What Could Go Right? The open mind movement

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The open mind movement

The current cultural polarization in the United States and beyond is being driven in no small part by our failure to communicate in good faith across ideological divides. The further we move from a place of common ground, the more divisive our discourse gets. This provokes a doubling down on the fringes. The loudest and least tolerant voices get louder and less tolerant, amplifying the more extreme divisions that exist between the few, and elevating them to our elected leaders, where they risk being Frankensteined into objectionable legislation, born of backlash and almost perfectly designed to invite equal and opposite backlash. 

The good news is that the jig is up. Or at least that the jig appears to be shifting toward being up. Increasingly, the sensible voices of the many are rising above the fray of the few, hungry for the hard and nuanced conversations that can move us forward.

This shift was highlighted in a recent conversation between The Progress Network (TPN) Members Manu Meel and John Wood Jr. The pair spoke about the community forming around the efforts of their respective organizations—BridgeUSA, a youth-led nonprofit focused on creating open discourse among students, and Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to depolarizing politics. Meel had this to say about the defining characteristics of the “bridge-building” movement.

It is not about Trump-Biden. It is not about Democrat-Republican. It is not about liberal-conservative. It is about whether you’re open-minded or close-minded. It is whether you are empathetic or exclusive. It is whether you believe in creating spaces that allow everyone to speak up or creating spaces that shut people out. If you are on the side of empathy, open-mindedness, and understanding, this is the community for you. And that is most Americans.

Indeed, there are signs that a more open-minded and empathetic majority is talking, listening, and bringing much-needed balance to some of our more heated debates. But the proof is in the pudding. So join us as we take a brief look at two of the current cultural landmines that inched closer to being defused this week: speech on campus and gender identity.

The loudest voices rarely represent the majority. They're usually speaking for the extremes.

You won't understand the views of a group until you've invited the quieter voices into the discussion.

Don't mistake silence for disengagement. It's often a sign of deep reflection.

— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) June 18, 2022

Speech on campus
One common narrative told about Gen Z is that they are overly fragile and politically correct, intolerant of opposing views and quick to cancel dissenters. But look a little deeper, and a more conscientious and tolerant picture emerges.

In an article for Persuasion last week, recent grad Matt Major and professor Jacob L. Mackey detailed the student chapter of Persuasion they opened at Occidental College in Los Angeles last year. The club was started to create a space where students could have open and honest discussions on topics like restorative justice and hate speech. Rather than devolve into call-out chaos, the group has been a success. Among the lessons to be learned, the authors write, is that students are actually an ideologically diverse group, sometimes more so than the faculty themselves. 

Persuasion Founder and TPN Member Yascha Mounk echoed this sentiment in his recent Atlantic piece, pointing out that, while students are open to free debate, many of them feel that the climate on their campus prevents them from saying what they believe. “The findings of a growing number of surveys, based on interviews with thousands of students around the country, reflect this duality in the way students think and feel about the state of campus speech,” he writes. “According to one recent study by the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit devoted to promoting viewpoint diversity, almost all students believe passionately in the need for an open culture of debate.”

Gender identity
“From the toxic debate playing out across social media you’d assume the country is split into trans activists and transphobes . . . But when you actually speak to ordinary people in communities across the country you realize that nothing could be further from the truth.”

That’s Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, an organization dedicated to countering social division and polarization. He’s referring to the polling done as part of a new More In Common report, which looked at the British public’s views on gender identity and trans equality and found significant common ground. Here are a few of the report’s key takeaways:

• Britons approach gender identity issues from a shared place of compassion that is “radically different in tone and substance from the angry and divisive debates of social media.”
• Public opinion is driven by a desire to balance different interests, such as inclusion and fairness, leading to more support on some issues (including pronoun usage and children self-identifying) than others (including children making potentially permanent changes to their body and the inclusion of trans athletes in single-sex sports).
• The public rejects “one-size-fits-all” approaches in favor of solutions that balance competing interests and concerns.

In other words, a nuanced and compassionate approach is crucial in navigating the issue and drawing a larger, fairer, and more inclusive circle. And despite the frustratingly dumbed-down and discordant tone on social media, much of the British public appears to already be united around such an approach.

There are signs that the conversation is improving in other countries as well. Kudos to Emily Bazelon for her refreshingly balanced New York Times piece on the highly complex issue of gender therapy in the US. And to Canadian parent Victoria G. for sharing her and her child’s gender care experience with The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), an organization dedicated to promoting a culture of fairness, understanding, and humanity. 

We’re of course not here to tell you where to stand on these issues. We’re merely applauding the good-faith sensibility we see making its way into some of our more difficult conversations. Because we need to talk. But we also need to listen. And we need to speak in the ways that best invite others to listen to us. As TPN Founder Zachary Karabell said in our latest podcast episode, “If you don’t start from the right sensibility, everything that follows is going to be either compromised or broken.”

Before we go

Senators in the US voted to advance a bipartisan gun deal aimed at strengthening federal gun laws. The 64-to-34 test vote puts the legislation on track to be passed this month. While we wait for the next move on the bill, Substacker Rajiv Sethi has this look at the potential life-saving benefits of introducing a reporting requirement for the 380,000 guns that are lost or stolen annually.

There are zero incarcerated juvenile females in Hawaii’s prison system for the first time in its history.

And finally, word on the street in Thailand, where marijuana was recently decriminalized, is that cannabis-fed chickens may help cut farmers’ antibiotic use. “Scientists observed fewer cases of avian bronchitis and superior meat” after the chickens were given cannabis, The Guardian reports. While it’s not clear why the cannabis had positive effects, it’s possible that the plant’s bioactive compounds may have stimulated the chickens’ gut health and immunity, solving forever the mystery of why the chicken crossed the road. Clearly, it was to get some weed.

Below in the links section, lab-grown super coral, hovering 3D rabbit holograms, and more.

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Look at these rescue rats go!

The sight of rats doesn't usually fill people with a sense of relief, but these backpack-wearing African pouched rats, that are being trained to find people under rubble, could change thathttps://t.co/6tkhn0sIan pic.twitter.com/map1OO1Ldy

— New Scientist (@newscientist) June 17, 2022

The New Space Race | S2 Ep. 13

Will space travel and exploration be left to the ‘billionaire boys club’? Executive Director of the Inter Astra group and 26-year Marine Corps veteran Ché Bolden shares with us his views on the future of space.

Listen to the full episode here. Read the full transcript here.

Progress, Please

(Found good news? Tweet at us @progressntwrk or email.)

Other good stuff in the news 🐻‍❄️

Environment:

• Study finds some hope for polar bears in an Arctic with less sea ice | Vox
• Plastic pollution on Australia’s coast has decreased by nearly 30% over six years | The Guardian
• Despite more heat waves, heat mortality is falling in the US | Reason
• This lab grows coral 50x faster than nature | Freethink
• Near-real-time tool reveals Earth’s land cover in more detail than ever before | Mongabay
• San Diego Zoo welcomes its first aardvark birth in years | AP

Science & Tech:

• Scientist develops antimicrobial, plant-based food wrap designed to replace plastic | Rutgers Today
• A new sensor can distinguish between viral and bacterial pneumonia, helping doctors decide if antibiotics will be effective | MIT News
• Scientists have created temporary graphene tattoos that could continuously monitor patients’ blood pressure | New Scientist
• New tech uses ultrasound to levitate and manipulate objects in real time | New Scientist
• A study shows that used beer yeast can filter out even trace amounts of lead from water | MIT News
• India has almost 800 different languages. AI is helping bridge the communication gap | 52
• Future phones could be as easy to build and upgrade as LEGOs | Daily Beast

Politics & Policy:

• Malaysia abolishes mandatory use of the death penalty | The Diplomat
• Spain will target supermarket food waste with steep fines | Earth.org
• US House passes a major wildlife conservation spending bill | NPR
• Native American tribes will now co-manage Bears Ears National Monument | Axios
• A look at state efforts to combat climate change in 2022, so far | The Hill
• Netherlands to ban fossil fuel boilers from 2026 | Energy Live News
• Canada sets dates to ban some single-use plastics | AP
• Hoboken hasn’t had a traffic death in four years. What’s it doing right? | Curbed
• New York passes landmark voting rights legislation | AP
• Colombia’s landmark Road Safety Law could save countless lives | World Health Organization

Covid & Public Health:

• Shots for tots: Covid vaccinations start for little US kids | AP
• What parents should know about Covid-19 vaccines for babies and little kids | Vox
• Despite another Covid surge, deaths stay near lows | The New York Times
• A vaccine against mosquito saliva may be the key to stopping their diseases | Freethink
• Buying from Mark Cuban’s pharmacy could save Medicare billions, study says | The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture:

• A nonprofit is providing photographic training to at-risk youth around the world | Atmos
• Black Girls Love Math aims to keep black girls involved in STEM | The 19th
• Don’t swipe, write: Japanese city encourages daters to send love letters | The Guardian
• Francia Márquez—a former housekeeper and activist—is Colombia’s first black vice president | The New York Times

Rights & Justice:

• In a historic shift, far fewer teens face adult US courts | AP
• Evanston, Illinois is the first US city to offer reparations to black residents | Reasons to Be Cheerful
• Fort Worth is turning an old Ku Klux Klan hall into an art and racial-healing center | Bloomberg

Economy:

• How a Brazilian town took a bet on basic income | Yes! Magazine
• Apple workers at a Maryland store vote to unionize, a first in the US | The New York Times
• What gas prices do—and don’t—tell us about the economy | Vox

TPN Member originals 🧠

(Who are our Members? Get to know them.)

• The real story of the politics of Juneteenth | Theodore R. Johnson 
• Juneteenth, as much as the Fourth of July, is America’s true birthday | Peniel E. Joseph 
• In some cultures, multiple fathers—or no fathers at all—are the norm | Nicholas A. Christakis 
• On the geopolitical recession | Ian Bremmer & Yascha Mounk 
• It’s time to start thinking about the endgame in Ukraine | Fareed Zakaria 
• Sometimes ‘proper’ speech isn’t correct speech | John McWhorter 
• Legalize housing, not tent encampments | Matthew Yglesias 
• Ro Khanna makes the case for digital public space | Eli Pariser 
• The dirty secret of Covid | Scott Galloway 
• The 5 most future-optimistic sci-fi shows on television | James Pethokoukis 

Upcoming Events

• Breakthrough Dialogue 2022: Progress Problems | Ted Nordhaus | June 22–24

Until Next Time

Congrats to DALL-E 2 on making its first magazine cover, a “wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art.” 👇

Dall-E gets its first cover. And it's good. pic.twitter.com/K76L52YcVj

— Alex Tabarrok (@ATabarrok) June 21, 2022