“New Jersey’s Department of Education launched a citizen engagement process asking students, teachers and parents to vote on ideas for changes that officials should consider as the state reopens its schools after the pandemic closed classrooms for a year.”
Tech tools help deepen citizen input in drafting laws abroad and in U.S. states, Rollcall.com
“Basically, social media radicalizes us and primes us to be intolerant of others whose attitudes, opinions and views differ from our own.”
“I Studied Trump’s Twitter Use for Six Years. Prepare for the Worst”, NY Times
Cotton Mather described the neighborhood societies as being composed of a dozen married couples who would meet at one another's homes in succession for prayer and other religious exercises, and also to consider questions like the following:[3]
Who are in any peculiar adversity; and what may be done to comfort them?What contention or variance may there be among our neighbours; and what may be done for healing it?In what open transgressions do any live? and who shall be desired to carry faithful admonitions to them?
The similar reforming societies would entertain questions like these:[4]
Can any further methods be devised that ignorance and wickedness may be more chased from our people in general; and that domestic piety, in particular, may flourish among them?Is there any instance of oppression or fraudulence in the dealings of any sort of people, which may call for our efforts to rectify it?Is there any matter to be humbly recommended to the legislative power, to be enacted into a law for the public benefit?Do we know of any person languishing under severe affliction, and is there any thing we can do for the succour of that afflicted neighbour?Has any person a proposal to make, for our further advantage and assistance, that we may be in a better and more regular capacity for prosecuting these intentions?
Snipped from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junto_(club)
One was an English group called the "Dry Club," which had philosopher John Locke, William Popple, and Benjamin Furly among its members during the 1690s (and was itself partially inspired by Furly's "heretics of the Lantern" society).[1] It met one evening a week for two hours at a time and required that its members reply affirmatively to the following questions:[2]
Whether he loves all Men, of what Profession or Religion soever?Whether he thinks no person ought to be harmed in his Body, Name, or Goods, for mere speculative Opinions, or his external way of Worship?Whether he loves and seeks Truth for Truth's sake; and will endeavour impartially to find and receive it himself, and to communicate it to others?
Each member of the club would take turns proposing topics for discussion and moderating these discussions. The discussions were to be held in a spirit of open-minded tolerance:
That no Person or Opinion be unhandsomely reflected on; but every Member behave himself with all the temper, judgement, modesty, and discretion he is master of.
Snipped from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junto_(club)
“One condition that matters is subtle but logical: It turns out that when people build up even a small buffer of goodwill, their conversations go much better. Specifically, people need to have about three moments of positive feelings for every one moment of negativity.”
“You distill the essence of what the other person is saying, and then play it back to them. There’s no need to agree with the person – or even to pretend to like them. “The point is not to convince, nor to contradict, nor to take exception to, nor explain away,” as Friedman writes in Challenging Conflict, which he co-authored. “The point is to understand.”
Gary Friedman quoted in “Make America Talk Again”, The Guardian
“So if you have a kind of absolutism, if you don’t contextualize it and you just look at it even if you’re not looking at it as murder or killing, in the grossest terms, but simply as the interruption of life processes that we would prefer under other circumstances go forward, it always has a dimension of loss to it.”
Frances Kissling, On Being, “What is Good in the Position of the Other”
Principles for better conversations
Words that matter
Hospitality
Humility
Patience
Generous Listening
Adventurous Civility
Better Conversation Guide, from On Being
Link to the Civil Conversations Project