Episode 14 - Dialectical Thinking To Reduce Polarization
Hello, thank you for joining me today. I'm really excited to be sharing this episode with you. We're gonna be tackling a really big question together today. What is truth? So today we're gonna be talking about dialectical thinking and I've talked a lot about it over time in my content. I have a blog post about it, but I've been wanting to do a podcast on this topic.
which really even this podcast is not going to do this topic justice. This is at the heart of a book that I'm currently working on. But zooming out a little bit and when we look at what's happening in the United States right now and you know probably other parts of the world, the polarization that we're seeing is like at peak levels, right? And you can look out at the world and you can see all these different people with all these different perspectives and beliefs and ideas around what is truth, this is truth, that is truth. And the divide and the polarization with that question seems to just be getting deeper and deeper.
And obviously one aspect here that is also kind of a side topic we're not going to get into is misinformation. Social media and online stuff has created a hotbed for misinformation which has a huge impact on what we view as truth or real. But the truth is that we take what we see into our mind, into our consciousness, and then we think we know, right? We all think we know. So we're all kind of experiencing this life through our own eyes, through our own perceptions, with our own unique histories.
There's this other big side topic that is a whole chapter in my book that we're not going to get into today is exploring our consciousness and our unconsciousness. So you know it's estimated that we're using five to ten percent of our brain when we're thinking consciously. Only five to ten percent of our thinking is actually in our conscious awareness. That leaves 90 to 95 percent of our thinking unconscious the back of our mind. So you can kind of think of your mind like a computer where what you see is on the screen, that's your consciousness, and then your unconsciousness is all the programs in the background.
So our mind has all of these sort of invisible beliefs and biases and understandings about truth and reality that we've developed over time from our life experiences and then those unconscious beliefs and biases are shaping we're perceiving the things that we see in the world, right? So that's a whole other side topic that we're going to go into in my book.
What we use to work with that is something called shadow work by Carl Jung. He was a psychiatrist in the early 1900s where we can learn to explore our unconscious mind and bring things more to the surface. We think we know our own minds.
And the truth is we greatly don't. Mindfulness practice is another piece here that I'm always teaching and fits into this equation because mindfulness practice helps us zoom out from our mind and observe our mind on purpose to notice our thoughts and our emotions and our beliefs from a more objective viewpoint. And again, we think we're mindful a lot of the time we think we're alert and awake and conscious and we're aware but really we're kind of in this passive mode of consciousness and so mindfulness is another tool this which is why I promote it so much that can help us just be a little bit more alert and awake and aware of what's happening in our own mind how we might be perceiving reality and also tweaking and twisting our perception because we all do this every single day with judgments and interpretations and assumptions that then colors and changes the picture we're seeing about reality. So those are all things that are kind of a separate topic.
Today we're just going to go into what dialectical thinking is and how we can have more flexible thinking and not get into such extremes. Now here's the thing I'm going to say to you before we get into this as we talk through what this is and how we do it. I want you to be thinking about yourself, okay?
It's really easy to look at other people and point at other people and say, yeah, uh-huh, they should do this or they should do that. Like they're the ones that aren't seeing this or aren't seeing that. It's really easy for us to look at other people and kind of see blind spots or whatever. The challenge here is that we actually each have to do this for ourself and
This is not about perfection. We're all humans. This is a never-ending process to learn to have more flexible thinking and to kind of reawaken our conscious awareness in more effective ways. Part of my book is a narrative where I'm gonna share my own personal life experiences where I've really fucked things up multiple times because of my own biases and my own blind spots and things where I've gone into extremes.
So I struggle with this all the time still, this is a part of being human. So as we go through this, really try to use it as a form of self-reflection rather than kind of projection onto others.
Quick disclaimer before we get started. Dialectical thinking and learning to view reality from a broader perspective to see different perspectives and acknowledge and understand different versions of truth - This is not about denying observable facts. So there are observable facts that we can use our five senses to discover, and have kind of a shared understanding of reality. Even that can get little murky, we won't go into that now, but this is not about seeing both sides of things and then getting really passive in ignoring harms and saying like, ‘well, they want to destroy the forest for their industry. And so, you know, that's one perspective. And I think we should save the forest because we need the forest. And well, I guess there's just two different views.’
This is not about passivity and not taking action when there are harms. So there's often this big misunderstanding with mindfulness practice or even dialectical thinking when we're trying to see multiple perspectives that it's about being passive and not acknowledging when something is harmful or hurtful. So we can absolutely have boundaries and see when something leads to negative consequences and identify that. Okay, so just a little disclaimer there before we get started. Often this idea of viewing multiple perspectives puts people off because they're afraid. It means they're gonna have to let people do harmful things and stand by and be passive and that's not at all what this is about. It's about zooming out as far as we can so that we can get a clear view and understand better so that we can solve problems more effectively.
So a quick bit of history here. Where did this come from? This is nothing new. This has been around for a long time, we’re talking Plato and Aristotle started having these forms of dialectical reasoning and thinking. As early as 1000 BC in Vedic and Buddhist philosophy Daoism, the term that's used kind of in those areas is non-duality, non-dualism. You know, life is not absolute and we're going to get more into some of that.
Gandhi also used these practices bringing in non-violence to reduce conflict and John Burton was someone who used this with international law conflict resolution. So when you have these protracted conflicts between two nations, dialectical thinking is something that is used in peace negotiations. So this is really a powerful tool for decreasing polarization and decreasing conflict.
So let's go ahead and just dive into what is behind all of this. And we're actually gonna zoom way, way, out into the universe, okay? And talk about like, what is the nature of reality? Here we are, know, planet Earth floating around the sun in this infinite universe that is ever expanding. And we've been trying to understand what's going on in this reality for a long time, right? And the scientific method was invented. Isaac Newton came along and old physics was materialistic. And so the thought was that the universe is made up of solid particles floating in space. So, materialistic.
And the newer forms of physics that came about in the 1900s, quantum physics, I'm no expert here, okay, there are people who know a lot more about this, you could go down and rabbit hole learning about this, but just kind of the basic 101 idea, quantum physics has shown us that at the smallest particle, everything is energy. These tiny little energy particles bouncing around off each other, in this kind of web, this interconnected web. So what we usually think of as a solid matter is actually ever-changing energy particles. So the table that might be in front of you feels hard when you touch it, it seems pretty solid. The smallest level, it's in constant movement. Same with glass. Glass is actually a liquid, which I learned recently.
So, you know, what we see around us in the material world, it looks solid, it looks material, and it's this tiny little cells of energy that are in constant exchange with each other and in constant change. So the universe and the nature of reality is filled with opposing sides and opposing forces, right? There's this push and pull that you can see at the cellular level all the way out into the universe, right?
And so what we're gonna learn here with dialectical thinking is that there's always more than one way to see a situation and more than one way to solve a problem. So two things that look like opposite things, they can both be true at the same time. This table is solid and it's also in motion.
Okay, we're going to get more into some like examples a little bit later on, but we have to start with this understanding that the nature of reality is this interconnected web of energy. So you may have heard the term interconnectivity. It's basically this idea that there's a ripple effect in the universe. You might have heard of the butterfly effect.
right, that this smallest flap of a butterfly's wings sends, you know, air waves out and it can change the wind patterns and change the direction a storm is going. So tiny changes in weather can make big changes as it goes down the chain of events. Again, I'm like not an expert in quantum physics, but you can do a lot of research in this and see that there's tons of research now and understanding that everything is connected. What we do sends ripples effects out into reality. Look at waves in the ocean, right? A storm happens and the waves continue forever until they hit the shore and then they wash back out into the ocean. And so interconnectivity is a really important concept.
If you look at western culture, and how we're very polarized into individuality and separatism. know, we're each individuals, which we are, and we're also connected integrally to everything around us. We're a part of the natural ecosystem. We're a part of a society. We're a part of families and communities. And so we're both individuals and we're connected at the same time.
So, understanding that the universe is filled with these opposing forces, everything is connected, and that change is the only constant. So you've probably heard this one too, the only constant is change. This is the nature of life, that we're living in this present moment, at least from our conscious awareness, and this moment is unfolding one moment after the next after the next.
Everything is in a constant state of change. So even as we're sitting here, our bodies, the cells in our bodies are in constant movements, constant cycles of death and rebirth and regeneration. I think there's some thing, statistic or whatever, finding about our skin. Like every certain amount of time you have an entirely different layer of skin, which is kind of weird, maybe a little gross.
Also really cool, right? So reality is constantly changing. You in this moment are not the same as you last week or last month or last year. Change is always happening. And so meaning and truth are also evolving over time. What we know about life and reality is in a constant state of expansion. Right? So people get really freaked out when science changes, right? And there's like a new understanding or, actually we were wrong there. This is now what we know. They freak out. my gosh, you know, they tricked us. They're trying to fool us. And not that that maybe doesn't happen sometimes, but the truth is, is that we are always learning new things. And there are some times we don't know something and then we do know something.
So we have to understand that truth changes from moment to moment. Something that was true about you five years ago, maybe five years ago you lived in, I don't know, San Diego, but now you live in Texas. Okay, that truth of living in San Diego is no longer true. The new truth is that you live in Texas. So we have to be able to adapt to this fact that truth and meaning is always changing.
And the way that things change is through transactions, through chains of events, right? So think about dominoes. When you line a bunch of dominoes up, you hit one and boom, boom, boom, boom, they all fall down. So changes happen because something triggers that change. So again, what we do influences our environment and the people around us. It sends a ripple effect of change out.
and the environment and other people influence us. Ripple effects come back to us, right? So over time, these infinite sets of causes and transactions ripple through time and create truth, meaning and reality and create what it is in this moment. And then will continue to shape and create new versions of reality and truth in the future that we don't see yet, right? So already as we're just kind of defining the nature of what we know about the universe right now and you know matter, interconnectivity, the constant change and cause and effect pattern that's creating change, you can start to see that when we're viewing something about the world or life or ourselves and we have this fixed idea of this is truth, this is who I am or this is how I am or this is the truth about that person or about this government or what's happening in this situation or that group or that side over there, it might not be as fixed as we think it is, right? So we have to zoom out and get a little bit more flexible to see if we can get a broader perspective and question where we might be seeing just one side of things.
So there's a Zen parable that illustrates this where there's five monks and they come across an elephant. They're blind. So these five blind monks and they start exploring the elephant. One touches the trunk and says, it's like a branch of a tree. And another monk touches the ear of the elephant and says, no, it's not. It's like a leaf. And another monk touches the leg and says, no, it's like the trunk of a tree. It's a big pillar, like a trunk of the tree. And another monk touches the side of the elephant, the belly, and says, it is not, it is like a wall. And another monk touches the tail and says, no, it's a rope.
So all of the monks were exploring the elephant and noticing the different parts, different perspectives, and having different experiences with reality and they were all right, right? And they were all right in what they were perceiving and what they were experiencing. So reality is multifaceted and you want to think of it like a gemstone where depending on which angle of the gemstone you're looking from or looking at it's going to appear very differently. It's kind of that standard is a glass half full or half empty.
Our perspective can be changed, the same fact that you're looking at, but two different perspectives are gonna see it totally differently, even though it's the same fact. So the goal with dialectical thinking is to try to be aware of these things, that there are multiple perspectives and multiple facets and get out of extreme. let's go through some ways that we can practice this more
Number one is just to remember that there's always more than one side to anything that exists. And try to look for both sides. Ask yourself, what might I be missing here? Is there a piece that I'm not seeing? So we want to get curious. And our culture has a huge, it's called the know-it-all shadow, right? There's this part of our consciousness that we want to know it all, we want to be right, and we get reinforced with that, right? As kids growing up, ‘have the right answer!’ and so we just always want to be right and think that we know and so this practice really requires humility.
It requires there's a Buddhist practice called beginner's mind where we approach life and reality from the eyes of a beginner. I think I have another podcast on that as well but we want to ask ourselves what am I missing here? and let go of extremes. When we get into these all or nothing, it's all this way or it's all that way, it's more likely we're moving away from the truth of reality, right? So it's either this or it's that. This sort of absolutism where we get really rigid in the way we're viewing reality and the way we think things are. Life isn't that simple.
It's much more complex than that. So we can start saying things like it's both this and that and soften the way that we're viewing things a little bit. Part of this is learning to validate multiple perspectives, validate when you disagree with someone. Let me give a practical example here, maybe kind of a political example. Let's take a small town where coal mining has been like the main industry in that town for a long time and many of the families have worked in the coal mines and it's been their primary form of income. And so maybe some a group of environmentalists comes in and we learn through our knowledge and changing over time that coal mining is actually very damaging to the environment. There's parts of the local environment that are being degraded, there's animals and ecosystems that are being impacted in negative ways. And so they say we're going to shut down the coal mine and we're going to change to a different kind of industry. Well, all the workers in that town just lost their income. And their perspective in their side is that this is bad, right? You've shut down my place of work. Now my family doesn't have a way to make money and provide.
And so the other side is saying, well, the coal mine was bad, it's destroying the ecosystem and we need to protect the plants and animals in this area. Both perspectives are valid, right? Both of those views are true. And so we can validate the opposite side by saying, hey, Mr. Coal Miner or whatever, like, yeah, this is terrible.
Your family's lost their income and you need to have an income. And this is a change, it's really hard. And this is a problem. We need to find a solution for this problem. So we can validate a perspective and we can also validate the side that we've got to find a different solution because the environment is being impacted. Right? So that's kind of an example of how we can balance validating two opposing perspectives and acknowledge where there's truth on each side. So another way to view things with multifaceted lens is to try to make lemonade out of lemons when things are challenging. Can we find a bright side? Is there a silver lining? Can I change my perspective in a way that'll make things easier?
We also have to be able to embrace confusion of life. This one's really, really hard for our human brains. Our dear precious human brains do not like confusion. We want to know for sure about things because that signals safety to our brain, right? We know for sure. The truth is much of life is confusing and unknown and so we have to kind of learn to sink into confusion and embrace this paradox. Like I mentioned earlier, paradoxes - this void, this hanging between two opposite ideas. Yeah, coal miner, you've lost the work that your family's done and this is causing problems and you're angry and that is incredibly valid. And yeah, environmentalist, we do have to save the ecosystems and these are two opposing ideas and it's a paradox, right? These two truths. Paradox is uncomfortable.
And sometimes we have to be willing to feel the discomfort of not having a clear answer right away before a new solution could kind of be birthed out from underneath the balance of the two opposing ideas.
We can also practice arguing different sides of things and seeing like, what would it be like to argue this position? What would it be like to argue that position? So that we can start to see different sides. The second way that we can practice this is to always remember that we're connected to everything. So when we're relating to reality, when we're relating to other people, remembering that we are an interconnected part of a whole.
So what we do, how we address problems, how we address things is going to stand a ripple out and impact everything else, right? So we want to treat others as we want them to treat us, right? It's kind of a common platitude that we hear. We want to try to look for the similarities among people rather than the differences. So when we start polarizing into this hyper focus of how different people are, well, they're from over there and that's different from where I am over here, or they have that background and that's different than my background. And we start focusing on these differences.
That's when we start polarizing into the separatist isolationist kind of way of thinking, which is not dialectical, rather than looking at how, where do we have things in common? How are we all human? How do we all feel the same emotions and have the same and similar basic needs o that we can have that more well-rounded perspective on things and not go into these sort of polarities of isolationism.
The third thing is learning how to embrace change. So how can we throw ourselves into the truth that change is always happening? Be willing to change, change our mind, change our behavior, change our routines, change our systems, right? When we get stuck in rigidly wanting to keep everything the same, there's going to be problems because that literally just goes against the nature of the universe. It's just not how things work. Things are always changing. So we have to be willing to embrace change and adapt and adjust, radically accept even when we don't like change like, okay, well this is what it was but now it's different and radically accepting that, getting used to the newness of something as we're adapting and adjusting to changes.
So with all of this, when we look at other people who have different perspectives, if we zoom out and we understand that the nature of the universe has change and things are the way they are because of an infinite set of causes that have led each of us up to being where we are in life, we can let go of judgment and blame.
So if we're judging and blaming ourselves or others, it's gonna be a lot harder to gain understanding. So if people have a viewpoint or perspective that's different than yours, you wanna look at how do people develop that perspective? Where did that come from? What are the causes that led to people having that perspective or that value or that idea? And when we can look at the causes, maybe there's a lot of misinformation being taught, maybe there's belief systems that have been passed down from generation to generation, then we can say, okay, how do we start working to change some of those things so that the outcome is different? So that people can, you know, better look at media and kind of test and check different sources and identify misinformation so that people can question their own belief systems that have been passed down from generations, right? We can't change the causes until we understand them. So we have to let go of judging and blaming to better understand the causes.
The last thing we're gonna look at today with this, because there's just really not enough time to go into the whole concept in one episode, is some examples of polarities that we want to try to balance and see both sides of. So one of the main polarities that we face in life is accepting reality and working to change reality. So we need to accept reality in any given moment. We also have to accept the past. We have to accept ourselves and others as they are in the moment. It's really important that we learn to do that to make life more bearable. And we can polarize into acceptance where we then go into passivity. We say, well, this is just how life is. This is how I am. This is how they are, how the world is. And well, there's nothing we can do to change it we become passive and we just accept into the extreme.
Change on the other hand is also something we need to be able to do. We want to change ourselves in certain ways, change our behaviors, our patterns, help change things in life, solve problems. We've got to be able to work towards changes that are needed and we can also polarize into change. Where we're pushing so hard for change we forget to accept reality then it's like grinding our wheels, right? The grass is always greener, we can never be content, and we're pushing so hard for change it just causes this tension and problems, it gets in the way of our ability to solve problems. So the question, when we're trying to balance a polarity and acknowledge the validity on both sides with 'yes and' thinking, yes, we need to accept reality, how can we do that?
and also work to change it at the exact same time. There's a paradox. And it's like kind of like a mind warp, right? Like how can I accept something I don't like that's painful and also try to change it at the same time? What? That doesn't make any sense, right? That's where the paradox lies. We can do both of those things at the same time.
Independence is another one versus dependence. So on one hand independence is really important especially as we reach adulthood. We need to be able to stand on our own two feet, take care of ourselves, solve our own problems, be independent, and we can also polarize into independence which the United States has polarized into hyperindependence where then we shove everyone out into their own little silo and say, figure it out by yourself, right? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
And if we polarize into hyper-independence, it's like, I won't accept help from anyone else. I don't need help from anyone. I'm gonna do it by myself. And that actually ends up becoming a weakness. So being hyper-independent, in the end becomes paralyzing because the truth is we're a collective species and we do depend on each other, we rely on each other. So on the other hand, dependence, we can learn from each other, right? When we accept help from others, we can progress so much faster. And so we need to be able to depend on each other as friends and families and teams and societies we can also go into the extreme of dependence. So if we go into the extreme of that, then we can't do anything by ourselves and we rely on others for everything that we need. And you can obviously see where problems arise there, right?
So our human brain likes to just go into these extremes and you can see it even in politics with independence versus dependence on one side, people are terrified of everyone becoming dependent and then everyone needs to be super independent, right? And the truth is, we can both be independent and self-reliant and also help each other and rely on each other and depend on each other. They're not mutually exclusive things.
Couple more examples here, openness versus privacy. So on one hand, we wanna be able to be open and vulnerable with people. This is how we connect with others, sharing who we are, saying how we feel, being open about our lives. We can go to the extreme of that, where maybe we just put everything out there all the time to everyone. And then, what is that term they use? There's like a vulnerability hangover.
Or maybe we share things that then people use against you or you get in trouble for whatever, right? So we want to be able to have openness but not go into the extreme. On the other hand, privacy, you know, we're all entitled to our privacy and it is important to know where our different limits and boundaries are around privacy and that's going to vary by person and depend on the relationship and all of those things.
We can polarize also into privacy where we don't want to share anything with anyone and that becomes isolating. So the practice is how can we both be open and vulnerable with people and also monitor our need for privacy and limits and boundaries for ourselves. This one's similar to trust versus suspicion. So trust is again another important aspect for humans as a tribal clan-based collective species. Having trust is key to our safety and survival, whether it's with our family or friends or people we work with, people in society. Trust helps us feel a sense of safety and we can also polarize into trust. So if we're overly trusting, again, with no self-protected boundaries, no sense of a little bit of discrimination around how well do I know this person, is this person trustworthy, it's a self-protective piece, then we can over we can trust someone who ends up harming us or doing hurtful things to us, right? The other extreme of suspicion, having a healthy level of suspicion is also important for our survival so that we can look out for dangers and make sure that we don't you know end up in some sort of trouble or harm.
But we can polarize into suspicion where we don't trust anyone and we're just stink eyeing everyone and we think everybody has the worst intention for us, for humanity, for life, and then that's very isolating and problematic. how can we embrace the paradox of both trusting ourselves and others and our fellow human being and also holding a healthy level of suspicion? ‘Both/And’ at the same time. So there's literally an infinite number of these polarities that we can get into, these extremes. You can be tough and you can also be gentle, right? You can be tough and gentle at the exact same time. You can explore this stuff to the ends of the earth. And it's really fun over time as you start to notice like, there's a polarity, there's a dialectic, there's an extreme.What's the opposite side of that? And how can I bring more balance there? In Buddhism, there's a term called the middle way. And Buddha has like the different paths to enlightenment.
One of the paths to enlightenment is balance, the middle way. So finding balance in extremes and so the middle way is how can I both be x and y? How can truth both be this and that? Right? And so this middle path, this middle way is the practice and it's never about perfection. So
If you think of these polarities kind of like a teeter-totter, they used to exist on playgrounds, I don't think they do anymore, but they kind of bounce back and forth, right, on the teeter-totter. have one person sit on one side, one on the other. And when we're trying to find more balance in polarities, it's never gonna be perfectly balanced. And if it is, it's not gonna last, right? So the goal cannot be to be perfectly in your middle path all the time. It's more about this gentle ebb and flow. We want to not have extreme swings back and forth into polarities. We want to reduce that into a more kind of ebb and flow balance.
So this is kind of the shortest nitty-gritty rundown of dialectical thinking, where we have to start realizing that reality is so much more complex than we think, and there are multiple perspectives that might be opposing and also have validity on each side. And so...
We've got to embrace humility. We've got to embrace curiosity. We have to let go of judgment. And it has to start with questioning our own minds first. Again, running around pointing fingers, even though we all love doing that, right? It feels so good. It's not effective. And if we know that we're only 5 % really conscious of our own mind and how we're interpreting and understanding truth, then we have to be willing to acknowledge that there's a lot we don't know, there's a lot we don't see. And so again, that doesn't mean that we don't acknowledge when there is something that's there that we can all see and acknowledge, hey, this is hurtful or this is harmful, or this is important, we need to value this. And then also learn to validate, listen to the other side and try to hear the other side and see where's the kernel of truth there.
How can I validate some of that and still come back to the need or the problem that you're seeing, right? So it's not either or, it's both and. And you can start to see where when we learn to use this process a little bit more often, a little bit more effectively, it's gonna help us problem solve so much more smoothly.
When we validate an opposing perspective, defenses go down, right? So then it's not this like competing battle for who's right, who has a correct truth. So we've got to drop our defenses. That's kind of a big part of the shadow work with Carl Jung that I'm gonna go into on another day.
We've got to drop our defenses in order to be able to navigate these conflicts and difficulties and challenges with differing perspectives. Because if we don't do that, we just end up backing ourselves all into a corner, pointing fingers at each other, and there's literally nowhere to go from there. Nowhere to go. So we are all connected in our shared humanity. And I think our first step here
is to try to start stretching our minds a little bit more, myself included, it's really hard for me too, but to stretch our minds a little bit more to try to see, is there something I'm missing? Is there a different way I could look at this so that we can gain a broader perspective, see where we have blind spots and we're missing things, and kind of come together with others to try to use our shared experiences and perspectives and hear each other out so that we can start problem solving more effectively together. All right, that's all I've got for today. Like I said, kind of a quick and dirty rundown of this topic. It's a big topic. It's why I'm writing a whole book on it. And then, you know.
But this is a starting point and I really wanted to have at least an audio podcast of this basic nitty gritty rundown to reference. So I hope you enjoyed it. As always, reach out with any questions. I would love to hear your thoughts. There's often a lot of questions like, wait, what? I don't know about this topic. So join the conversation. Like leave comments, send me emails.
ask questions, again it's okay to not know or be confused about things or maybe disagree with something, like share your perspective on this and there's validity to your perspective, right? But we have to also be willing to kind of join the conversations on these things. All right, I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks for tuning in.
