As We Hurtle Toward the Election…
Thoughts on Moving from "Us vs. Them" to "We All Belong"
Hi, Friends. Here’s an inspiring essay about surviving American politics with your soul intact. It’s by my good friend Palma Joy Strand: a swimmer, former Stanford J.V. field hockey player, and Stronger Woman if there ever was one. – Mariah
P.S. My support for Kamala Harris is beyond the scope of this article but if you’re undecided or tempted not to vote, read this or this.
I’ve been thinking about how and why to create respectful, empathetic relationships with people who are different from me. I’ve been thinking about how this process, one conversation at a time, builds and strengthens communities.
I know: This is not exactly what most Americans seem to be thinking about these days. But it’s my life’s work.
What Is Civity?
Eleven years ago, my co-founder Malka Ranjana Kopell and I created a nonpartisan nonprofit, Civity, devoted to this vision: a world in which everyone belongs. We define civity as a culture of deliberately engaging in relationships of respect and empathy with others who are different.
Civity operates most immediately at the level of person-to-person interactions. Relationships may last years and even decades, but they form by the accretion of moments.
Civity animates my greeting to the unhoused woman who many afternoons sits with her dog on the steps of Calvary Church as I walk by on my way home from work. Civity also seems to animate two Spanish-speaking men who pull up next to me in the auto parts shop parking lot and come over when they see me having trouble closing my car’s hood. I had accomplished the replacement of the headlight bulb all on my own (!) – but welcomed their assistance in getting the job done.
Civity was present when I stopped last summer at the Dickeyville Grotto and Shrine on my drive from Omaha to Milwaukee and ended up in conversation with one of the church elders. We knew that our politics were different (probably diametrically opposed), and yet our conversation almost sparkled with shared appreciation for the passion that inspired the construction of this local marvel.
Stanford’s Strengthening Democracy Challenge
This year, a major Stanford University study proved that Civity’s relational approach to connecting people across differences can strengthen democracy and reduce polarization by building social trust.
The Strengthening Democracy Challenge – the largest social science experiment of its kind – measured several factors related to partisanship and political distrust. The results show that the simple act of engaging in the practice of civity – of seeing humanity in an “other” – reduces partisan polarization. Specifically, the study showed that our eight-minute digital intervention – Civity Storytelling: Expanding the Pool of People Who Matter – increases social trust, decreases social distance (avoiding being near someone of the other party), and reduces bipartisan animosity.
Most importantly, the study showed that even small interactions make a difference.
Time and Scale
Last month, a weekend trip brought awareness of this into focus in a literal way. I drove north from Marquette University, where I teach law, negotiation, and conflict resolution, to Lake Superior, the largest lake on the North American continent. The Ojibway/Anishinaabe, who lived in the region long before Europeans arrived, call it Gichigami: sea or large lake. By any name, the lake is vast and ancient, created millions of years ago by volcanic action and glaciers.
Along the lake’s southeastern shore, the cliffs of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore rise vertically from the water. Their sandstone cliffs are being worn away by the waves and winds that sweep across the lake. Natural springs send water trickling down the face of these cliffs, leaching iron, manganese, calcium, and copper in Jackson Pollock patterns of red/brown, black, white, and blue/green.
This expansive lake and the work of water and wind on stone over eons: these are reminders of geological time and scale. Though we experience our individual lives in minutes, days, and years, we are also riding the currents of the millions of millennia of Earth’s being, as well as thousands of years of human history.
Daily civity is tangible and real – easy to see and feel. We experience how it nourishes us, sustains us. We may be less aware of civity’s long-term effects: how individual moments, interactions, and relationships are creating stories that in turn create shared meaning and culture – a macro-level, emergent pattern of how people live together.
“Respect breeds respect,” writes sociologist Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot. “A modest loaf becomes many.”
“Happiness and sustainability depend on everyone healing everyone else,” writes psychologist Mary Pipher.
This election matters. Of course. Absolutely.
And…
Every-four-year elections are just one of the time cycles in which we live our lives. We also live our lives day by day. A significant part of working with Civity, and of civity work, is connecting with other people all across the country who are working in their communities to make things better. Everywhere. Inside offices, schools, libraries, and coffee shops. On Zoom calls. Outside on the street or in parks. It’s inspiring. You are inspiring.
Regardless of how this election unfolds, we are all spinning webs of relationships that make it possible for us – all of us – to live together and work through challenges together. The more we all weave respectful, empathetic webs with people who are different from us, the more we increase trust, create solidarity, and co-create a world for our children and their children that will grow stronger and stronger over time.
In addition to being Co-Founder and Research Director of Civity, Palma Joy Strand is Professor Emerita of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at Creighton University and Visiting Professor at Marquette University Law School. She teaches conflict engagement, structural injustice, race and belonging, and more. She holds a BS (Civil Engineering) from Stanford University and a JD from Stanford Law School. She can be reached via comments here or directly at Palma@civity.org.
A version of this essay first appeared in the October 29, 2024, Civity newsletter.
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Interesting.