Unsafe Conversations
Really excited to launch a new YouTube series with my friend Amelia Sargisson in the next few days. Amid the noise and dissonance of an increasingly normalized political incivility, creating a space to have meaningful social conversations across ideological divides has become necessary spiritual work. When honest folks lose the ability to understand and respect intellectual differences, they are unlikely to be able to make sense of a complicated world. Meaningful conversations no longer take place on campus, cable news or social media, venues that prefer a cult of victimhood, confirmation bias and de-platforming. While prior to the pandemic they were still taking place in galleries, concert halls and theatres, many of those venues have now been shuttered.
Moral progress is driven by imagination — hearing and telling stories that increase our sensitivity -- not winning rational arguments. As a culture, we have historically put our trust in the imaginative expressions of artists to offer leadership in the task of extending societal sympathies. Our video series is rooted in three assumptions:
First, as Tim Leary taught in regards to the psychedelic experience, the physical environment matters. As does having a guide. In many ways, the sort of conversations we need to have as a society are very much like an LSD trip - dissonant, disorienting, but potentially life-changing as we come out the other side. Even today, people still associate concert halls, theatres and galleries as spaces associated with dissonance and the inviting possibility of temporarily stepping outside of ourselves. Folks are programmed to be ready for the weird sounds, unusual colours and strange ideas that they are likely to encounter in these types of spaces. If for the time being we can’t meet artists in their natural environment, then let’s bring them here.
Second, throughout history we turned to artists to be our social guides for a reason. There is a romantic instinct in the commitment to living an artistic life, and this instinct allows the artist to access feelings that are beyond the reach of calculative logic. Artists look for integration, and can assimilate a multiplicity of viewpoints more naturally than others. The type of art being discussed here celebrates the deep possibilities of our humanness.
Third, the mindset brought to the experience matters as much as the setting. Our set up is not binary – not right/left, old/young or any other opposition. Instead, the “set” shared by all participants is a desire to facilitate conversation, not have an argument. We need to refine our listening skills in the same way that many of us have refined our visual perception. We are not thrown off-balance when encountering a surprising colour. But why are we so much more sensitive to unexpected words or ideas? Dissonance can be integrated so that it is simply another colour on the palette of sense-making.
We hope this series empowers the viewer to be somewhat more hopeful and join our conversation as a participant in creating something transformational.