MUSIC Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. A recent report estimates more than a quarter of Americans are estranged from family members and that differences over values are among the chief causes of those estrangements. Many reject friends and even family members if their politics aren't right or right to them. Jim Dalrymple joins us today to discuss this article, This Election Season, Don't Let Politics Destroy Your Family. Jim Dalrymple, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. What has happened that so many among us think they have even a duty to stop associating with people they disagree with, even their own family members? What has happened over time is that we've seen increasing polarization among Americans.
I think that in some ways it's not as bad as some of the headlines make it seem. There's some research that shows that maybe Americans are a little bit more centrist, a little bit more willing to accommodate each other than some of the most alarmist headlines seem. But there is evidence that we're becoming a more polarized people.
That is a result of a few different things. We see sort of upticks in people identifying as really ideological during, for example, the Bush administration and then again during subsequent White House administration. So we see kind of it growing with each president, if that makes sense. And we also see things like, for example, there's a researcher named Peter Turchin who's talked about this sort of jockeying among elites to get elite positions in media and in politics and that kind of thing. And as there are more people trying to get those jobs, they're kind of pushed more to the edges. And so we see a variety of different factors converging to push people to sort of identify more strongly with their political positions. I think you just said that there's some research that shows we may not be as polarized as sometimes we seem. Do you feel like that's the case that on the far right, the far left, these people are kind of dominating what's going on in our culture?
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the big factors that we see here is the rise of social media, right? 20 years ago, there really was no social media, the internet was in its infancy. And what you see is now on places like Twitter or even other platforms like TikTok or Instagram, that kind of thing, the loudest voices often are the ones that get the most likes the most views, that kind of thing. And so it seems like the loudest voices are representative of everybody. And I think that they're often not. But it kind of creates sort of a feedback loop where loud voices get amplified.
They have more traction, they persuade more people. So we have the social media problem that's exacerbating things. It used to be the worst thing you could be accused of was being closed minded. But this seems like now closed minded is something to be proud of.
Is that what we're finding? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because people are sort of like militantly devoted in some cases to being open minded, but they're so devoted to that idea that then it sort of swings back around and anybody that kind of finds themselves on the wrong side of the line gets excluded and that kind of thing. So I do think that I personally believe that most people are well intentioned. Most people want to be good people in the world. And I think that sometimes what's happened is those good intentions have just they've been taken to kind of their logical conclusion. And anybody who doesn't share those specific intentions ends up looking like a bad guy in the eyes of whoever it is we're talking about. This inability to learn from people who think differently from us seems to be somewhat dangerous. I mean, is that something that we need to learn to embrace as people that think differently?
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of reasons for this. I think when you look at like the top sort of political leadership of this country, one of the common complaints about our political leadership is that Congress can't get anything done, right, that we're sort of locked in this battle where it's just perpetual campaigning. There's no compromise, there's no bipartisanship. And the flip side of that, though, the thing that I think people say they want, at least, is compromise. People getting along together, a Democrat and a Republican, going down and having lunch together and hashing out their differences and figuring out how to get things actually done. And I'm talking about sort of the top of the political spectrum. But that happens, I think, in our everyday lives as well.
We just passed through Thanksgiving, we're coming up on a few different holidays here in the next few weeks. It occurs to me that if, for example, you don't include, you know, your crazy uncle who has those wild ideas, or you know, your parents who, you know, watch the one political network versus the other or that kind of thing. What happens by distancing ourselves from people who disagree with us isn't that they change their minds, it's that they're left to kind of go down that rabbit hole that they were already going down. And I think that the way that we reach compromise is by spending time with people, by showing them that you can believe something they might think is wrong and still be a good, compassionate person. There's a researcher who's studied friendship a lot.
His name is Robin Dunbar. He's famous for Dunbar's Number, which talks about this idea that we have kind of communities of 150 people or so in our lives. And one of the points that he's made is that one of the keys to cultivating relationships with people is just spending time with them. You don't necessarily have to share all of the same values, you just need to be in the room with them for some amount of time. And I think that as we cut people off, or as we distance ourselves from them, we're not likely to reach some sort of consensus or get things done or see each other as human beings, we're likely to drift even further apart. So what do you think about using these people, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but using people that are very different from us as focus groups, somewhat, you know, I know, sometimes I'm around people, I'm like, well, there's a person that honestly believes that seems like a good opportunity to ask some questions to see if I can figure out why.
What do you think about that concept? Yeah, I love that. I mean, I personally, I love to spend time with people who believe different things than I do. I actually enjoy it in some ways more than people who agree with me. Having a conversation with someone who doesn't agree with me or with a person like it's a richer conversation, it's an opportunity to test your own ideas and see where they might have weaknesses.
We have little get togethers at my house, just kind of informal, you know, dessert night, game night, that kind of thing. But often they sort of evolve into big discussion groups. And it's really wonderful when there's people there who have different opinions, because then we all kind of see what our ideas are, we see each other as human beings. And we also sharpen your own opinions, you see how to persuade people how to convince them that maybe you have a good idea or two. How do we learn this, though, to me, the ability to sit in a room with people that think vastly differently than you do, and be able to just be dispassionate and ask questions and not try to win them over seems like a skill we have to learn. Are there places that we can go to learn that? I think there are I'll get into the weeds a little bit here.
I don't want to get too complicated. But there's this idea that in the Western world, the United States, you know, the Anglophone world that a lot of the time we are really tied to our opinions. There is this is sort of one of the things that sets the West apart from other parts of the world that principles matter so much to us. There's a researcher at Harvard who has written about this idea, and he has a really great example where he does sort of a thought experiment where he says, if someone in your social circle showed up and said that they had just hit a person with their car, would you turn them into the police?
Or would you not? And for most of us Westerners, the question is obvious. They broke the law, they hurt a person, you turn them in. But there are other parts of the world where people see relationships as sort of trumping other values, that relationships are just the most important thing. And obviously, as a Westerner, you know, so in this part of the world, I absolutely think we should obey the law. But I think what this tells us is that there are different ways to think about transgression and think about sort of people doing the wrong thing. And that in other parts of the world, people value their relationships more than they value this idea of casting out a transgressor, right, that someone who is important to them, someone that they love is a person that can still be in their world, even if they have done something that is otherwise not great.
And again, breaking the law is just sort of a thought experiment. But I think that this applies in the world of politics and debate, where you can say, you know what, you might have ideas that I think are wrong, you might be committing sort of a transgression against my values, but the most important thing is our relationship. And I don't want to lose that I don't want to break that.
And if I see that straining, I will sort of back away. And I think that the other useful thing to know here is there's this idea of the Overton window, which is kind of the parameters within which you can have kind of a debate, right? You know, if you are debating climate change, or politics or something like that, what what is it that two people can sort of reasonably disagree on, and you kind of have to find those points of reasonable disagreement with the people that you're talking to.
And sometimes you have to kind of meet them halfway, right, you can't just die on every hill, because dying on every hill is a very lonely thing to do. So I think, I think trying to embrace kind of this idea of relationships as being the most important and then trying to meet people halfway as you discuss stuff with them has at least been really useful for me. So when you talk about meeting people halfway, are you talking about trying to understand maybe their motivation or the principle underlying some of their opinions?
What do you mean by that? For example, let's say you're discussing, I'll use climate change, because it's just like something that I think we're all familiar with, like, let's say you're discussing something with a person, and you think that climate change is this dire thing, and we need to enact, you know, x, y, and z procedures to solve it. But you're debating with a person who doesn't believe climate change is real, you can't meet halfway if you just insist that we need to discuss policies, and they insist that we need to discuss whether it's real or not. So you basically, if you're the person who wants to discuss policy, you've got to step back and understand where they're coming from, and meet them halfway, understand that they're maybe not interested in the policies, they're interested in sort of the underlying facts. And so I guess what I'm saying is it's sort of being willing to set aside your own policy priorities or discussion priorities, and understand what it is someone else wants to debate or discuss.
But I think I have a really big family. And I think what has worked for us at big gatherings is understanding the group dynamics, certain people are willing to discuss things that certain other people are not. And also, you just kind of you sort of ease into it, like, I know, when we get together, we might start out with a discussion about pop culture or some movie that everyone recently saw.
And then that evolves into, you know, an issue, maybe the movie raised or, you know, the actions of the actors or something like that, right. So I think the point I'm trying to make is that easing into these conversations, I think, is the way to go. Try to be aware as you discuss stuff with your loved ones, be they friends or family members, when temperatures might be rising, when people are crossing that line that they can't discuss anymore. I would imagine you're a very interesting dinner guest.
So good for your family. Keep things interesting. So are there some examples of some more balanced approaches to relationships that we're seeing? Yeah, it's a good question. It's hard to know if sort of across demographics we see this. There's a lot of studies on polarization and that kind of thing. There's less research on, you know, sort of the emotional state of people interacting with each other. But in my anecdotal experience, I've seen, you know, some people with larger families who have to negotiate this more. If, you know, you have five kids versus one kid, you're going to have five different opinions. Right.
And so you are sort of forced to learn how to grapple with this. So I think that's not to say everyone needs to have a large family. But if you are looking for examples, you know, you can look to some people in those situations. I used to live in Los Angeles in a part of the city that was extremely diverse. I mean, it was just like I lived in a little cul-de-sac type of space and every house was filled with someone from a different country. And a lot of those families were sort of extended families that were first and second generation families in this country. And what really impressed me about living in this situation was that they managed to sort of maintain their relationships and their cohesive identities and that they seem to love each other, despite the fact that their lives were very, very different. Right.
You might have some parents or grandparents who are first generation who didn't even speak English. And then, you know, their kids or grandkids are going to college at UCLA and, you know, radically different lives. And yet somehow they managed to maintain close relationships. And so when I think about the type of relationships that I want, I often think about this little cul-de-sac I lived on in Los Angeles where people maintain their relationships. Great visual.
Well, we're just about out of time for this week before we go. Jim, where can our listeners follow you and find this particular article? This election season, don't let politics destroy your family. So I write a substack blog. It's nuclearmeltdown.substack.com so that you can check out that. And then I also on the particular piece we're talking about was for the Institute for Family Studies. So it's at ifstudies.org slash blog and you'll find my writing as well as a ton of great other people's writing. All right, Jim Dalrymple, thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters.
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