>> From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made on a date.

If you're part of Gen Z, you were likely to check out a date's political views or voting history before going out.

A few months ago.

NPR and PBS news worked with Marist to get an updated picture on how Americans view their potential dating partners.

They found that 60% of Americans age 18 to 29 consider it highly important to only date or marry someone who shares political views.

That lines up with the survey from last year finding that many Gen Z singles would refuse a date based on different political views.

Now, this is a generational trend.

The importance of political alignment decreases with age.

Only about a third of baby boomers care if their partners share their politics.

But this hour is about more than just dating.

In the romantic divide.

Look at your neighborhood.

50 years ago, most Americans lived in places that had diverse political views, and now it's flipped.

We have deep blue cities.

We have deep red rural areas.

We have a growing number of neighborhoods where you can't find someone who disagrees with you.

We're more isolated.

As a result.

We spend more time online.

That's where we learn to really loathe people who think differently.

We dehumanize our fellow community members.

We get angry before we even meet one another.

Is there anything we can do to bring down the heat?

I wonder if there's something that listeners have done.

Is there something in your neighborhood that's happened, or in your family?

Or maybe you think that maybe we don't need to turn down the heat?

Maybe you do feel like cutting ties as appropriate.

I recognize that everyone has their lines and their limits.

I'm simply observing that the national fracture feels more acute.

And frankly, to me, it feels more frightening.

I'm looking for ways to return to a sense of community, of seeing people who live among us as neighbors and humans, not pure political creatures.

First.

My guest this hour is someone who I think has always helped with this kind of conversation.

He's really, really good.

Reverend Colin Pritchard is pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Geneva, and I really appreciate your insight.

Thank you for making time to come all the way in here to Rochester.

Like Geneva's not that far.

Come on.

>> It's not that far.

And actually, I'm a Rochester City kid, so.

>> Yeah.

>> Come on.

Yeah.

>> We're good.

It's great to see you.

and for all of your community church there, if you're listening on Finger Lakes Public Radio.

WEOS.

Thank you for doing that.

It's a great community that you can join every day here.

We should be doing more in the Finger Lakes.

And we'll always take your ideas, connections to Wxxi.org.

Today is about turning the heat down.

I think.

Well, I don't think I know, Colin, that I've already gotten emails from people saying, why should we turn the heat down?

Why should I give any emotional energy to someone who's x, y, z?

I'll read some of those in a moment.

but do you share my concern that what feels like a national fracture is getting worse?

But but could get way worse?

I mean, like, I hear people say, it's so bad.

It's never been this bad.

It couldn't get worse.

And I think it could get much worse.

And that scares me.

Does it frighten you?

>> Sure.

So first question is, do I share the concern?

Absolutely.

I think there is no question that the heat, to use your language has been turned up in recent years in the political environment of at least the last decade has been dramatically more confrontational.

dramatically more win lose, as opposed to how do we benefit the greater community?

so it definitely is ramping up.

Could it get worse?

Oh my goodness.

Yes.

Look at any place where speech is actually a potentially fatal activity.

I know we've had some recent examples of what that could look like in any direction you want to choose.

and we are horrified by it, as opposed to having it be a daily experience.

Are there places where that is a daily experience?

Yes.

Could we get there?

Yes.

Must we?

Absolutely not.

And so it is it worse than it was?

Yes.

Is it better than it could be?

Yes.

Are there some things we can do?

I believe so, yes.

>> I've shared a little bit on this program about how I kind of had to pull the car over, and I was shaking up when I heard about the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

And that says nothing about how I felt about his views.

It's how I felt about a human being and how I felt living in a country where to your point, it is not a daily occurrence to be killed for speech, but it is.

It is not.

Never.

And how horrifying that felt.

How did you feel when you heard that news?

>> Yeah.

It's it was.

I was honestly pretty struck by the range and intensity of responses.

it was, for whatever particular reason, that particular incident cued up things and lots of folks that I know left, right, apolitical or political folks.

and the intensity of the response was extraordinary.

mostly for the bad, honestly I actually know some of the folks who've been involved in some of the challenges in public education and suspensions for posting and those sorts of things.

I have seen folks that I had pretty significant relationship and respect for celebrating suffering.

And that doesn't mesh well with my profession or sensibility.

and I saw some folks really instantly target blame and go after things that were anything other than the murder of a person publicly in front of his family.

and the fact that there was an immediate leap over the that moment of suffering and that criminal act and that public assassination to get to blaming the other or try and turn it into something other than a human story and a human loss to go there first was pretty hard to watch.

and, it makes it real hard to then have a conversation around the, the content and whether or not you make a saint of a person because of the nature of their death.

Right.

and that's a whole 'nother conversation.

But it was it was really hard, and it was mostly hard for me because of the way I saw the people around me react to it.

>> Yeah, I understand that that sentiment.

And I'll also say, I mean, I listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates on with Ezra Klein this week talking about their disagreements to some of what Ezra Klein wrote in The New York Times about Charlie Kirk, about what he said on his podcast, and I thought, I think there is a couple of points that are fair here, and I want to draw a distinction and see if we can move in this direction, see if you agree.

So the first is that Ta-Nehisi Coates says that how a person dies does not change how they lived.

And the fact that they have died may be a tragedy.

In this case, it is undeniably a tragedy.

It does not change the evaluation we have of the content of their public life.

I think that's fair.

I understand the desire to sort of move toward hagiography when we see such a shocking death.

So I take that point where I part company a little bit is the idea that that we should pretty, pretty freely and pretty widely just cast people out of our lives.

And I think that we can confront views that we find odious or be honest with what distresses us.

While still trying to respect the person, to not respect the views.

I've said from the start on this program, people are worthy of respect.

Ideas are worthy of interrogation.

They're not inherently worthy of respect.

I think the internet's convinced people, you have to respect my ideas, too.

No, I don't, I will always respect you and your right to share them.

Your ideas are your ideas, and they will be evaluated on the merits.

But I think too often we say, well, you have bad ideas, therefore you are bad and you're irredeemably bad.

And if I spend any time with you, it's an endorsement of you, and therefore I will build a silo.

That's where I think we get in a cycle that we are starting to spiral.

And I wonder if there's a way to pull back from that.

Do you see that spiral, and do you are you actually optimistic that we could pull back from that?

>> Sure.

I mean, it's super hard work because you need to pull away from what you're being tempted towards.

we're constantly being fed encouragement to behave exactly as you are describing.

And one of the pieces I really want to highlight in what you just said is you're separating the idea from humanity.

And when those if those two get connected in some way where someone is essentially the ideas they have, we need to take a further step back to the human reality of their existence.

and there is a couple things I have always found incredibly helpful, and I would encourage folks to do.

I recognize that very few people are willing to have this conversation, but I think the invitation to it has a lot of merit, and it is two things.

Number one, what are you afraid of?

Violence comes from fear, right?

bad ideas are usually grounded in some reasonable sense of sense of trying to protect something.

You love.

And if we can have the.

What are you afraid of question before?

Why are you why are you trying to defend in this way?

Question we break it down into its sort of essential parts, and the vast majority of people I've ever encountered who are willing to have that hard conversation find themselves in a profound alignment around what matters most in the world and what it is they care about, and why they're energized and why they're angry.

They're angry because they're scared.

They're scared because they love something.

What is it you love and what are you afraid of?

What happens if the world goes the way you don't want it to go?

What is it you lose?

And when people can identify those things, you start having an entirely different conversation.

>> More common ground.

>> Profoundly, profoundly.

so what do you love?

What are you afraid of?

one of the things I've done in leadership retreats over now, 25 years of ministry, is there's a little exercise where you gather people around the table and you just take turns and just say, tell me one thing you love.

And the first time you go all around the table, you get these ridiculous stories.

I love the Buffalo Bills.

There's nothing I love better than pizza.

There's nothing.

And there are all these superficial things that people really can safely say out loud.

They get their fandom, they celebrate, and then I say, go again.

What do you love?

And it starts getting a little deeper.

And usually about the third time when I say we're going one more time, half the people around the table are crying, not because they're in pain, but because they're getting honest about what matters the most to them.

And you stop talking about sports teams or favorite colors.

>> Children.

>> I love my children.

I love what it means to be able to breathe.

Because, you know, I overcame a diagnosis.

I love the fact that I have one more day.

I love the fact that my neighbor came by and mowed my lawn just because they saw I needed help, and it was really beautiful.

And I don't ask for the help I need.

But there it was, and I loved that moment.

And when we get to those moments, suddenly we're not talking about what are your bad ideas?

We're talking about what we share and what it is we love.

And it really turns the temperature down and it really changes the conversation.

So when someone throws an idea my way, the first question is usually, where is that idea coming from?

What are you afraid of?

>> That's really powerful?

>> and boy, when people can identify that and we ourselves can identify that, right?

>> So it might take multiple rounds to write.

What are you afraid of?

Well, bears.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Sure.

losing my children.

>> Right.

>> I'm.

I'm scared of my children not being in a stable world.

>> Right?

>> Yeah, I I'm.

>> That's a powerful question.

>> So, and it's twofold, because what are you afraid of?

Is going to dovetail and be very, very close to what you love.

>> They're connected.

>> Yeah.

>> Because you're really only afraid of losing what you love.

You're not afraid of losing what you don't care about.

>> So once you do that.

>> Yeah.

>> Let's say you've got 20 people in a room and they're sharing openly, and you know that they are from very divergent political views, but they might start to see some common ground.

My concern is that that common ground is as powerful as it may feel in the moment.

It's ephemeral because they will retreat to.

>> Sure.

>> You know, all of the visceral feelings they get in their online communities.

and then the identities that we have built up, I mean, for all the concern that the political right has had about identity politics, identity politics are everything in the online space.

What team are you on exactly?

Are you on the right or the wrong side?

We hear it reflected in the rhetoric of political leaders.

So what's next after you establish that common ground?

I mean, I want to first salute just the construction of these questions to help us see humanity in each other.

Yeah.

What do you do next?

>> So then it is so can we admit both of us are afraid here.

And both of us care about.

And usually you end up at a spot where both of us care about a lot of the same things.

And so the fact that I love this, and this is what I'm afraid might come of it, leads me to kind of think this way.

Can you tell me a little bit about who you love and what you're afraid of, and how that leads you to your decisions?

Okay, that actually makes some sense.

I'm not sure I agree with the end result.

I'm not sure that's the way I would go about it.

but when we're having a conversation about why it matters instead of just the process or winning some battle, it fundamentally creates a different kind of space.

And I almost always I see folks radical right or radical left just start to merge a little bit.

It's like, yeah, we're going to have some basic disagreements, but not nearly as many as we thought.

And oh, you're not actually an idiot.

You're a human.

>> You've actually seen this?

>> I've seen it in small scale.

Sure.

I've never seen it on Facebook.

Just let's be clear.

any kind of public forum where someone is on display or can anonymously comment or is trying to score points for their team that's the wrong model that it has to be close enough to be sort of interpersonal.

>> Let me ask a separate question related to that.

And this is just mostly musing, but I want to get your view on this.

I think by now we know that social media is bad for us.

It's it's like cigarette smoking.

That's how I view cable news.

I mean, cable news is less of a thing.

I mean, it's certainly a thing for certain generation.

but social media, almost all of it.

I mean, maybe there are examples of positivity.

So.

And I think most people would say that, I mean, like Jonathan Haidt in his book and in his research has indicated, has shown that teenagers will tell you they spend hours a day on TikTok, and nearly half of teenagers will also say, I wish TikTok was never invented, but I'm still going to use it for hours a day.

Adults like we know social media is bad for us, but we doomscroll.

We post, we lash out, we post.

I don't know why people use X, but they use it.

So why are we still doing it if we think it's bad for us?

>> So there's a few answers to that.

one is they are designed to be addictive and it works really well.

>> So exactly how they're created.

>> Yeah, I mean, part of it is this was the more you are setting eyes on that, the more it is an economic driver for the owners of those companies.

It is why did we market cigarettes to little kids with cute camels?

Why?

You know so part of it is somebody's smart enough to know psychologically how to touch the buttons, hit your sort of adrenaline centers, give you your occasional rewards.

Psych 101. and if you get enough clicks and likes and whatever it it replaces genuine community, but at least feels like something.

and so we do it because we are victims of a highly addictive system.

And we what started as a good idea quickly became a poor one, as almost most addictions do.

the first little piece is not that big a problem, but when it becomes something you have to have, you're in trouble.

some suggestions around social media that I offer for folks is just never entertain.

really a meaningful conversation or battle or back and forth on social media.

The the answer is always if you really would like to talk about this here's my office, right.

If you really want to talk about this, we'll do it offline.

if you really want to talk about this, I will buy you the cup of coffee.

But we're going to look at each other face to face and have this actual conversation.

But what you cannot do here on my social media feed is hijack a battle with somebody else who commented, or try and score points against me, or, you know, pull quote and then misrepresent the whole thing simply won't.

so I have really never had a back and forth on social media and just cut it off.

and.

>> You cut it off.

>> But never really got into back and forth yourself.

>> I don't know if you want to talk to me, do it face to face.

>> Boy, I almost never use social media anymore.

>> Yeah.

>> and I was actually having a conversation at the Ewing Forum with Daniel Ponder about this, in which he was talking about how there becomes this pressure not just to have the back and forth that you talk about that becomes so ugly, but also that whatever team you're on expects you like, when's the last time you posted about this issue X, Y, or Z?

Well, you can't post about the bills if you haven't said this about this political issue.

And you don't, you don't.

You haven't said enough.

Where's your comment?

Where's your post?

So now my response to that is fine.

I don't post about anything.

I'm on the sideline.

Join me there.

It's nicer there.

People can't yell at me for not posting about whatever your pet issue is, because I don't post about anything and I find it more comforting that way.

>> Sure.

>> And it's I want to be clear that it is not apathy, right?

It's effectiveness.

>> It's this.

>> Idea that if you.

>> So.

>> Daniel Ponder referenced Amal Clooney and there were activists saying, like, she hasn't posted about Gaza, she doesn't care.

And calling her out while she was actually drafting legal papers about, I mean, like doing actual physical work in the real world, but being called out for not posting enough, like, that's a very strange world that we're in.

But I want to go back to something that you said that I think is really important here.

You said that it can feel like community, correct.

In absence of genuine community.

>> Correct.

>> Church attendance across the country is down.

I don't know about your church, but it's down over the decades in this country.

We see fewer people involved in PTA groups.

We see less in the way of chicken barbecues and everything that relates to.

And I you don't have to call me from Penn Yan or all these other wonderful places that I spend a lot of time in.

I know it still happens, but I'm saying it happens less and we do spend more time thinking that we're just replacing the physical community with the online community.

so talk to me about why you think real world community, whether it is church, whether it is meeting for a cup of coffee in person, whether it's book clubs, whether it's PTA groups, why is that more valuable than trying to recreate that online?

>> so we are sensory human beings.

We are people made for community.

Why is isolation a punishment?

Because we are naturally communal beings.

however, we've been created physically, psychologically, all that kind of stuff.

It's really not good to be alone.

and so there is something that has potential for vibrancy and shared life.

It's more than the sum of its parts.

When people are in healthy community and come together, it cannot be replaced by any kind of digital interaction.

I've did Zoom Church for two years.

You know, we did a pretty good job, said some pretty nice things.

Some people had some good affirmation.

>> About the same.

>> But it is fundamentally not the same in the language of my tradition, not just the sacramental activity, but the notion of what is communion to be truly in the presence of one another, and therefore also recognizing the presence of the Holy.

You can't do that digitally.

It doesn't work in the absence of two or more gathering.

>> Aren't we teaching kids that they can?

I mean, with social media and all these different things that come at them every day, isn't that the message that that kids and people everywhere are getting that that does count as community, that does count as real connection?

>> Oh, sure.

And you can see the suffering that then comes from it.

When that breaks down or you realize that since I never actually met that person or saw them at their worst, or they didn't have a filter on their picture or their story and then when that wall breaks down, they discover that they were in a meaningful relationship with a false representation.

And how painful that is.

it's very much it's very similar to, you know, what happens when your loved one, surprises you in a really negative way?

This happens repeatedly on social media kinds of pieces, because there is there's something about eye to eye.

There's something about, you know, tell me your story and I'm going to look at you while you do that.

And sharing the quiet moments that earn the trust.

so are we telling kids that that counts as community, social?

Societally?

Yes we are.

I would argue that that's not true.

>> Well.

>> I want to offer one more observation about in real life versus these online spaces that you talk about.

I did mention off the top of the hour that there's been a big change, and there's a lot of data on this in the last 50 years about the communities we live in politically.

And what that means is in the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter gets elected.

24% of Americans lived in what we call landslide counties, which means your county was a 20 point margin or more in the presidential race.

So more than three out of four of us lived in counties that were not landslide counties.

And that's almost entirely flipped.

It's it's in the mid 60s now, almost two thirds of Americans live in landslide counties, which means hugely one way or the other.

But there's a risk in overstating that.

And here's an example.

You know, I live in Charlotte.

Rochester is a deep blue Rochester Republican struggle to win in Rochester.

We're going to talk about that soon on the show.

Democrats struggle to win in in, you know, rural America that that's the case right now.

But on the the little neighborhood I live in, this little triangular park, there are straight and gay families.

There's atheists and people who go to church every Sunday.

There's Puerto Rican families and black families and white families there.

There's judges and people who work for the schools and a teacher.

and there are Black Lives Matter flags, and there's don't tread on me flags.

And there were occasionally other flags and yet.

So so if that neighborhood, if my neighborhood existed only in an online community, I think it would be nasty.

I think if the only thing that we all knew about each other was how we engage online, and we had never met in real life, didn't know anything about him, I think people would really loathe each other, and instead the people with different political views plow each other's driveways.

And this is not this is not a cliche.

This is literally where I live.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> People bake for each other.

People bring desserts to each other.

There are parties in the parks.

People bring baby clothes when there are new baby in the neighborhood.

I just experienced that this summer.

No one's asking your politics.

The neighbors are great.

They are great.

I would do anything for my neighbors, and I know that some don't vote the way I do or have different views on the things I I view on, but that's not a cliche.

That's literally where I live.

If it were the online space, it would.

I'm going to use a technical term.

It would suck.

>> Yeah, yeah.

So but.

>> We are choosing.

that pastor.

We are choosing that I don't.

And so I'm hoping that we can pull back from that.

So before we get into break, my next question is do you think we can pull back from that.

>> So I do and I think it requires like so many significant changes or turns or transformation or repentance or whatever you want to call it.

it requires a few folks very consistently and bravely and gently leading the way.

it is shocking to people who want to have a fight to be met with compassion.

I mean, it really, it disarms literally and metaphorically.

it is it is stunning to just have that.

Well, wait, I thought you were one of those people.

Yeah, but tell me about your life.

I mean, we can argue about politics or my biblical interpretation for a second, but it looks like you are not having a great day.

Are you okay, well, wait a minute.

I wanted to tell you how you're sending everybody to hell.

No, but first let me ask, are you hungry?

Because we got some extra food.

And actually, I'm curious about what you love.

And if you're willing.

What are you afraid of?

And communities as a whole, being willing to do that?

I think there's an incredibly important distinction to be made that most people are struggling to define, which is the difference between a conversation and a confrontation.

And there are places and times, and you may make the choice for protest.

Right.

And there's value in that.

And societal change can be led by that.

And that's important.

and but understand that that's the choice you're making.

If you are doing a confrontation, you are trying to win something.

You were trying to score points, you were trying to put something on display.

If it's a conversation, then you're looking for growth for both of you.

One of one of them has a defined outcome.

The other is open ended towards grace.

What are you choosing and why?

>> Sarah writes in to ask, who are the political leaders who are modeling what your guests are talking about?

All right, Sarah, I'm going to I'm going to be really Pollyanna here.

Are you ready?

Because this is it would not be fair to have the reverend be forced to tell you who's going to save the day politically, I think he would agree that right now we don't have great modeling of some of these themes on the national level.

Okay.

We got a thumbs up on that one.

If the next presidential race was Spencer Cox and Pete Buttigieg, I think the country would be going in a pretty good direction.

That's a good start.

I think there's a lot of people, not just them, but it's people like them who, when you listen to the governor of Utah after the Charlie Kirk assassination, just listen to that 30 minutes, watch him break down a little, watch him talk about how we see each other as people.

Now, he doesn't go on to say, yeah, my party, the Republican Party, is struggling with this.

And at the national level or whatever, I don't think he has to.

He is modeling something.

I think really beautiful.

And I would love to see more Spencer Cox in politics.

He's the guy, by the way.

We talked about this like four years ago.

He and the Democratic candidate for Utah governor didn't add together where they stood on in the same room and were like, hey, I'm the Republican running for governor.

He's like, I'm the Democrat, and you should vote for me.

And he's like, oh, no, you should vote for me.

But whoever you vote for, we're all human beings and we're going to have an election, and then we're going to support each other.

And the whole country was like, whoa, that's awesome.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, we're going to see like a wave of this stuff.

And we saw nothing else like that.

Was it?

Well, Spencer Cox is the governor of Utah, and I, I am Pollyanna, I get it in a minute.

I'll read some of your emails that think I'm naive.

And I get it.

I love that stuff.

I think it's not impossible.

And I think some of what Reverend Pritchard is telling us is a good model for how we can bring it down in our own communities, whether we're seeing that on the national level now, after we take this break, some really good questions for Reverend Colin Pritchard on some of these themes.

He's the pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Geneva.

I think you're going to get more people coming to see you now.

Well, you should probably I also want to say that we're going to get I'll read some of your emails that the people who are just not having it, I get it.

So we're talking about bring the temperature down.

And if you think that's the right thing to do, we'll come right back with the Reverend.

I'm Evan Dawson Thursday on the next connections the strange story of an attorney in Syracuse who works on sexual harassment cases.

She put up a billboard at the Syracuse airport.

But the airport took it down, saying that it might offend men and politicians.

And the attorney says what is going on with the culture that we can't even talk about sexual harassment?

We'll discuss it Thursday.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola Center, supporting residents to become active members of the community, from developing life skills to gaining independence.

Mary Cariola Center transforming lives of people with disabilities.

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>> I almost talked right through that break.

We're going to we're going to get some feedback.

And I'm going to start with a little dissent.

>> Sure.

>> Okay.

Charles emails to say this regarding seeing each other as humans or bringing the temperature down.

He says, I'm sorry, but why should I?

Why should I associate with someone who says I'm a bad person?

Because I like guns or I hate taxes?

Or I think jobs should go to the most qualified people?

Why should I associate with someone who thinks that if a woman accuses me of a crime, her words should be taken over mine?

Who would be 100% okay with it if someone killed me during a debate on these or other hot button issues?

Believe it or not, mental health is important to me.

I don't need to put myself in positions where, my watch has to remind me to breathe.

That's from.

>> Charles.

Sure.

>> so first of all, what you're describing there, Charles, is, in fact, the extremes of this going completely bad.

And I would absolutely invite you to please protect yourself if conversations actually go that way.

If someone's going to celebrate anything that harms you, that is an extreme that doesn't have the possibility of a conversation.

So you bet.

One of the things I want to put into this conversation for this hour is the extremes do change the rules.

So if you are actively in a threatened position, if you are directly being harmed this, then please take my advice and put it on the shelf for the space where you can have and I return you back to the difference between a conversation and a confrontation.

If you're in a confrontation where somebody has to win, that means somebody else has to lose.

There is very little value in that.

And please exit yourself from that.

That is true.

Right, left, center or any version where anybody needs to demean, harm or threaten another.

I do premarital counseling, and one of the things I get to do with every couple is to say, just so you know, if you ever win a fight with your spouse, you both lose because that means you are struggling to honor your promise to bring the best out of one another.

And if somebody wins, by definition, you now, in that moment are married to a loser.

How is it that you have brought them up?

How is it you together are bearing witness to what is good in the world?

If it becomes a victor and a loser?

If you do that to each other, you harm your marriage.

Expand that out into a national discourse.

>> Yeah, that's.

>> So good.

I think that's so good because we are addicted to the idea of getting won over, of how many YouTube videos such and such destroys this other person.

>> Right?

>> And that's what gets the clicks.

>> It does.

and obviously I come from a tradition and I'm not here to proselytize or any of those kinds of pieces, but I do come from a tradition where the answer to violence is grace, where as opposed to picking up the sword, there is the healing of Malchus and the Garden of Gethsemane.

For those who want to look it up.

But those who live by the sword die by the sword.

The quoting of rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, so long as it depends on you.

Live peaceably with all that's your task in this world.

And so you try to celebrate the good news for other people.

Go ahead and delight in someone else's celebration.

So if you have you know, new kid, fantastic.

If something goes well for you business wise, that doesn't trample over others, fantastic.

If it's just a beautiful day, good.

If you're just crying because the bills won again.

You know what?

I'm kind of happy for you.

We'll talk about how much money you spend on the tickets.

>> Right.

But.

>> Rejoice with those.

But also weep with those who weep.

your pain is part of the human experience.

And we are not a people called to suffer.

So if you are grieving, I recognize that regardless of your political views, your pain matters.

Let's get better.

>> All right, let's get back to some feedback.

I just want to echo too, by the way, Charles, I hope there was never an implication that anyone on this program me, the reverend, anybody else is saying that if you feel totally dehumanized for your view on taxes or guns or whatever, I mean, like it's one thing to disagree.

You're talking about a different level.

And I would just echo that the model on this program is hopefully to not get to that level of dehumanization.

John in Rochester on the phone next.

Hey, John, go ahead.

>> Hi.

I want to talk about or I'd like you to talk about or respond to the idea of where do we learn connection as a skill or as a culture.

So for example take parents supporting their children at a high school sports game.

They sit on opposite sides of the field.

What if they sat at the ends together and really learn to cheer and support the kids on together?

So a lot of what we do is frame a sort of a structural adversity that disempowers us from learning how to maintain and build connection when the stakes are low, because so much of the conversation so far has been about what do we do to protect, remedy, intervene once we're broken, we're at the stage of marriage counseling, or we're at the stage of conflict or the stage of political conflict.

But what if we considered where can we learn in our daily practices, having a meeting, having a meeting at work?

community group group getting together to work on a problem together in a neighborhood.

And really explore.

What does it take to take time to develop the kind of connection that's sort of like a deposit.

It's a deposit in goodwill.

It's deposit.

You can think of it as equity, so that when we get to the difficult conversations, we have a reserve to draw on to say, yeah, I kind of get what you're saying.

I don't have to work at the extremes of my points of view all the time, because I've developed the skill and capacity to see you as a whole person.

So I'd like you to comment on that a little bit and how you see that.

>> Yeah.

John, thank you for the phone call.

Reverend Pritchard.

>> So, I mean, the question is, what does it take to create those experiences?

And I think it creates of folks intentionally being willing to do so.

It's it's hard to mandate, but it's something that I think we certainly can invite into at its best, I would hope any version of faith communities allow those sorts of space of mutual affirmation and recognizing the value of one another.

so whatever flavor you want, find one that's decent and and have people listen to and affirm one another.

I work places that's going to have to be the ethos of the company.

and what a beautiful thing it would be if folks could take some time practicing that in terms of sports.

I think you're absolutely correct that it is become the new kind of coliseum where we have we seek the defeat of the other as more than we celebrate the victory of our own.

I had two kids that went through local school district, and they were deeply involved in music and theater, which is an entirely separate experience where folks just cheer each other on because it is about the the collective presentation of beauty and story.

so part of the answer, I would honestly just throw back to you, which is what would it mean to try and create some of those spaces on a micro level?

Who who can you do that with in your neighborhood and your family and your friends?

How can you ask your employer to do that?

what would it mean to go to some version of a faith community and say, hey, can we hold a forum where these are the rules?

and just put more and more and more of that into the world?

I do think you are absolutely right that an ounce of prevention is radically cheaper than pounds and pounds of emergency care.

So if we make it an ethos change as opposed to an emergency response, we'll be in a better place.

>> John.

Thank you.

Here's an email from a different John in Canandaigua who says to your guest's point about being afraid subconsciously, what if people's real fear is that their perceptions and viewpoints are wrong, resulting in them shutting down any chance for the other side to make and articulate their point?

I can't help but watch people disagree about a topic, with one side making a measured, reasoned argument, while the other side ignores and shuts down the other side.

Not wanting to hear it.

To me, there's certainly a realistic likelihood that the person is afraid that the other side argument might make sense.

This goes both ways, but when one side of the argument demonizes the other side by misrepresenting or taking the other side out of context, that avoidance to me, shows that they may not have enough to back up their side of the argument.

It's from John.

>> Yeah.

>> and none of us are fully informed.

None of us have all the information we need.

none of us are going to be in a position to absolutely defend everything because we don't have the lived experience of the other people we're talking to.

however, that being said, yeah, if if folks are really reacting in a way where I can't learn from you because it might bring me pain, that is where grace kicks in, as opposed to mockery.

that is where transformation is celebrated as opposed to condemnation.

That is where you don't slander wound one up or shame and Lord, shame as a whole.

Another shows worth of conversation.

The other person but instead say, you know, look, I didn't fully know that either, but now that I do, I think this might be something we agree to.

so the gentility of allowing someone else's transformation can be a really valuable gift in this world.

And we're we're pretty tempted to celebrate and flag, wave and tear down the goalposts when our team wins.

I would suggest that's not a good model.

we instead could invite everybody into the locker room and say, hey, we're aiming toward something better today.

>> One question I like to ask when I'm really interrogating ideas faithfully.

Not in the way I share the reverence point that too much dialog.

And it happens on social media, less in real life, but it can happen in real life where it's like, see, you were wrong.

You want to prove that you were wrong.

So one thing I think that's helpful is a question for myself and a question for the person.

I may be having a discussion with, which is what would it take to change your mind here?

What's where are you and what would be the barrier for for changing your mind?

And I ask myself that question, what do I believe?

What do people I care about differ on?

What would it take for me to come to where they are?

What would I need to see or hear or believe?

And that can be clarifying.

If it's done in a way that isn't threatening or mocking.

>> So two thoughts on that, which I found incredibly helpful in my own personal life as well as my ministry.

There is a profound difference between humility and humiliation.

Humility is inherently good.

I don't know everything, and so I can't be utterly self-righteous and decide that I can justify any of my behaviors because I've talked myself into it.

Humility allows a certain recognition of our own incompleteness and fragility.

Humiliation is essentially bad.

Humility, good humiliation bad to slander somebody, to mock them, to lessen them, to harm them, to shame them means your conversation is over and now you are a cruel overlord.

>> Of this, >> Humiliation is an attempt to cause pain, isn't it?

>> Absolutely, absolutely.

And clearly it's not the building of community, but I think we regularly confuse humility with humiliation.

Hey, I learned something.

I'm sorry.

Should be met with.

I'm so glad you're here.

Not I told you so.

You fool.

>> Ooh.

>> That's a good one to remember.

Humility.

Not humiliation.

I'll take your call in a second.

Celia.

Charlie emails to say not Charles.

Charlie.

We got John and John.

Charles and Charlie.

This is Charlie.

Not the same Charles from earlier.

Evan, I love the silo analogy.

When I taught high school, we would have conversations about ideas and concepts.

It was so hard to keep teenagers from getting personal.

In the end, I hope we can all discuss ideas and concepts vigorously and rigorously.

Thank you for this beautiful show.

That's from Charlie.

Yeah, I salute that, Charlie.

And it can be tough not just for teenagers, but I especially understand that idea.

As the father of a 13-year-old, I get it.

humility, not humiliation.

I'm going to keep saying that a lot.

I'm going to steal that.

I'm going to tell people I came up with it, too.

Now, that's not that's not humble enough.

All right.

Celia in Rochester.

Hello, Celia.

>> Go ahead.

>> Hi.

I, I believe in principle in what both of you are saying and talking about people trying to find common ground and come together.

The problem for me right now is that the world is in a really kind of dangerous place.

It seems to me.

And particularly our country, we're, we're we're, you know, we're in a, in a what looks like a movement toward a kind of fascist takeover of our country.

and and what, what concerns me is there are people in my life I'm thinking of particularly of a couple of people that are related to me by marriage who are very nice people otherwise.

And I get along with.

But they they believe in you know, the eradication in some way of gay people that whether that's by conversion or, you know, whatever they believe in you know, what's happening.

They think that it's okay what Ice is doing in our community.

And these are these are cruel, horrible things that we have to stand up to, that we have to like take their moral things.

These are about values.

And so I'm not sure that right now the message needs to be we're all, you know, needs to be Kumbaya, when maybe it needs to be.

Don't let this happen.

Don't, you know, don't let people get away with saying the kinds of things that are awful for people.

So.

And that's.

>> Yeah.

>> What I struggle.

>> With.

>> Celia, first of all, I want to thank you for the phone call, and I think it's a good one.

And I want to read an email that kind of dovetails with this.

this is from Delton, who says I don't disagree with the sentiments of the show at all.

I do have concerns that the call to tone down the rhetoric has often been used to mean, don't be outspoken about what matters to you.

And I want to make a distinction before I turn it over to Colin here.

First of all, Delton, I don't think tone down the rhetoric.

I mean, I think it probably does help to tone down the rhetoric when it is, you know, anybody who disagrees is your enemy.

You know, if you're a Republican or Democrats, your enemy, if you're a Democrat, is a Republican, your enemy.

I mean, like I do think that's probably good, but that's not the main point here.

And I think Celia is right.

If you are perceiving this to say drop what you are passionate about, set aside what matters most to you.

Stop fighting against injustice and just get along with people.

That would be a mistake in my view.

I'll let the Reverend weigh in on that, but that's not what I'm hearing from Reverend Pritchard, and that's not how I feel myself.

I think it is essential to use your voice.

I think it is essential to speak out about what matters to you.

What I am positing is that the way we speak is not working.

It's not only not kind.

Often, and it not only dehumanizes, but pragmatically, it backfires.

Pragmatically, it doesn't attract more converts to whatever side you're on.

Pragmatically, it doesn't convert more of the people who disagree with you.

You get smaller and smaller tents.

So I'm saying care about those things.

Work toward what you want to work toward, but understand that the modern tools of technology have tricked us into thinking that dunking on people and humiliating people is a way to achieve justice.

When you can achieve justice while also showing kindness, it's a question of how.

That's how.

I have heard the Reverend and if if others have heard it differently, I will, you know, sort of step back.

But what do you intend, Reverend?

>> This is a good.

>> Couple of minutes to take us home here.

>> Sure.

So there's two things here.

one is the impetus for this particular show was basically how do we maintain recognize the humanity of one another?

Yeah.

and kind of maintain our own sanity in what's becoming an insane world.

so much of what?

Prep to have a conversation about is in the messy middle of life, not the extremes.

the extremes are another conversation I did say earlier, and I will repeat here that there is absolutely a right time for protest.

Just understand that that protest is not a conversation.

It is an intentional confrontation that you may deem worthy.

And there are times where that is due and right.

And if you talk to me off air, we may have some significant agreement on some of these topics.

but I just let's not confuse conversation with protest.

Those are separate things, and we consciously choose where we are in the day to day living in your neighborhood or in our workplaces, and the things that we can impact.

Then I think some of these tools can be of value.

I have the incredible privilege of being the peer support chaplain for the Sheriff's department in Ontario County, which means I am present for the officers as well as public response in times of trial and stress and trauma.

and you get to have these extraordinary conversations around sort of.

What does that feel like?

What does it mean to be a person who carries lethal weaponry?

What does it mean to be in spaces where those things happen?

and what do we value here?

Super quick story.

This past Sunday, drove was coming back from preach in two services, drove right into a very significant car accident, pulled over because I am the chaplain there.

there were two vehicles involved for people going by ambulance.

Two folks needed to be extracted from their vehicle.

And there is a woman sitting on a tree stump on the corner by the area.

And I just went to her and said, I'm the chaplain with the fartman here.

Are you okay?

Were you involved?

I wasn't involved, but I don't know whose dog this is.

>> Oh.

>> She is holding a shaking older pup who came from one of the cars that was involved in the accident.

The dog, miraculously, was one uninjured.

But here is this good Samaritan woman sitting there simply holding the dog so the dog won't run away or dance in the broken glass, or be killed by a passing vehicle.

And we had just the moment of saying, you're going to need to connect to that person who's going to be able to hold this dog.

And in that moment, not a single person asked who anybody voted for.

They got those four people to help.

They need.

That dog was kept alive and everybody cleaned up the street and gave thanks that they were still breathing.

>> I'm going to keep baking for the neighbors no matter how they vote.

And I want to say that I understand some of the dissent that I've gotten this hour.

I also know that someone you love may feel differently than you, and I. I want us all to be able to be in community together, not just today, but long into the future.

Reverend Colin Pritchard is the pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Geneva.

That's where you'll find him.

Thank you for sharing these insights.

>> You're welcome.

>> Humility, not humiliation.

Talk to you tomorrow.

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