FVO IX: “Politics Is Too Hard to Understand”*

Yet another Frequently Voiced Objection that leads people to check out of civil discussion is that politics is simply too daunting:

My problem with getting involved in a serious political discussion is simple: It’s so complicated that it’s over my head. I’m totally intimidated by the issues. Most, such as global warming or education, are topics that even the experts don’t agree on. I don’t see how I could contribute. It’s hard enough to know whom to vote for.

I fully sympathize with these feelings.  But if you think more about it, they should lead us all to embrace civil discussion, not avoid it. In fact, most of the workable discussion processes that are out there—including both the one I used in college classrooms for a dozen years and the one I’ve seen work so effectively at Interactivity Foundation (IF) over the past 16-plus years—were developed at least in part to address complexity.

When we’re faced with the complexity of public policy we might be tempted to throw our hands up and “leave it to the experts.” The moment we do that, however, we cease being a democracy and start being an “expert-ocracy” ruled not by the people, but by those with special knowledge.  Or we could just leave it to whoever’s in power.  But that”s not particularly democratic; nor is is likely to protect our interests and values.

The approach we’re committed to at EnCiv, by contrast, is both more radical and more traditional: focus on the bigger picture, then leave the details to the experts. It’s a radical idea in that we tend to think of citizenship as an all-or-nothing affair: either you’re “informed” or you’re not. But who can really be adequately informed on even a slice of public policy? Isn’t it better to spend time getting a clear survey of the forest first?  It’s a traditional idea in that it resembles both the relationship among citizens and our government representatives and between the more “generalist” representatives in the legislative branch and the more “specialist” members of the executive branch.

Civil discussions can deal effectively with public policy by exploring concerns, possibilities for addressing them, and their consequences at a general, “big picture” level. You don’t have to be a scientist or a professional to participate. (In fact, at IF we’ve found that “ordinary” citizens tend to be better at our process than experts because they naturally keep their eyes on the forest rather than forever wandering into the trees!) You don’t even have to “know” anything about the topic beyond having a sense that it’s worth talking about. What really counts in civil discussions is a willingness to think through general alternatives with others, not to have specific answers. Where there’s that kind of will, civil discussion will provide the way.

*Adapted from Adolf G. Gundersen and Suzanne Goodney Lea, Let’s Talk Politics: Restoring Civility Through Exploratory Discussion, Chapter 3.