Daryl Davis is African American. He is a musician by vocation, but has a very peculiar avocation: his mission in life is to answer a question that has puzzled him since he was ten when his family moved into an all-white suburb of Boston:

“Why do they hate me when they don’t even know me?”

His first foray into this question took him to a motel room meeting with Grand Wizard of the KKK, Roger Kelly, a man with the reputation for being unyielding and dangerous.  Kelly was accompanied by a gun toting bodyguard who amused himself throughout the meeting by drawing his gun and twirling it in his fingers.

But Davis had a weapon, too… listening.

Listening not to punch holes in Kelly’s argument – that, of course, would have been impossible and risky – but listening with curiosity, to try to understand who lived beneath that menacing mantel of hate, and what motivated him.

Davis believed that if he listened with an open mind without judgment, that would create a space for people to listen back. And he was right: over the course of several years Davis met and befriended hundreds of white supremacists, and eventually, over two hundred of them, including Roger Kelly, renounced their racist views.

We Live in a Divided World Where Alienation is a Way of Life

We live in a divided world where alienation is a way of life. That’s one thing most of us can agree upon. But how to bridge the vast gulf continues to elude us. On one hand, we know the divide is costing us dearly.

On the other, it feels as though listening, really listening with open mind and heart to the other side, would mean selling out our principles and maybe our people, and possibly being swallowed up by that other, repugnant point of view. So, we clench our jaws, stuff our (figurative) fingers in our ears, and hold fast to our position, repeating it over and over again. And in the end, no one hears anyone else.

This is called positional-thinking. It takes the form of defending, persuading, or compromising. When we’re in the positional mindset (which is just about all the time!) we gather and assess information selectively, favoring information that confirms our position, dismissing information that challenges it.

“We lock ourselves into a posture that is simultaneously offensive and defensive.”

We lock ourselves into a posture that is simultaneously offensive and defensive. We learn nothing new about the workability of our position or the realities of the world outside our narrow view. Our reactions are unexamined, uninspired, and predictable.  Most importantly, we lose the precious opportunity to gain unexpected insights or to see new possibilities.

But There is an Alternative. It’s Called Non-Positional Thinking.

It doesn’t cut down the middle between positions but stands above all the positions. Non-positional thinking is not compromise—Daryl Davis didn’t compromise – which, although necessary at times often leaves both sides thinking only about what they had to give up.

In compromise, we still feel that we’re right and entitled, but that we had to sacrifice something in order to gain something else. And the loss stings.

Non-positional thinking doesn’t waste energy defending a position or attacking another. Nor is it “both sides-ism”, the notion that both sides are equally valid – sometimes they are, but often they’re not.  In many cases, as with politics or ideology, it’s less about seeing the merits of the opposing position and more about something else, more obscure and penetrating. In non-positional thinking you don’t need to concede anything.

You just – for this moment – set aside the question of the rightness or wrongness of either position and choose to rise above to see the larger picture, the entire panorama of causes and effects and effects that become causes, in order to bring forth new insights and understandings. You ask yourself the question, “What is it that I’m not seeing about this, the seeing of which might make a difference in how I think?”

Listening to Understand

It wasn’t the persuasiveness of Davis’s argument that won over the white supremacists. It was his listening-to-understand. Davis sought to understand them, to see what lay beneath the white supremacist position: the experiences, the needs, the feelings that brought them to it. In the end that understanding gave them the space to, in Davis’s words “be seen” and let go.

How might non-positional thinking affect the discussion around a loaded political issue such as climate change. Let’s say you encounter someone from West Virginia whose world for all their life has been defined by coal mining. It would be pointless to try to convince them to give up their livelihood because a faceless battalion of “they” have determined that coal burning will change the world after they’re dead.

Cognitive dissonance alone would drive them to denial. So, attempting to persuade them to give up their position is a conversation heading nowhere.

What if, on the other hand, you used Daryl Davis’s approach and listened, not to find the weakness in their argument to show them they’re wrong, but to understand the needs and fears that motivate them to cling to their position? You might discover that their loyalty isn’t to coal at all but to their livelihood.

You might discover that it’s not science that scares them, but the potential loss of their economic anchor. By putting aside for the moment, the heated emotions of the debate around climate change, you can hear their story in a new way.

You can imagine with empathy what it’s like to live without options. On that path, a real dialogue has a chance: a conversation can begin that addresses their needs.  By understanding that you’ll never convince them to give up their security you can begin to conceive of an alternative path forward that could give them what they need while, at the same time, preserving the environment for future generations.

Non-positional thinking isn’t necessarily easy to put into practice. It is hard work. And it won’t solve every problem. But in this world, increasingly divided and fractured, it is a hopeful step forward.