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Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide
A guide to productive dialogue across ideological divides with practical tools for building trust, defusing hostility, and approaching hot-button topics. With the election of President Biden, many liberals thought that the world of political discourse would somehow go back to normal. But the continued extremism of Republican politicians and conservative pundits has only stoked the flames of progressive disdain in ways that make it harder than ever to engage in civil debate. In Beyond Contempt , Erica Etelson shows us how to communicate effectively across the political divide without soft-pedaling our beliefs―or playing into the hands of divisive politicians. Using Powerful Non-Defensive Communication skill sets, we can express ourselves in ways that inspire open-minded consideration instead of triggering defensive reactions. With detailed instruction and helpful examples, Etelson demonstrates how we can open hearts and minds in unexpected ways.
240 pages, Paperback
Published December 10, 2019
44 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 24, 2024
I'm giving the book five stars to bump it up to the recommender algorithm. Books like this need to be more widely read. The main takeaway is that most people have an instinct to experience (and express) contempt for people who violate the standard they hold other people to. Etelson explains how the psychology works now, but she doesn't delve into the natural history of it too much (the contempt instinct may be a genetic hangover from our Stone Age tribal past). Back then, for the first roughly 300,000 years of humanity's existence as a species, most people lived in small groups, surrounded by other small groups which were often hostile. The world was harsh, and few people could survive for long on their own. Therefore group cohesion was essential for our ancestors' survival.
Fast forward to today, and now we have a world with over 8 billion people. Fossil-fueled transportation has allowed many millions of people to migrate and mix all over the planet, building huge cities and nations with far more diversity than most of our ancestors ever had to cope with. And yet our brains still instinctively try to treat everybody else as if they are wayward members of our own little tribe - when they are not. They are members of other tribes, and our feeble Stone Age brains never really learned how to deal with those.
Etelson proposes a different way to talk to other tribes, using the rather peacocky marketing-speak term "Powerful Non-Defensive Communication." (For those of us who view tooting one's own horn as bad form, that's a bit cringe-inducing. It sounds like a name Trump might come up with, except that Trump slaps his own name on everything before he bankrupts it.) Etelson's method is not all that different from the norms of communication you find among scientists and scholars (see for example Rapoport's Rules for Debate, as adapted by Daniel Dennett), whose communities have for centuries been dealing with clashing views and increasing diversity. The main difference is that scientists and scholars place a much higher emphasis on facts than Etelson does. This is understandable, since few voters care primarily about facts, and few people have the intelligence necessary to cope with the complexity of facts on most real-world issues.
I don't agree with Etelson's entire world view, and I don't think her world view completely agrees with itself. For example, she's comfortable with biodeterminism when it comes to people's political predispositions (the emerging branch of behavioral genetics called "biopolitics"). But then she reverts to anti-hereditarianism when it comes to explaining economic disparities, health disparities, and so on. While there is certainly structural racism and sexism, it can't be the only factor, when the so-called "model minorities" in the USA (namely, Asian-Americans and Jewish-Americans) have faced plenty of negative discrimination yet still found a way to out-earn white Americans on average. That's an inconvenient fact for the anti-hereditarian narrative that doesn't appear in the book - imagine that!
But it would stand to reason that if we can inherit our political leanings - to some degree - then why wouldn't we also inherit our prosperity to some degree? Surely a person's innate cognitive capacity and behavioral traits have some influence on their ability to learn marketable skills and market them. Just because the social playing field isn't level doesn't mean the genetic playing field has to be. Why would Nature be fair when Nature's people are not?
Etelson also doesn't seem to have read a single book about the science of human intelligence differences. She even claims - without evidence - that intelligence has nothing to do with a person's cognitive errors:
Intelligence is the ability that enabled some unusually intelligent people to discover the long list of human cogntive biases in the first place. Intelligence differences also have some effect on which humans are likely to read about their cognitive biases and work to overcome them. If you read a book like this one, you are probably in the top quartile of the IQ distribution. You'll still make some errors, because everybody does, but the odds are that you'll make fewer cognitive errors than a person in the bottom quartile, who is very unlikely to read a book like this and become aware of cognitive biases.
But people don't get to choose how smart they are any more than they can choose how tall they are. That choice was largely made for us by factors we couldn't control, such as our genes and our early childhood environments and nutrition. Scientific progress might someday give people control, but for now we're stuck with what we have.
Etelson makes some other head-scratchers, like this one:
Etelson's message is an important one: we shouldn't hurl contempt at people for things they didn't get to choose. But then again, we didn't get to choose how much contempt instinct we happen to have either. The adjudicators have no more free will than the offenders. But reading a book like this becomes just another factor in the giant causal chain that decides our future actions, and maybe a factor that can nudge us a little in the direction of sanity. So read it.
Fast forward to today, and now we have a world with over 8 billion people. Fossil-fueled transportation has allowed many millions of people to migrate and mix all over the planet, building huge cities and nations with far more diversity than most of our ancestors ever had to cope with. And yet our brains still instinctively try to treat everybody else as if they are wayward members of our own little tribe - when they are not. They are members of other tribes, and our feeble Stone Age brains never really learned how to deal with those.
Etelson proposes a different way to talk to other tribes, using the rather peacocky marketing-speak term "Powerful Non-Defensive Communication." (For those of us who view tooting one's own horn as bad form, that's a bit cringe-inducing. It sounds like a name Trump might come up with, except that Trump slaps his own name on everything before he bankrupts it.) Etelson's method is not all that different from the norms of communication you find among scientists and scholars (see for example Rapoport's Rules for Debate, as adapted by Daniel Dennett), whose communities have for centuries been dealing with clashing views and increasing diversity. The main difference is that scientists and scholars place a much higher emphasis on facts than Etelson does. This is understandable, since few voters care primarily about facts, and few people have the intelligence necessary to cope with the complexity of facts on most real-world issues.
I don't agree with Etelson's entire world view, and I don't think her world view completely agrees with itself. For example, she's comfortable with biodeterminism when it comes to people's political predispositions (the emerging branch of behavioral genetics called "biopolitics"). But then she reverts to anti-hereditarianism when it comes to explaining economic disparities, health disparities, and so on. While there is certainly structural racism and sexism, it can't be the only factor, when the so-called "model minorities" in the USA (namely, Asian-Americans and Jewish-Americans) have faced plenty of negative discrimination yet still found a way to out-earn white Americans on average. That's an inconvenient fact for the anti-hereditarian narrative that doesn't appear in the book - imagine that!
But it would stand to reason that if we can inherit our political leanings - to some degree - then why wouldn't we also inherit our prosperity to some degree? Surely a person's innate cognitive capacity and behavioral traits have some influence on their ability to learn marketable skills and market them. Just because the social playing field isn't level doesn't mean the genetic playing field has to be. Why would Nature be fair when Nature's people are not?
Etelson also doesn't seem to have read a single book about the science of human intelligence differences. She even claims - without evidence - that intelligence has nothing to do with a person's cognitive errors:
Cognitive errors arise innocently and are unrelated to intelligence.Given that "intelligence" is synonymous with "cognitive capacity," one wonders how a person's capacity for something would have nothing to do with their performance on that something. Certainly, people at all intelligence levels make mistakes, but do they all make mistakes at the same rate? The point of a test in school is to make it hard enough so very few students will get a perfect score. Most students will miss at least one question, but some students will consistently miss more questions on test after test. And what is true in school is true in life, which functions like a giant unending IQ test. That's why, for example, a low IQ can shave a decade or more off a person's life - because having a low IQ hampers a person's ability to obtain and heed health-related messaging. The low-IQ person is more likely to develop unhealthful habits. There is a whole field of study about this, called cognitive epidemiology, which Etelson seems to have never heard of.
Intelligence is the ability that enabled some unusually intelligent people to discover the long list of human cogntive biases in the first place. Intelligence differences also have some effect on which humans are likely to read about their cognitive biases and work to overcome them. If you read a book like this one, you are probably in the top quartile of the IQ distribution. You'll still make some errors, because everybody does, but the odds are that you'll make fewer cognitive errors than a person in the bottom quartile, who is very unlikely to read a book like this and become aware of cognitive biases.
But people don't get to choose how smart they are any more than they can choose how tall they are. That choice was largely made for us by factors we couldn't control, such as our genes and our early childhood environments and nutrition. Scientific progress might someday give people control, but for now we're stuck with what we have.
Etelson makes some other head-scratchers, like this one:
Liberals tend to value cooperation, collectivism, diversity, equality, critical thinking, questioning authority, conflict resolution, peace, harm reduction, health and safety, compassion, freedom, and fairness. Are there contradictions embedded in this set of values? None that I can see, thanks to confirmation bias, but I’m sure a conservative could spot some.I'm no conservative, but I thought most educated people understood the inherent contradiction between equality and freedom. The more freedom a society has, the less equality it will have, particularly in the economic arena. Given that the genetic and social playing fields are far from level, some people "are born on third base" to use the baseball metaphor. In a perfectly free society, people with advantages and privileges would be free to exploit them to gain more advantages - much like Trump's cabinet of billionaires is soon to do as I write this. Only by reducing people's economic freedom can we hope to even approximate equality. That is, if you want equality, then people cannot be free to just keep on accumulating more and more billions. Progressive taxation is a giant infringement on economic freedom, and one that most liberals endorse. If you're not for progressive taxation then what kind of liberal can you be? If you think we have too much inequality, then you must also think we have too much freedom. Unless, perhaps, you are a transhumanist who wants to level the playing field by giving everyone the same enhanced abilities. That isn't scientifically possible yet, so it's not a policy option, but it might be the only thing that could actually work.
Etelson's message is an important one: we shouldn't hurl contempt at people for things they didn't get to choose. But then again, we didn't get to choose how much contempt instinct we happen to have either. The adjudicators have no more free will than the offenders. But reading a book like this becomes just another factor in the giant causal chain that decides our future actions, and maybe a factor that can nudge us a little in the direction of sanity. So read it.
February 17, 2022
Cries for greater civility in the public space have been growing in America for years. From a battered Rodney King in Los Angeles ("Why Can't We All Just Get Along?") to the Republican-friendly Hank Williams Jr., ("Why Can't We All Just Get a Long Neck?") to the current book, by a California community activist, there is wide recognition that Americans are hurting each other with their hard-headed confidence that they know what's right and that fellow Americans do not.
Erica Etelson, speaking mainly to the left side of the political space, makes a plea for us all to tone down our rhetoric, learn to listen, and be more respectful of the people we think do not see clearly how things are and should be. Hers is a good book, an important book. One thing I especially like about it is her explanation of Powerful Non-Defensive Communication, a technique for dialogue for which Etelson credits Sharon Strand Ellison, founder of the Institute for PNDC.
I'm lending my copy to friends, but I want it back. This is good stuff that I'll be using soon and often.
Erica Etelson, speaking mainly to the left side of the political space, makes a plea for us all to tone down our rhetoric, learn to listen, and be more respectful of the people we think do not see clearly how things are and should be. Hers is a good book, an important book. One thing I especially like about it is her explanation of Powerful Non-Defensive Communication, a technique for dialogue for which Etelson credits Sharon Strand Ellison, founder of the Institute for PNDC.
I'm lending my copy to friends, but I want it back. This is good stuff that I'll be using soon and often.
March 4, 2020
This book is a must read for any liberal who is concerned about our democracy and wants to move the country in a healthy direction. Etelson demonstrates how liberal contempt is alienating swing voters and driving prospective supporters away, and shows how to communicate “across the great divide” in ways that are true to our values and yet have the power to touch hearts and minds and win back the people in the middle.
February 2, 2020
Just mind-blowingly good! If you want to understand what motivates Trump supporters and how to reach their hearts and minds, this book is for you. This book showed me that what I thought was impossible -- talking to people who seem to inhabit a parallel factual and moral universe--is not only possible but crucially important. The author shows how to use Powerful Non-Defensive Communication (PNDC) to communicate without acting self-righteous. I've used PNDC in my own personal life and didn't realize until now that it can be used in political discourse as well.
In addition to being incredibly useful, the book is wonderfully written in a funny, intimate, breezy style. By all means, read this book and then ask all your lefty friends to read it too.
In addition to being incredibly useful, the book is wonderfully written in a funny, intimate, breezy style. By all means, read this book and then ask all your lefty friends to read it too.
Read
June 21, 2020What makes Etelson’s book more than just one more book advocating for better human relations between members of opposing political camps is her willingness to share her own story. Etelson admits not following her own advice, following the election of Donald Trump. She eventually caught on to her own mistake and made a correction, but the story makes the point. That point being that it is all too easy to fall into the trap of being superior, even if only in one’s attitude.
As a progressive, I feel a kindred spirit to the views espoused by Etelson. I, too, want to break through the wall that prevents any meaningful sharing of ideas with people who differ from me so profoundly. Good human relations is, on the surface, better ethics as well as better policy.
As a progressive, I feel a kindred spirit to the views espoused by Etelson. I, too, want to break through the wall that prevents any meaningful sharing of ideas with people who differ from me so profoundly. Good human relations is, on the surface, better ethics as well as better policy.
April 3, 2021
This is a fantastic book. It should be read by any liberal who wants to listen, and potentially change minds. In fact, it should be read by anyone who wants to have real conversations about controversial topics. It has changed my mind about media that used to entertain me by sneering condemnation of ideas I disagree with. It calls out the toxic nature that the "quest for purity" has as the self-righteous abuse and humiliate the historic and sometimes minor misteps of others. We drive people away from the causes we want to advance. How do we hold and advance the ideas that we hold dear, without rising to the bait of another arena style fight? To change minds and to find the common ground of social discourse, someone has to change the nature of the dialog. Why not us?
January 21, 2020
This book and the approach described provide a means by which those of us who are progressives can passionately express our concerns and values but do so in way that opens up communication and allows us to connect with and reach others. Extremely well-researched, it is well-written in a humorous, self-disclosing and, even, lyrical way that makes reading it enjoyable, as well as informative. Please read it!
November 13, 2020
I want to be part of the solution!
This book thrilled me with a real world approach with dealing with talking to someone who disagrees with me politically! Power treatment with the topic.
This book thrilled me with a real world approach with dealing with talking to someone who disagrees with me politically! Power treatment with the topic.
August 8, 2020
Excellent! And very timely. Highly recommend!
October 27, 2022
This is my favorite read of 2022! It was so insightful and written with such compassion and hope that I had a hard time thinking others wouldn’t accept what she had written. I urge every liberal to read this book and absorb what you learn, practicing it, and making it a part of the way you speak to others. I hope to emanate the respect and active listening mentioned without getting angry or snarky, but I know it won’t be easy. For real, 10/10 would recommend. I think it should be mandatory for all liberal politicians and corresponders.
May 3, 2022
Helpful
This is mostly common sense - well-documented common sense - about how calling one another idiots gets us nowhere. It was written late in the Trump administration and before the 2020 election, so readers have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight. It remains helpful, however, regardless of where you fit into the political spectrum.
This is mostly common sense - well-documented common sense - about how calling one another idiots gets us nowhere. It was written late in the Trump administration and before the 2020 election, so readers have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight. It remains helpful, however, regardless of where you fit into the political spectrum.
June 28, 2022
If you, like me, are a progressive that wishes to be able to have a cogent and non-confrontational conversation with those who hold the opposite opinions, this is the book for you.
February 25, 2024
Very good advice on how to handle differences. Even though the author did clearly state what political frame they came from but the advice is applicable to either side of the divide.
October 10, 2024
This offers a compelling case for seeing a bigger picture in everyone. It’s a little repetitive on this central point but definitely gave me perspective on the opposite side of politics from me.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews