh, People who were so badly injured in war that it has had a lasting effect. So we have reasons why we hold these positions. And I don't believe that my position, because it's what I have experienced.
should be anybody else's. It's mine.
Yes. And I think, you know, totally understanding and respecting others opinions makes for a much nicer world to live in.
Yes, dear. I 100 percent agree with you. So will, will you be, uh, sending this out to the world, this interview?
Of course I will. I don't have a great big [00:43:00] huge following, but I will definitely get it out and I will give you a copy or I post it on a rumble page.
Would you rather have the mp3 of it, or would you rather have the link to it that you can share? Whichever works. The
link. The link is best. And, uh, and if people down in Charlottesville want me to come down, I love Charlottesville, so I'd be glad to come and talk.
There we go. That would be great. Well, thank you so much for your time today.
And thank you for having me.
Wow, thank you for being patient through all of my life circumstances. I
love it and you keep it up.
All right, you too. Thank you. Bye
