Ever get into an argument on Facebook over something or other? You spend all this time trying to get the person to see your side of things -- why black lives (or all lives) matter, why Trump should (or shouldn't) be president, or why guns should (or shouldn't) be more regulated. It gets heated. No one changes their mind, and there's no satisfying conclusion. You get frustrated. After all, you're being so reasonable, and they're so not. Your position is so obvious, why don't they just listen? Well, I hate to break it to you, but you might not be as reasonable and understanding as you think. When was the last time you were in an argument and thought "Wow, that person made a really compelling point?" If that hasn't happened lately, it might be a sign that you don't know what exactly you're arguing against.
When I was around 11 or 12, I was in a junior debate club, and I was told to argue for the abolition of the death penalty. As a young conservative, I was pretty indignant. After all, the point of argumentation is generally to further your own beliefs; why should I argue for something I disagree with? As I followed through with the task, however, I began to listen to people with whom I disagreed, but this time, it was with the express purpose of supporting them rather than discrediting them. I was forced to start with the assumption that these people -- who I had assumed were just overly-empathetic liberals with no sense of justice -- actually had good reason to believe what they believed. It changed the way I thought about the people I argue with, and ultimately changed the way I thought about my own beliefs and values. I realized that it's so easy to oversimplify a person's beliefs and mistakenly think we understand what they mean. It's so easy to hear "black lives matter more than yours" instead of "we are justifiably concerned about the way black men are perceived and treated by police." It's so easy to hear "I don't care who dies, I want to keep my guns" instead of "I'm worried gun control makes us less safe." It's so much easier to debunk a caricature of a belief than to consider the belief itself. When we take the easy way out instead of understanding and engaging, we widen our political divide and contribute to toxic and unproductive rhetoric.
I believe the fix for this is to practice advocating for your opponents. If you don't understand a person's point of view well enough to argue it for yourself, or if an idea is unfathomable to you, then you don't understand it well enough to argue against it. In the end, understanding why people believe what they do can only make your own views more reasonable, your arguments more convincing, and your political discourse more constructive. We have everything to gain by understanding more than we argue, so let's start.
