Take "the Other" to lunch

There's an angry, divisive tension in the air that threatens to make modern politics impossible. Elizabeth Lesser explores the two sides of human nature that create this tension (call them "the mystic" and "the warrior") and shares a simple, personal way to begin a real dialogue -- by going to lunch with someone who doesn't agree with you, and asking them three questions to find out what's really in their hearts.

This room may appear
to be holding 600 people,

but there's actually so many more,

because within each one of us,
there is a multitude of personalities.

I have two primary personalities

that have been in conflict
and conversation within me

since I was a little girl.

I call them "the mystic"
and "the warrior."

I was born into a family of politically
active intellectual atheists.

There was this equation in my family
that went something like this:

if you are intelligent,

you therefore are not spiritual.

I was the freak of the family.

I was this weird little kid

who wanted to have deep talks
about the worlds that might exist

beyond the ones we perceive
with our senses.

I wanted to know

if what we human beings see
and hear and think

is a full and accurate picture of reality.

So, looking for answers,

I went to Catholic mass;
I tagged along with my neighbors.

I read Sartre and Socrates.

And then a wonderful thing happened
when I was in high school:

gurus from the East started washing up
on the shores of America.

(Laughter)

And I said to myself,
"I wanna get me one of them."

(Laughter)

And ever since, I've been walking
the mystic path,

trying to peer beyond
what Albert Einstein called

the "optical delusion"
of everyday consciousness.

So what did he mean by this?

I'll show you.

Take a breath right now
of this clear air in this room.

Now, see this strange,

underwater-coral-reef-looking thing?

It's actually a person's trachea.

And those colored globs are microbes

that are actually swimming around
in this room right now,

all around us.

If we're blind to this simple biology,

imagine what we're missing
at the smallest subatomic level right now

and at the grandest cosmic levels.

My years as a mystic have made me question
almost all my assumptions.

They've made me a proud
"I-don't-know-it-all."

Now, when the mystic part of me
jabbers on and on like this,

the warrior rolls her eyes.

She's concerned about what's happening
in this world right now.

She's worried.

She says, "Excuse me, I'm pissed off,

and I know a few things,

and we better get busy
about them right now."

I've spent my life as a warrior,

working for women's issues,

working on political campaigns,

being an activist for the environment.

And it can be sort of crazymaking,

housing both the mystic
and the warrior in one body.

I've always been attracted
to those rare people

who pull that off,

who devote their lives to humanity

with the grit of the warrior
and the grace of the mystic --

people like Martin Luther King, Jr.,

who wrote, "I can never be
what I ought to be

until you are what you ought to be."

"This," he wrote, "is the interrelated
structure of reality."

Then Mother Teresa,
another mystic warrior, who said,

"The problem with the world
is that we draw the circle of our family

too small."

And Nelson Mandela, who lives
by the African concept of "ubuntu,"

which means "I need you in order to be me,

and you need me in order to be you."

Now, we all love to trot out
these three mystic warriors

as if they were born with a "saint" gene.

But we all actually have
the same capacity that they do.

And we need to do their work now.

I'm deeply disturbed

by the ways in which all of our cultures
are demonizing "the other,"

by the voice we're giving
to the most divisive among us.

Listen to these titles
of some of the best-selling books

from both sides of the political divide

here in the US:

"Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,"

"Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot,"

"Pinheads and Patriots,"

"Arguing with Idiots."

They're supposedly tongue-in-cheek,

but they're actually dangerous.

Now here's a title
that may sound familiar,

but whose author may surprise you:

"Four and a Half Years
of Struggle Against Lies,

Stupidity and Cowardice."

Who wrote that?

That was Adolf Hitler's first title
for "Mein Kampf" -- "My Struggle" --

the book that launched the Nazi Party.

The worst eras in human history,

whether in Cambodia
or Germany or Rwanda --

they start like this,
with negative otherizing.

And then they morph
into violent extremism.

This is why I'm launching
a new initiative.

And it's to help all of us,
myself included,

to counteract the tendency to otherize.

And I realize we're all busy people,

so don't worry, you can do this
on a lunch break.

I'm calling my initiative
"Take the Other to Lunch."

If you are a Republican,

you can take a Democrat to lunch.

Or if you're a Democrat,

think of it as taking
a Republican to lunch.

Now, if the idea of taking
any of these people to lunch

makes you lose your appetite,

(Laughter)

I suggest you start more local,

because there is no shortage of the other
right in your own neighborhood:

maybe that person
who worships at the mosque

or the church or the synagogue
down the street;

or someone from the other side
of the abortion conflict;

or maybe your brother-in-law
who doesn't believe in global warming --

(Laughter)

anyone whose lifestyle may frighten you

or whose point of view
makes smoke come out of your ears.

A couple of weeks ago,

I took a conservative
Tea Party woman to lunch.

Now, on paper, she passed
my "smoking ears" test:

(Laughter)

she's an activist from the Right,

and I'm an activist from the Left.

We used some guidelines
to keep our conversation elevated.

And you can use them, too,

because I know you're all going
to take an other to lunch.

So first of all, decide on a goal:

to get to know one person from a group
you may have negatively stereotyped.

And then, before you get together,

agree on some ground rules.

My Tea Party lunch mate and I
came up with these:

"Don't persuade, defend or interrupt;

be curious, be conversational, be real;

and listen."

From there, we dove in,
and we used these questions:

"Share some of your life
experiences with me --

what issues deeply concern you?

And what have you always wanted to ask
someone from the other side?"

My lunch partner and I came away
with some really important insights,

and I'm going to share just one with you.

I think it has relevance to any problem
between people anywhere.

I asked her why her side makes
such outrageous allegations and lies

about my side.

"What?" she wanted to know.

"Like, we're a bunch of elitist,
morally corrupt terrorist-lovers."

Well, she was shocked.

She thought my side beat up
on her side way more often --

that we called them brainless,
gun-toting racists.

And we both marveled at the labels

that fit none of the people
we actually know.

And since we had established some trust,

we believed in each other's sincerity.

We agreed we'd speak up
in our own communities

when we witnessed
the kind of "otherizing" talk

that can wound and fester into paranoia

and then be used by those on the fringes

to incite.

By the end of our lunch,
we acknowledged each other's openness.

Neither of us had tried
to change the other,

but we also hadn't pretended

that our differences
were just going to melt away

after a lunch.

Instead, we had taken
first steps together,

past our knee-jerk reactions

to the ubuntu place,

which is the only place

where solutions to our most
intractable-seeming problems

will be found.

So who should you invite to lunch?

Next time you catch yourself
in the act of otherizing,

that'll be your clue.

And what might happen at your lunch?

Will the heavens open

and "We are the World" play
over the restaurant sound system?

Probably not.

Because ubuntu work is slow,
and it's difficult.

It's two people dropping the pretense
of being know-it-alls.

It's two people, two warriors,
dropping their weapons

and reaching toward each other.

Here's how the great
Persian poet Rumi put it:

"Out beyond ideas
of wrong-doing and right-doing,

there is a field.

I'll meet you there."

(Applause)