We Make Change with Our Stories

I've been involved in an initiative through my work for a few years--which I'll refer to in somewhat vague terms on this forum. It's something that some of my colleagues developed a bit spontaneously and organically. The essence of the initiative has always been bringing teens together to talk about race. Bringing teens of different races together to talk about race. Different races, backgrounds, neighborhoods, socioeconomic statuses, etc. Crossing our community's unofficial dividing lines to interact with those they wouldn't normally.

The "how" of those interactions has morphed with time. The first time a colleague tried to host something along those lines in our libraries, no one showed up or responded. Other attempts were made to some success, then teachers and others in the community responded and a positive feedback loop developed. Librarians, teachers, and others started working on ways to gather high schoolers from different schools to have shared experiences then reflect together from their different perspectives. And listen to each other.

I asked to get involved and have been a core member of the team since around 2018, not only planning and leading experiences for the teens, but also doing a lot of work on the website and newsletter. As the program has changed and grown, so have requests from those who want to participate. Since we're librarians doing this as one part of our larger work, we haven't had the ability to meet all of the demand or continue to grow the initiative to its full potential. A year ago, we took a hiatus from offering experiences to lay the foundation for turning it into a community-based program that includes, yet is bigger than, our library.

I was not part of the project team that created the foundation, but have been honored to be asked by them to be our team's representative on the newly formed community advisory board that will determine the program's direction going forward. I'm one of 25 people from a pool of nearly 90 who applied, a diverse mix of students, teachers, parents, professionals, and community members from as wide a spectrum of backgrounds as possible.

The other night we had our initial orientation, a chance to gather for the first time, meet each other, and get a sense of the work ahead of us. During my turn, I briefly introduced myself, my career as a youth librarian, my previous involvement with the program. Then I did my best to answer "how I show up" for anti-racist work, my "why" for being part of the board--unplanned. I came up with something along the lines of this:

Like all of you, I'm sure, I get so frustrated by all the injustice, hostility, and inequality in the world. That it doesn't have to be this way. That it's due to choices people make, it's something created. Yet it's systemic and seems too big to impact as individuals. What I've found makes sense to me as a way to take action is to be what I call a "story pusher." To help people encounter different perspectives and build empathy through consuming stories at the library. And I think the most important thing we can do to address race issues is to bring groups of people together--like this--to share our personal stories with each other. To listen and learn. That's how we can make change happen, by getting people together to share their stories.

Okay, I made it a little bit clearer and more articulate just now than what I managed to get out of my mouth in the moment; but it's pretty close. And, more importantly, I still feel it's accurate. In reflection, I don't know that I could have come up with anything I find more true. That's what I really believe the work is all about.

I just read this article this morning.

How to Escape ‘the Worst Possible Timeline’

Cultural pessimism is widespread. But there’s a way out.

“Cultural pessimism is more widespread and much more public than it used to be,” Rhys Williams, a Loyola University Chicago sociologist who specializes in the relationship between politics, religion, and social movements in America, told me. . . . 

But part of cultural pessimism’s pervasiveness comes from the fact that it’s self-reinforcing, as a highly marketable narrative of despair that sells resigned inaction (to say nothing of scented candles, bath bubbles, and other products meant to soothe). To break out of the spiral of doom requires not just practical social change, but also a collective reimagining of what the world can be. . . . 

So, what’s changed? One strain of answer—recently expressed by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, who wrote The Coddling of the American Mind (which originated in this magazine)--is that the rise of social-justice language, and our increased cultural focus on problems as entrenched and systemic--has conditioned the American public, particularly on the left, to see themselves as helpless victims, unable to effect change. . . . 

The “wokeness has made us weak” narrative overlooks the degree to which both the rise of social-justice discourse and an ever-more-pervasive sense of cultural pessimism are downstream of a wider phenomenon: an ubiquitous sense of alienation from the foundational mythos of the “American dream” and--no less vitally--from one another. . . . 

Meanwhile, Gorski says, fewer and fewer of us are getting to know the people around us at all. He cited “the gradual decline of voluntary association” in America, as fewer and fewer of us attend religious services, belong to community organizations, or even have close friends. And he said that most Americans “are very unlikely to encounter people who are very much unlike them, much less to come to trust them.” Even if they do, Gorski told me, our political and civic lives have become so self-segregated that “the odds that they’ll really encounter somebody significantly different from them along any number of dimensions is just so much lower than it used to be.” . . . 

Without real-life, in-person social interactions—particularly with those who don’t share our ideological priors or identities—we struggle more and more to envision the kinds of necessary societal changes that require not just individual but collective action. . . . 

A mindset shift might help people better reframe their own despair: If someone is dissatisfied, it’s because that person can envision how much better our society could be. But to get there, suggests Cece Jones-Davis, an activist and author who lectures frequently on effective organizing, we have to learn once more to live and work with one another, in communities that require us to lay aside our personal narratives and preferences. We have, in other words, to start small: focusing on achievable local concerns, rather than grand national narratives. . . . 

“When you start small, you’re having smaller circles, smaller conversations; you’re getting to know people; you’re building trust among groups … and everybody starts to get to know everybody.” By forging human relationships at a sustainable scale—and by mobilizing those relationships toward the common good—we can develop pathways toward change.

The doom spiral of cultural pessimism can best be combated by—as internet parlance has it—“touching grass”: encountering human beings in the kind of real-life social situations where change, however small or modest in scale, is possible. That kind of in-person work can help to turn our collective disillusionment into an engine of hope, a reminder that our present disappointments are inextricable from a belief that a better world is something we owe to ourselves—and to one another.

In a nutshell, we feel pessimistic because we're disconnected from people who are different than we are, and the solution is to forge those connections and begin doing work together.

Like all of you, I'm sure, I get so frustrated by all the injustice, hostility, and inequality in the world. That it doesn't have to be this way. That it's due to choices people make, it's something created. Yet it's systemic and seems too big to impact as an individual. What I've found makes sense to me as a way to take action is to be what I call a "story pusher." To help people encounter different perspectives and build empathy through consuming stories at the library. And I think the most important thing we can do to address race issues is to bring groups of people together--like this--to share our personal stories with each other. To listen and learn. That's how we can make change happen, by getting people together to share their stories.

At the risk of being repetitive, this would be a good time to detour through my last post, The Experience of Being Experienced, particularly all the thoughts about and excerpts from You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy. A quick sample from the book:

To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention.

Listening is not about teaching, shaping, critiquing, appraising, or showing how it should be done (“Here, let me show you.” “Don’t be shy.” “That’s awesome!” “Smile for Daddy.”). Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It’s when someone takes an interest in who you are and what you are doing. The lack of being known and accepted in this way leads to feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. What makes us feel most lonely and isolated in life is less often the result of a devastating traumatic event than the accumulation of occasions when nothing happened but something profitably could have. It’s the missed opportunity to connect when you weren’t listening or someone wasn’t really listening to you.

-----

You can't have meaningful exchanges with people, much less establish relationships, if you aren't willing to listen to people's stories, whether it's where they come from, what their dreams are, what led them to do the work they do, or how they came to fear polka dots. What is love but listening to and wanting to be a part of another person's evolving story? It's true of all relationships--romantic and platonic. And listening to a stranger is possibly one of the kindest, most generous things you can do. . . . 

The stories we collect in life define us and are the scaffolding of our realities. Families, friends, and coworkers have stories that bind them together. Rivals and enemies have narratives that keep them apart. All around us are people's legends and anecdotes, myths and stark realities, deprecations and aggrandizements. Listening helps us sort fact from fiction and deepens our understanding of the complex situations and personalities we encounter in life. It's how we gain entrée, gather intelligences, and make connections, regardless of the social circles in which we find ourselves.

What is love but listening to and wanting to be a part of another person's evolving story?

Of course, since I added that, I can't help but throw in a bit of Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. From You Are a Group Project:

So what does Bregman see as the solution to conflict and hatred? Contact. Simply having contact with others. Seeing them, hearing them, spending time with them helps us understand them more fully as human. It undermines the instinct to dehumanize them.

Pettigrew and his team rounded up and analysed 515 studies from thirty-eight countries. Their conclusion? Contact works. Not only that, few findings in the social sciences have this much evidence to back them up.

Contact engenders more trust, more solidarity and more mutual kindness. It helps you see the world through other people's eyes. Moreover, it changes you as a person, because individuals with a diverse group of friends are more tolerant towards strangers. And contact is contagious: when you see a neighbour getting along with others, it makes you rethink your own biases.

But what also came out of these studies was the finding that a single negative experience (a clash or an angry look) makes a deeper impression on us than a joke or a helping hand. That's just how our brains work. Initially, this left Pettigrew and his colleagues with a puzzle. Because if we have a better memory for bad interactions, how come contact nonetheless brings us closer together? The answer, in the end, was simple. For every unpleasant incident we encounter, there are any number of pleasant interactions.

The bad may seem stronger, but it's outnumbered by the good.

Contact. So simple.

This is not to say we need to change who we are. Quite the opposite. Among the most notable findings to come out of contact science is that prejudices can be eliminated only if we retain our own identity. We need to realise it's okay that we're all different - there's nothing wrong with that. We can build strong houses for our identities, with sturdy foundations.

Then we can throw open the doors.

It all starts with the way we understand each other, with accepting that we're all in this together and depend upon one another.

From the new article up above: Without real-life, in-person social interactions—particularly with those who don’t share our ideological priors or identities—we struggle more and more to envision the kinds of necessary societal changes that require not just individual but collective action.

One more vein from a previous post, The Purpose of Learning Is to Evolve Our Beliefs. First, of Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart by Shane Snow:

The key to great teams, Snow shares, is cognitive diversity. The important ingredient, the thing that gets teams into The Zone, is not peace and harmony and sameness--it's engaging the tension between their perspectives, heuristics, ideas, and differences. He uses the analogy of a rubber band. Unstretched, it lacks potential energy. Stretched too far, it breaks. It has the most ability to achieve when stretched just the right amount for maximum sustainable tension.

Of course, that's a hard balance to achieve. It starts by forming teams of individuals who bring differences to the table. Homogeneity--even of values--won't produce enough tension. And there needs to be provocation and dissent. To keep things from breaking, there also needs to be openness and honesty, mutual respect and goals, intellectual humility and empathy. And play. Playing, it turns out, makes us less afraid of cognitive friction. The members of great teams push each other in just the right ways. . . . 

The key to intellectual humility is increasing the cognitive diversity inside our own heads.

Teams--and groups and communities and societies--are stronger and perform better when they're less homogenous. We're better--together and as individuals--when we surround ourselves with more difference.

And from Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant:

We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn't limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network. . . . 

An antidote to this proclivity [for binary bias] is complexifying: showcasing the range of perspectives on a given topic. We might believe we're making progress by discussing hot-button issues as two sides of a coin, but people are actually more inclined to think again if we present these topics through the many lenses of a prism. To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, it takes a multitude of views to help people realize that they too contain multitudes.

A dose of complexity can disrupt overconfidence cycles and spur rethinking cycles. It gives us more humility about our knowledge and more doubts about our opinions, and it can make us curious enough to discover information we were lacking.

Diversity is good for us.

Gathering together, having contact, and sharing stories with--and listening to--those who are not like us is how we make the world better.

On the topic of race, specifically, there's one more thing I'd want to tell my group that didn't come up during our orientation meeting:

I have a lot of good knowledge, perspective, empathy, and skills, but I don't have any actual lived experience of being a minority, which trumps anything I have to offer as a white man. I see my role as listening, supporting, and supplementing the non-whites in the group, and as a role model, bridge, and spur to my fellow whites, since we're the ones who need to change.

I'm guessing opportunities will occur as we spend more time together bonding.

The thing about bonding, about getting to know people, hearing their stories, and spending time together, is that you have to accept from the very beginning that they're flawed, emotional, limited beings prone to mistakes who are different than you. You can't expect perfection or anything like it. That's not how it works. And you can expect to be challenged, stretched, disappointed, and frustrated at times. That's the nature of relationships.

An article last year caught my attention, and I've been wondering about it since. The author writes about the trend in recent years to label those who are different, in disagreement, or not in complete accord with you as "toxic" and to cut them out of your life. Doing so is encouraged all the time on social media.

That’s It. You’re Dead to Me.

Suddenly everyone is “toxic.”

The internet is wallpapered with advice, much of it delivered in a cut-and-dried, cut-’em-loose tone. Frankly worded listicles abound. For instance: “7 Tips for Eliminating Toxic People From Your Life,” or “7 Ways to Cut a Toxic Friend Out of Your Life.” On Instagram and Pinterest, the mantras are ruthless: “There is no better self-care than cutting off people who are toxic for you”; “If I cut you off, chances are, you handed me the scissors.” The signature smugness and sass of Twitter are particularly well suited to dispensing these tidbits of advice. I don’t know who needs to hear this, a tweet will begin, suggesting that almost anyone might need to hear it, but if someone hurts your feelings, you are allowed to get rid of them. There is even a WebMD page about how to identify a “toxic person,” defined aggressively unhelpfully as “anyone whose behavior adds negativity and upset to your life.” Well, by that measure … ! . . . 

The advice I’m sifting through isn’t just about sloughing off casual acquaintances; it’s meant to apply to close friends, siblings, partners, parents. The message—implied if not always stated outright—is that other people are simply not my problem. . . . 

Two decades ago, Robert D. Putnam lamented the breakdown of social ties in Bowling Alone. Americans, pressed for time and money, were abandoning their bridge clubs, bowling leagues, and broader community obligations. Putnam diagnosed a generational posture toward society, but what’s going on now is different: a generational mutation in the philosophy of interpersonal relationships. It’s more intimate, and maybe more distressing. . . . 

Earlier iterations of self-help often stressed the hard work of building and maintaining relationships, of opening up and connecting with others. That’s more arduous than simply removing from your social network anyone who causes you discomfort.

People and relationships are far too complicated, complex, nuanced, and multi-faceted to reduce to such simple dimensions. And some measure of discomfort is healthy. Nobody's going to be perfect in every way. Being in relationship with them means accepting them as they are.

I was reminded of that article because yesterday a new one came out that seems to be basically the same thing.

Stop Firing Your Friends

Some therapists have the sense these types of friendship performance reviews are becoming more common, but there’s no way to know if that’s true. Friendship, in general, is less common: People are spending much less time with friends than before, and the surgeon general now calls loneliness an “epidemic.” . . . 

Nevertheless, advice is proliferating on how to aggressively confront, or even abandon, friends who disappoint us. Online guides abound for “how to break up with a friend,” as though the struggle is in what to say, rather than whether to do it. One TikTok therapist suggested that you tell your erstwhile friend “you don’t have the capacity to invest” in the friendship any longer, like you’re a frazzled broker and they’re a fading stock. . . . 

Six categories [of friendship expectations]: First, there’s “genuine positive regard,” or the idea that the other person likes you for who you are. Second, there’s “self-disclosure,” or a feeling of freedom to discuss personal topics. Third, there’s “instrumental aid,” which is a friend’s willingness to help you move, say, or to provide other kinds of tangible support. Fourth, there’s “similarity,” or seeing the world in a like-minded way. Fifth, there’s “enjoyment,” or having fun in each others’ company—feeling that the conversation is easy and entertaining. Finally, there’s a strange category called “agency,” which presumes that it’s nice when your friends are rich and powerful—people who can help you find a job, or let you stay in their summer house.

The problem is that few people state their expectations directly. More typically, “you’re building the expectations as you do it,” Hall told me. You write the rules of the friendship as the friendship unfolds: You tell your friend a secret, and they prove trustworthy, so next time, you tell them another. You don’t say outright that your level of self-disclosure is high. . . . 

This nebulousness is precisely what makes friendship so enchanting—and exasperating. We find ourselves depending on people who didn’t know they were being depended upon. And because friendships are voluntary and fluid, “you may ultimately doom the relationship by calling somebody out on their failures,” Hall said.

The other problem is that few people meet all these expectations organically, no matter how badly we might want them to. We can’t always wring all six friendship duties out of one person. In dialing up the pressure on a best friend, you risk ignoring the casual connections that can provide camaraderie or sympathy just as well. Rather than resting on one pillar, healthy friendship is better imagined as crowd-surfing—many hands holding you up. . . . 

What many experts recommend instead is to ease up on your one or two closest friends and befriend people who can do whatever it is your besties are failing at. The resounding chorus from everyone I interviewed was that no one person can fulfill all of your needs. Some friends are good listeners, some invite you on fun trips. The person you call in a crisis might not be the one who tells the best jokes at happy hour.

Of course, if a friend disappoints you, you should first try communicating, ideally in the counseling-approved “I felt Y when you X” cadence. Relationships, including friendships, tend to be healthier when people address issues, rather than skirt them or store them up . . . 

But even if you communicate with the dexterity of a hostage negotiator, some people are not going to do what you want. . . . 

That doesn’t mean letting go of the friend who let you down, though. You can find the person who will remember your birthday, and still enjoy everything else about the birthday forgetter. . . . 

Other people are allowed to be different than you. They should be. It's a good thing. You should want them in your life regardless; because they are. It enriches you and makes the world better. Instead of cutting yourself off from people, you should be seeking to expand your connections.

Contact.

Listening.

Stories.

That's how we can make change happen, by getting people together to share their stories.