it's useful to talk to people that you
don't agree with and it's useful for a
variety of reasons one is that a lot of
what determines your political
orientation is biological temperament
far more than people realize so for
example left-leaning people liberals
let's say although that's kind of MIS
misnomer but we'll keep with the
terminology liberals are high in a trait
called openness which is one of the big
five personality traits and it's
associated with interest in abstraction
and interest in aesthetics it's the best
predictor of liberal political leaning
and they're low in trait
conscientiousness which is dutifulness
and and orderliness in particular
whereas the Conservatives or the
opposite they're high in
conscientiousness they're dutiful and
orderly and they're low in openness and
that makes them really good managers and
administers administrators and often
businessman but not very good
entrepreneurs because the entrepreneurs
are almost all drawn from the liberal
types and so these are really
fundamental fundamentally biologically
predicated differences and they're you
might think about them as different sets
of opportunities and limitations and
certainly different ways of screening
the world and each of those different
temperamental types needs the other type
so in economically speaking for example
we need liberals to start businesses and
we need conservatives to run them and
the Conservatives are too conservative
so if they are running businesses they
have a of a time with innovation
whereas the Liberals are really good at
generating new ideas and and moving
laterally but they're not very good at
the level of detail and implementation
and so if you start understanding that
the person this is a diversity issue
let's call this a diversity issue if you
start understanding that the person that
you're talking to doesn't share your
political views isn't stupid that's the
first thing necessarily they might be
but so might you be
no stupidity isn't the differences in
intelligence are not the prime
determinants of differences in political
belief all right so you might be talking
to some
one who's more conscientious and less
creative than you if you're if you
happen to be a liberal but that doesn't
mean that that person's perspective is
not valid and it doesn't mean that they
wouldn't outperform you in some domains
because they would so one thing to
remember is people actually do see the
world differently it's not merely that
they that they're possessed of illy
informed opinions so you have to first
of all stretch out your hand and say
look you know like I get that you see
the world differently than me
and I also understand that there's a
place for you and a place for me even
though that isn't the same place and
then it's necessary to also remember
that well do you want to talk to people
or do you want it you want to fight with
them because fighting is not pleasant
and it goes very dark places very very
rapidly and so you know the last time I
was down in in Boston I talked to an old
friend of mine and this person went on a
relatively solid and strong and
relatively personal critique of Trump
supporters calling them ill-informed and
stupid and and you know an insulting and
insulting characterization and I thought
well it was surprising to me because
this was a reasonable person and I think
it was an indication of the polarization
but you know you can't throw away 50
percent of the population like that it's
not reasonable and it's the same on the
right the conservatives can't do it to
the Liberals either I mean right now I
think that the radical left totalitarian
proclivity is a much greater danger than
radical right totalitarian proclivity
especially on the university campuses
and so I've been mostly speaking out
about the about the left wing radicals
it could have just as easily been the
reverse case it just doesn't happen to
be but you the whole point of the of a
democracy is to continue the dialogue
between people of different
temperamental types so that we don't
move so far to the right that everything
becomes encapsulated and stoned and
doesn't move or so far to the left and
everything dissolves in a kind of
mealy-mouthed chaos
and the only way that you can you can
navigate between those two shoals is by
is through discussion which is why free
speech is such an important value it's
the thing that keeps the temperamental
types from being at each other's throats
just like in a marriage you know because
there's differences in the marriage if
you can't talk you either
you're either subservient or you fight
well that's just no good so so part of
it is have some respect for people that
are different than you which is of
course what the radical leftists are
saying but they they don't identify the
real differences
you
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