Can INTOIT moments bridge our partisan divide? Perhaps, if we seek them out

For anyone who has canceled or is on the verge of canceling a friendship or relationship over political differences, author Mónica Guzmán has a message, slow down and get curious. She shares the details of how to choose that path in her new book I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

Similar to a continental divide, our so-called partisan divide separates people into divergent rivers and seas of belief and opinion. Sometimes the resulting chasm seems unbridgeable, but contrary to the continental example, Guzmán points to the many ways in which our disconnections are not an unavoidable force of nature. She says our divide is not as big as we think it is.

Guzmán divided her book into three parts. She calls the first section SOS (Sorting, Othering, and Siloing.) Part two concerns Curiosity (Perspective, Friction, Conversation, and Traction.) And part three covers People (Assumptions, Reason, and Opinion.)

INTOITW lessons:

• How to ask what you really want to know (even if you’re afraid to)
• How to grow smarter from even the most tense interactions, online or off
• How to cross boundaries and find common ground — with anyone

Mónica Guzmán is a former columnist at The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She is the co-founder of The Evergrey newsletter and serves as an adviser to Braver Angels (a national organization with a mission to depolarize America), and Together Washington, an organization building collaborative local relationships among leaders in Washington state.

She is interviewed here by David Horsey, a two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient for political cartooning, based currently at The Seattle Times.

This event was presented by Town Hall Seattle, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, and the Western Washington Braver Angels Alliance on March 22, 2022.