I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

by Monica Guzmán

Ideological polarization is based on reason. Affective polarization is based on feelings. But false polarization? That’s just based on a lie.

What’s underrepresented in your communities will be underrepresented in your life and overrepresented in your imagination.

Believing what you see across the political divide is like believing what you see in a fun-house mirror: everything’s warped—including the divide itself. Our ideas about the other side’s ideas? Wrong. Our ideas about the other side’s hostility toward ours? Distorted. Our ability to learn the truth about the other side from within our hyperactive silos? Totally, totally busted.