What we believe
How did you come to this site? How do you feel about how our friends and fellow citizens talk to each other when we disagree?
All of us driving this project come from different backgrounds. We have different abilities, different skills, and different beliefs. All of us have come together in recognition that we have little hope of advancing our beliefs in a democracy if we can’t talk to each other. We have agreed that protecting a forum for democratic discourse equals or exceeds the importance of a particular policy.
We also know that the people we can most influence are ourselves. We’re not here to lecture you or anyone else. We’re here to make a commitment that we will do our best to contribute to a clean forum for discourse by setting examples and hoping others will follow. As Stephen Covey advised, be a model, not a critic. Be a light, not a judge.
To participate in this movement, you don’t have to be perfect.
Each of us can recognize times in the past when we have not lived up to the concept we are encouraging here, and that’s OK. Sometimes commitments to a particular cause or point of view have made us feel we are falling short of our moral code if we are anything less than vigorous advocates.
We are not proposing, however, that we must give up our vigorous opinions, only that we become more willing to listen to and seek to understand opinions that may differ from our own. Our name, The Neutral Ground, is meant to suggest that we can live well with people holding other opinions.
These skills only raise our ability to advocate our own views. We respect the wisdom literature that says we can only lead someone from where that person is. We can’t change someone’s mind if we don’t even know what is on their mind. To quote Stephen Covey again, effectiveness means “seek first to understand, THEN to be understood.”
We are just starting. We don’t know where this will end. Our early milestones are to start a conversation with ‘legs.’ To get an ever-growing number talking about the opportunity, committing to model these behaviors, and spreading the word. With numbers, we can create a market for more constructive exchanges in political debate. Media is concerned about the fair presentation of the best form of opposing views. We can support educators committed to
coaching a next generation of citizenry skilled in walking another mile in someone else’s shoes and comfortable with disagreement and their place in it.
It starts with an example setting. It’s easy to underestimate the power of example setting. Thinking calmly about most of the things you do well probably connects to someone else’s example setting earlier in your life.
Were you ever boarding a flight, settling into your seat, and making a final decision about what you’d put in the overhead or on the floor? It can be a little tense. Then maybe you saw someone struggling with a bag, and another passenger stood up and offered to help. It transformed the environment. You felt more at ease, maybe remembering that humans can be good. Maybe you wondered why YOU weren’t the one rising to help, and maybe you
later, on some future flight, WERE the one who stood up, helping someone else and changing the atmosphere, and spreading a good example.
Some will argue that example setting is the single most powerful tool we have to influence others.
