“Up until then, I had doubts about the Republican Party,” he said. “But I didn’t actually want to admit that. And it also has to do with evangelicalism, as you know. I was also a pretty hardcore evangelical back then. They’re in some ways closely related. …I think the speech got a little nasty for a while in 2016, when Trump was elected, but I think that’s when it started to get particularly bad.”
Despite this, most of Son’s friends remain Republicans. Son holds the ideal that most people want the same thing politically. “The people want the country to do what’s best for them.”
Son cited Seattle in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd as an example of trying to pull a “friend” out of the media bubble in order to soften some of the rhetoric promoting his friend’s hard-line political views. There were protests in.
During the 2020 Capitol siege protests, an “autonomous zone” was created in the middle of a densely populated area of Seattle. Protesters clashed with police, at one point forcing Seattle police to abandon the East Precinct. The situation received widespread media coverage, but some of the coverage was more myth than reality.
Son said his friends got their information from sources such as Fox News and Newsmax.
“They’re telling him Seattle is exploding and everything is on fire,” he said.
So Sohn went to the area around Cal Anderson Park to see for himself. He took photos and videos to share with his friends, giving them perspective on what they were seeing and hearing on TV and the Internet.
“He and I still don’t see eye to eye on those things, but he took[those pictures]and said, ‘I know, I appreciate that.'” You It gave me time to think about what I was seeing on the news. “I took it as a positive interaction,” Son said.
However, he could not find common ground with all his friends. One said Christians would be persecuted abroad and held accountable for their “baseless hatred of Trump.” He had to let go of the relationship, at least for the time being.
After that, racial discrimination intensified.
“I’m Korean. I’m a minority,” Son said. And while he grew up experiencing mostly “subtle” and “insidious” racism, in 2016 he felt it erupted openly, especially on social media.
“For me, it just feels like the guardrails came off at that point,” he said.
The son makes a persistent effort to keep his friend.
“I think it comes down to mindset, and it’s something that you have to actively reinforce every day,” he said. “For the people I care about, I need to remember that what I care about is not what they believe politically. What I care about is that they are human beings. It’s about what kind of person you are as a person.”
stay curious
Seattle resident Eric Fisk models a similar approach, drawing from his experience working on community councils to “understand where everyone is coming from, what the underlying issues are, and look for common ground.” He said he learned.
Mr. Fisk, 53, is a former software engineer who describes himself as a “good government liberal” who voted independent in the primary. He was raised an atheist and had no ties to religion.
“But, of course, most people are religious. So I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand why people believe in[religion]. It’s a fundamentally irrational point of view. , I still think that’s not really the case. “
But he finds it interesting to listen to religious people talk about how they came to believe what they believe. He said this practice is helpful in such contentious times.
“So if you’re talking to someone and you feel like they’re from another planet, that’s very useful for political discussions today,” he said.
But one tactic, Fisk realized, just doesn’t work anymore. It’s humor. He said he lost friends because of the joke. He was quick to point out that the joke he tried to use to lighten the mood was “thought-provoking humor” and not an attack on people or lifestyles.
“I’m basically not a guy who takes sides,” he said. “But you definitely see it on both sides. It’s just a lack of humor and a lack of tolerance for the other side.”
One of Fisk’s tactics for staying sane is monitoring his media intake. He recommends it to others as well. He said he likes reading Seattle Met magazine. That’s because it focuses on “happy things you can do,” like restaurant reviews and community-building ideas.
“If you visit a news source and come away less satisfied with the news, it’s probably not the right place to visit,” he says.
What really drives our political attitudes?
My brother and I have a father, but we grew up in two different homes in two different states. I lived with my father and mother. He lived with his mother, his father’s first wife. We sometimes spent summers together on the small farm owned by my mother and father, often with six other children around. We were a noisy blended family of his, her, and them. For several years, my brother and I worked together on construction sites.
After that, we quit my father’s construction company and went to separate universities, and we didn’t see each other much for nearly 30 years. He became an engineer working and living in Billings, Montana, and I studied philosophy and writing while working primarily in Seattle.
A few summers ago, he invited me to go fishing with him on the river for a week. We became very good friends and took two long river trips over the next few years. And on those trips, we realized that our political alignment and attitudes are pretty much the same.
Professor Pete Hatami of Pennsylvania State University said genetics likely played a role in our similarities. After all, we all share genes from our fathers, and we have lived according to our father’s choices even when we are far apart.
Khatami has published widely on “psychiatric genetics,” a complex discipline that explores the genetic roots of political and other behaviors and attitudes. Although my brother and I share a common view of our different backgrounds, Hatami says, “We understand why people are different even when they are in the same family and face exactly the same experiences, the same environmental pressures, and the same socio-economic class.” He said he is interested in “understanding”.
But first, Khatami points out in both his conversations and his published work that there is no single gene or collection of genes that dictates who you vote for. Genes and environment are a complex system of interactions that collectively determine, from moment to moment, what we do, who we trust, and what tribe we feel comfortable belonging to. Motivate.
In one of his review articles published in the Annual Review of Political Science, he and colleagues wrote: realizing one’s own life and updating the cognitive, emotional, psychological, and neurobiological processes humans use to select their environments and perceive, observe, and evaluate their social world. ”
In an interview, he explained that although there are parts of us that we are born with, our environment, especially during childhood, determines whether or not those genes are expressed.
In a more open environment, the attitudes of a genetically influenced person emerge earlier and you yourself are freer to become a genetically influenced person.
However, even in extremely restrictive environments such as overbearing parents or the strict social rules and customs of the society in which they were raised, “Once these children leave home, they are unable to make friends, , the experience, the (financial) choices they start making on their own,’ classes, and whatever they’re going to do anyway. ”
The lesson from this research for communicating across political divides, he suggests, is that people cannot change the attitudes of others.
“You can’t even ask them questions or try to find someone who agrees with you. That’s not productive,” he said. “The data shows that trying to change someone’s politics is like trying to change their religion. It’s like trying to change their personality. Once you’re down that path, If that happens, nothing good will come of it.”
Instead, he said, we should focus on what we share that affects our daily lives.
