Introducing “empower politics”
Instead of reacting to conservative rhetoric with your counter liberal arguments, you can do something exquisitely radical: Listen.
Yep. You offer no immediate resistance. You offer instead your caring ears. You seek first to understand them, to compassionately recognize those eager needs bubbling up from behind their passionate talk.
Politics-as-usual emphasizes your needs. You can then ignore theirs. Does that sound very attractive?
Empower politics emphasizes their needs. You inspire them to respect your needs. You attract mutual concern.
When our politics misses this critical and yet sensitive component of needs...
...we then easily misunderstand each other.
Conservatives that now detest you may just open up to you more, esteem you move, perhaps even love you more. Or wonder what you’re up to. You get to build or rebuild trust.
Instead of reacting to a conservative person’s objection to these NFL football players’ protests with…
“Protesting the flag is my Constitutional right to free speech, to air grievances, including all the violence my community suffers in the name of that flag!”
…you can replace it with…
“I get what you’re saying about respect for the flag, that for you it demonstrates your deep gratitude to all those who fought to preserve such a Constitutional right as free speech.”
Understand to be understood
You open a dialogue about each other’s needs. You focus on their needs, not yours. You make it easier for them to admit their more vulnerably felt needs. And give reason to reciprocate, for the needs you guard behind political arguments.
Isn’t it pointless to disagree with what another’s stated need? Have you ever said to someone, “I disagree that you need that”? Who are you to accurately know their specific need?
They’re usually struggling to better understand it themselves. Arguing from your own experience, instead of theirs, typically triggers their defensiveness. And it doesn’t show love, but quite the opposite.
"Only our needs truly matter!"
Political debating shouts: I don’t really care about your needs, I only care about my own and those who share my experience. If “debating” excludes the specific needs of unheard others, no wonder it gets you nowhere!
So let’s skip the debate. Let’s get right down to each other’s specific needs. Let’s understand divisive politics, to understand polarization, and perhaps something we call can do about it.
-
Let’s replace overgeneralized beliefs of political ideology with dynamically relating to specific needs.
-
Let’s replace alienation with impacting engaging, to relate better to each other’s impacted needs.
-
Let’s replace polarization with mutually affirmed value, with value framing.
These are just some of the items addressed in a new eCourse, available to you at Udemy.com, called….
Your responses indicate you lean politically leftward.
You need liberalism, to ease your particular set of needs.
Popular opinion assumes your political views results from reasoned arguments. That you could choose to be more conservative, if persuaded by a good argument. What if this is actually backwards?
Your needs come first
Before you had any reason to follow liberal ideas, you experienced a particular set of needs. At some point, your needs seem best relieved through liberal policies. Right?
You see government as a necessary protector of minority rights. You experience a greater need for social inclusion than, say, lifting up individual potential at the most local level.
You experience your social needs like equal inclusion and fair treatment more than your self needs like self-resiliency and personal responsibility.
From the perspective of your burning needs, it sure can seem strange to you that anyone would advocate decreasing the human services role of the federal government.
It is this priority in your experienced needs that attract you to liberal ideals. Not ideology. Your needs come first. Appealing arguments come later.
We trust you learned something valuable about yourself. We see you as valuable, no matter where you fit along the political spectrum. Your responses indicate you lean politically to the left.
Unfortunately, political orientation theories tend to overstate the role of choice. We do not simply choose what we may need. We don’t flexibly choose our political beliefs; we find what gives expression to our less flexible needs. We can only change our politics when aligned with our needs.
To delve deeper into your survey results, click through each of these eight slides. Navigate by clicking on the arrows . Afterwards, hold your mouse over the bottom of the slide to read its text.
Now I do have to ask you something.
Won any political debates lately?
No, I didn't think so.
If your political views express your particular needs, and others experience a different set of stubborn needs, guest what. Most political debating is just a tragic waste of time.
Your persistent needs yearn for better understanding, not to be proven wrong. So does theirs.
Instead of insisting how your need-based arguments should fit everyone, go ahead and browse through these “leftward leaning needs” slides.
You can click through each of these twelve slides to delve further into your leftward experience of needs. Be sure to hold your mouse over the bottom of each slide to read its text. Navigate by clicking on the arrows on either side.
You likely lean leftward because you individually do not fit in well with the larger group of mainstream society. Or you lean left because of your strong affinity with others marginalized by established norms.
You seek liberation from traditional forms of oppression. Mainstream culture continues to exclude you in some ways. Liberalism offers the promise of being liberated from traditional forms of oppression.
In fact, your pressing needs keep you from recognizing how conservatives legitimately experience a contrary set of needs. We overcome political polarization by respecting each other's differing needs.
You likely lean leftward because you individually do not fit in well with the larger group of mainstream society. Or you lean left because of your strong affinity with others marginalized by established norms.
You can click through each of these twelve slides to delve further into your leftward experience of needs. Be sure to hold your mouse over the bottom of each slide to read its text. Navigate by clicking on the arrows to either side.
Now compare your leftward needs with their rightward needs. If you find liberalism well suited for your needs, can you appreciate how they find conservatism a better fit for their particular needs?
Sometimes they feel smothered by their local groups, but that's a small price to pay for their secure support. They see the free market as a force for good, with its self-determination for creating loose-knit supports.
A first step to overcoming polarization is to understand both sides. So click through these to better understand the other side. Compare the legitimacy of their needs to your own.
You see how neither is better than the other? You see how both sides imperfectly address their needs in opposing situations?
Instead of pushing others away with your need-based arguments, are you open to an alternative? Instead of fueling the political hate, are you interested in how you can spread some love?
We all need at least one person in life who we can trust with our deepest secrets. Someone who helps each of us face life’s deeper challenges.
Unfortunately, too many of us resort to some partisan group to ease our frustrated needs. Then think the worst of those who don’t.
Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. - George W. Bush (2016)
Care to better understand our bias against each other? What we call pseudio-opposition?
There's not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America. - Barack Obama (2004)
Care to help make this ideal more of a lived reality? Not only in the USA, but all over the world?
TL;DR...take me to course offering
Value Relating
You typically rely more on others than on yourself when addressing politicized needs, and the greater this difference the more political you tend to be. They rely equally on themselves and on others when addressing such needs, leaving them less political.
Course Preview
NOTE: Not yet optimized for viewing on mobile devices.
We trust you learned something valuable about yourself. We see you as valuable, no matter where you fit along the political spectrum. Your responses indicate you lean politically to the right.
Unfortunately, political orientation theories tend to overstate the role of choice. We do not simply choose what we may need. We don’t flexibly choose our political beliefs; we find what gives expression to our less flexible needs. We can only change our politics when aligned with our needs.
Your personalized survey results
We are so done with political polarization!
TL;DR...
NOTE: Not yet ready for viewing on mobile devices.
Defusing Polarization: Understanding Divisive Politics
Overcome political polarization by going straight to what is needed
PREVIEW Defusing Polarization:
Understanding Divisive Politics
HIGHLIGHTS
-
7 sections, plus a bonus
-
3 three video lessons in each section after the 1st one
-
A recap in each of these sections
-
A 3-question quiz in these sections, to internalize what you’re learning.
It’s about needs, especially the need to be loved.
Here’s a preview of some the key lectures.
Welcome, let's get started. Lesson #1 is the brief intro to the course, where I introduce myself and the book this course is based upon. What can you expect from this course? What can you get out of it yourself?
How to optimize this course. Lesson #2 has no video, just PDF provides some tips to maximize the course for your life.
It's not about having the correct ideology. That's the theme for lesson #3 in the course. It's about love, or the lack thereof.
Undrstanding politics by defining it. Jumping ahead to lesson #7 in the course, you get what we mean by politics. This definition puts your needs back into the equation.
You see both liberalism & conservatism impartially. Jumping ahead to lesson #20, you see how the course enables you to appreciate liberalism and conservatism on equal footing. See how neither is inherently better than the other, at least not for all of us.
Section 7. This last full unit goes the extra mile, or 1.6 meters. You get a taste of what you can start to do about this messy problem of political polarization. You see the alternative of “empower politics” in action.
Only so much I can give you here. The course gives you a new vocabulary to better understand the experience of needs beneath all that emotionally thick political talk. And this course can answer some questions I likely raised for you. Such as...
-
What is this “wide” or “deep” psychosocial orientation, and how does it shape my political orientation?
-
What is this new academic field for better understanding my needs?
-
What is this and and ?
-
What exactly is e,mpower politics, and what it can mean for me?
So go ahead and check out the full course. Avoid the full price at the Udemy platform. Join others in not only understanding political polarization, but who are starting to do something about it. See you there.
It's about your overlooked needs
OPTION A:
Be normal
Keep believing politics is all about rationally argued conclusions.
Keep assuming others should follow your politically reasoned arguments.
Keep suffering disappointment as others cling harder to their own views.
SKIP THIS COURSE
OPTION B:
Be transformative
Start relating your needs more effectively, to make it easier for others to respect you.
Improve how you relate to the needs of others, beyond political generalities.
Start seeing some amazing results in your life and in the lives you impact.
TAKE THIS COURSE
The full course is available at Udemy.com at its full price of $95.
For a limited time (till 11/30/2017) you have more affordable options.
and for a limited quantity
(2000),
you can get now take this course for less than half the full price. For only $45.
Go to course
Thank you!
for...
getting the course,
taking the course, and
leaving helpful feedback for others.
Now let's engage where needed.
Take a peek at what you would see if self-identifying as a conservative.
Your feedback is appreciated. Thank you.