The Daily Me

Nicholas Kristof has an article in today's NYT about people confronting opinions that are different than their own less and less. He says that the demise of the daily newspaper makes this more prevalent. I'm not sure that that's true, since people's dose of different views in the paper came only from the opinion pages, but not usually from the rest of the paper, unless I'm misunderstanding him. One quote I especially like:

One 12-nation study found Americans the least likely to discuss politics with people of different views, and this was particularly true of the well educated. High school dropouts had the most diverse group of discussion-mates, while college graduates managed to shelter themselves from uncomfortable perspectives.

When thinking of different cultures' attitudes towards different views, I remember in particular one Thanksgiving we spent at my friend's house. There were a Palestinian woman (mathematics grad student) and a Jewish man (law student) who spent hours of the visit arguing. It made me a bit uncomfortable to watch---polite people don't do that! but they were enjoying themselves and actually listening to each other even while they disagreed mightily. I wish in our culture we could disagree so strongly and with so much grace: nowadays, if you disagree, you're either stupid or immoral and not worth listening to, it seems.

Another thing that is interesting is the completely different universes that commentators and even news editors live in, depending on their viewpoints. Just read the NYT and the WSJ on the recovery effort from the government, for example. It's hard to see that they are commenting on the same things! In order even to have an intelligent discussion, it seems that they would need to agree on some basic definitions and facts, their viewpoints are so different. It also seems as though merely acknowledging that the other has a valid point is equated to conceeding defeat (or claiming victory, depending on which side you're on), which is very unhelpful for fruitful discussion

I always like to say that I would listen to 6 things I disagreed with before breakfast. His last quote: think of reading things that you disagree with like going to the gym, also rings true for me: I wish that the heart rate elevation I get from reading other people's opinions would translate into better cardiovascular health. Ah, well, that's why I have this blog, to calm me down again.