Last weekend it was my honor to speak for the Common Good Forum in Boulder, Colorado. This fall’s theme was Common Ground for the Common Good. I did the morning keynote, followed by a panel of four mayors moderated by KUNC reporter Rae Solomon, followed by an afternoon session with Nancy Norton, a Boulder comedian. The whole thing was delightful, my kind of Saturday.

My keynote was based on the proposed title of my next book: When Their Enemy is You – Responding With an Open Mind, a Receptive Spirit, and a Curious Soul. I’ve been working on the talk for a few months, trying to get complicated information into a 40-minute talk that is understandable to all – not an easy task.

There is nothing I love more than taking complex information and making it understandable to a broad audience in as short a time as possible. When I see audience members have aha moments, I know I have succeeded.

Communication demands that the communicator and those to whom the information is communicated are both on the same wavelength. Greater discipline is required of the communicator than of the audience. Who is your audience? What is their level of education and knowledge about the subject? What is their level of interest?

To me, a talk has two goals. First, it must impart information the audience did not previously know. One attendee this past Saturday told me no less than three times, “I already knew all of that information, but I liked the talk.” Oh well, so much for having achieved the first goal.

My second goal is to provide insight. That is also one of my goals as a therapist. Good therapy involves insight, courage, and perseverance. The therapist can only provide insight. The client has to muster the other two.

When I am speaking, I want to take the audience’s knowledge and enhance it in such a way that a new piece of information allows them to connect the dots and have an aha moment. On Saturday I talked about four issues that are exacerbating the problem of our current cultural divide.

First, humans have a tendency to create enemies that do not exist. Second, we do not all work from the same moral standard. The oldest moral standard is that there is no greater moral good than to protect the integrity of the tribe. The second moral standard, also quite ancient, is that there is no greater moral good than to obey the teachings of the gods. This is the moral standard of all forms of fundamentalism.

The third moral standard is the youngest, only about 2,000 years old. It is the moral standard that there is no greater moral good than to protect the freedom of the individual. It is the moral standard of all of western Europe and the secular United States. Most of us work from the third moral standard.

After understanding our tendency to create enemies that do not exist and recognizing that we do not all work from the same moral standard, we come to the third issue I talked about last Saturday.

For the last 500 years we have lived in a left-brain heavy world, which is unfortunate because the right hemisphere is the primary hemisphere of the human brain. The left is its emissary. Yep, I know that is not enough information for you to grasp what I was talking about, but I hate it when a post goes over 1000 words. Sorry ’bout that.

The fourth issue about which I spoke was the myth that humans care more about the truth than they care about belonging. That is simply not true. We consistently care more about belonging than we care about the truth. It is the rare person who has enough ego strength to care more about the truth than they do about belonging.

I did manage to cover all four topics in less than 40 minutes, and then was joined by Stan Mitchell for another 30 minutes of Q&A. Stan is my favorite interviewer. It is always best to have an interviewer who is smarter and more knowledgeable than you. Unfortunately the lecture is not available to the public. If you were in attendance I can send the manuscript to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the book.

I will write about my observations about the mayors panel next week. Suffice it to say I believe mayors are the politicians most likely to have their feet planted firmly on the ground.

This week I’m preparing lectures for next Monday and Tuesday at Brite Divinity School on the campus of Texas Christian University. It’s a good thing I’m not lecturing at Texas A&M, since when it comes to issues of gender identity, as of today Texas A&M looks more like a bible college than a public university. How did that happen?  I send you back to the beginning of this post. We humans do tend to create enemies that don’t exist.

And so it goes.