Talkin' 'bout a Revolution

Is listening an antidote to hate?

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” — Epictetus

We started the Story Rules Project to deepen our thinking about rapidly emerging neuroscientific research that gives groundbreaking insight into how our minds and bodies process and respond to story. In doing so, we wanted to explore our thesis that storytelling offers a unique capacity to address the political and cultural polarization that is tearing our nation, our communities, even our families apart.

Before thinking about bringing people together, we need to understand what is dividing us into such bitterly opposed factions. Polarization is an effect, not a cause or condition, and understanding its origins necessitates thinking about how we, as individuals and cultures, are witnessing a breakdown in our collective ability to tolerate disagreement and process conflict — something we urgently need to fix. Devising new cultural mechanisms to manage contentious dispute is not a new thing, of course; Americans, given our immigrant melting-pot history, have always disagreed, every generation has faced issues that deeply and fiercely divided it. 

But how we handle disagreement matters. The First Amendment explicitly protects dissent from governmental retribution — a revolutionary notion at a time when the guillotine was silencing dissent elsewhere — and norms of conflict resolution have evolved to negotiate among competing political principles, ideally in ways that avert violence. As President Reagan put it: “Peace is not absence of conflict; it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”

This is where the shift has happened. Forgetting or disregarding long-established mechanisms for peaceful conflict resolution, we are retreating into tribal Internet bubbles whose algorithms foster division, reinforcing the notion that one side is right and virtuous while the other is wrong and evil. Such vicious polarization has reached the point where 20 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans freely propose eliminationist solutions to ideological gridlock, saying the country would be better off if their political opponents were dead. Even more Americans feel deeply pessimistic about the future: According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, 65 percent of us feel that our country is heading in the wrong direction, while 37 percent say we are in danger of failing as a nation. This is not a sustainable trajectory.

We were already deeply polarized as a nation on October 6th — but the horrific terrorist attacks in Israel, and the ensuing war, have polarized not only the US but much of the rest of the world, too. Explicitly violent antisemitic and anti-Muslim posts surged dramatically across social media platforms in the wake of the attacks. Since then, protests have created deep rifts in our cities, communities, and college campuses. Some European countries—including France, Germany, and Austria—responded to increasing social tensions by banning protest marches, flags, and slogans, only to provoke an outcry about free expression. In the US, the conflict has split Americans along ideological fault lines as well as generationally — a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that Americans over 65 remain strongly supportive of Israel, but that the 18 to 34 demographic flipped when Israel began its military counter-offensive in Gaza: The numbers of younger Americans expressing greater support for Palestine jumped from 26 to 52 percent in the month following October 17.

Public opinion polls tell an important story. But paying attention only to surveys and aggregated data can make us miss what we should hear as storytellers: Personal testimony from those who feel isolated, unsafe, and betrayed in this current moment. Israeli-American student Liyam Chitayat—selected for TheMarker’s “40 under 40” list in Israel when she was just 19—moved several months ago to Cambridge, MA, to begin her doctoral studies in computational systems biology at MIT. In an emotional speech, Chitayat described how, on October 7th, her childhood best friend hid in the dark at Kibbutz Be'eri as Hamas terrorists chanted “Kill the Jews” and shot people outside. Chitayat spent 17 hours straight on her phone, never knowing whether the most recent text message from her friend would be her last.

She then described her fear, confusion, and powerlessness at MIT over the ensuing weeks, as protestors blocked Jewish students from attending classes, administrators advised Jews to access campus via back entrances, and the university’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion staff—employed to support minority students—liked and thanked online posts calling for the elimination of her country. Anger, powerlessness, and fear are all very real emotions—experienced not only by Chitayat, but by people on both sides of the divide who feel threatened, dehumanized, or ignored amid the conflict. In the passionate debates that rage online, both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian posters feel that they are making legitimate arguments and appeals to humanity, but that the other side is not listening.

In Ireland, where I live, most people have reflexively taken the Palestinian side in the conflict, due to a perception—however historically inaccurate—that the Palestinian experience since 1948 mirrors the Irish Catholic experience under British rule. Politicians in the Irish parliament have been wearing keffiyehs and making impassioned speeches denouncing Israel. Enormous pro-Palestinian protests have taken place weekly in Irish cities since early October, while the country’s tiny Jewish population—numbering around 2,500—have mostly stayed underground and remained quiet. Regardless, the country was gripped by the saga of Emily Hand, a 9-year-old Irish-Israeli girl initially assumed to have been killed in the Kibbutz Be’eri massacre, but later revealed to have been captured and held hostage in Gaza. Her Dublin-born father Tom and older half-sister Natali traveled to Ireland to enlist the assistance of the Irish government, whose senior ministers worked for weeks through diplomatic channels in the US, Israel, Egypt, and Qatar to help secure the child’s release.

 Several evenings ago, Emily was finally released to the Red Cross in Gaza after spending 50 days in captivity. A brief clip circulated widely online, showing the small girl, wearing red Disney pajamas, running into her weeping father’s arms. That night, the Irish taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar tweeted: “This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.” 

Varadkar’s tweet soon went viral, and for all the wrong reasons. It gained over 46 million views on Twitter/X and even sparked an international diplomatic crisis as Sonya McGuinness, Ireland’s ambassador to Israel, was formally summoned by the Israeli government to account for Varadkar’s verb choice. His use of “lost” and “found” were perceived to have glossed over the child’s violent kidnapping and captivity, and thus to have made light of the October 7 atrocities. But most incensed readers missed the allusion to Luke 15:32 (“It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found”), inviting people to celebrate and be glad because a child who had been presumed dead had been discovered alive; a child who was held in the tunnels of Gaza had been freed. Readers instead rushed to self-righteous and vindictive judgment.

What is happening here? For years, cultural commentators have worried that we are losing our ability to read carefully, attentively, and generously — unsurprisingly, given the overt politicization and then broad decline of the humanities, as well as our overdependence on short-form social media soundbites on smartphone screens — a practice that seems at odds with the quickfire judgment, snark, and instant tribal hostility of online spaces. At a time when international tensions are on a knife edge, though, quarrels over misinterpreted words can have devastating consequences. In such an environment of viral outrage, can we come together again around peaceful solutions? Can we learn to negotiate disagreement by peaceful means — or will algorithmic polarization drive us further apart, with catastrophic results? I like to believe that we can rebuild our civic culture. But first we have to listen, attentively and carefully and without assuming the worst.

A newly published research paper, “Listening to Understand: The Role of High-Quality Listening on Speakers’ Attitude Depolarization During Disagreements” by Guy Itzchakov et. al. reiterates points we have noted previously on the Story Rules Project — that disagreements create defensiveness, which only further polarize attitudes into a downward spiral, especially when people feel that their self-worth or worldview are being threatened. We have discussed in recent posts the neurological underpinnings of disagreement, or how our brains do not differentiate between an argument and a physical attack. As one person talks, the other is “listening” only in the sense of formulating a self-defensive counter-argument — which, it turns out, is not actually listening or responding at all. Because disagreement typically reaffirms and strengthens polarizing beliefs, arguing with people only makes them all the more convinced that they are right, while also making them defensive and angry.

Recognizing this reality, researchers set out to discover what happens when one person genuinely listens to the other. Terming this “high-quality listening”— characterized by attention, understanding, and positive intentions toward their interlocutor — they hypothesized that conversational partners who engaged in it would feel more socially comfortable and connected, become less defensive and more open, and be capable of conducting conversations that reduced rather than strengthened polarization. As such, they proposed that high-quality listening could become a powerful tool for bridging divides and facilitating constructive dialogue.

Through a series of experiments, the researchers discovered that high-quality listening does indeed reduce depolarization. They found consistent evidence that it brought people closer and inspired greater insight and self-awareness. Additionally, high-quality listening made people better able to consider opposing views, as opposed to retreating into defensiveness and closing down. This is a key finding, adding scientific validity to the idea that listening attentively to other people — and by extension, to story — can have world-altering effects.

Strikingly, the researchers found that high-quality listening by itself can depolarize attitudes, even when speakers are making no efforts to persuade. Notably, although the attitudes of listeners shifted, they did not shift enough to change the direction of the attitude. In short, high-quality listening moderated existing attitudes but did not induce a swing to the contrary attitude — but this is still a huge positive. It means the difference between arguing past each other to at least appreciating (if not sharing) each other’s views. This creates the potential for negotiation and compromise.

Of the many videos that circulated on October 7, one of the most distressing showed a young woman, Naama Levy, covered in blood and dirt, her hands tied behind her back, being pulled by her hair from the back of a pickup truck and shoved into the backseat of the vehicle as men jeered and chanted around her. Nineteen-year-old Levy, who had just begun her compulsory military service with the Israel Defense Forces, is believed to be a hostage in Gaza. The great-granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, she is also, ironically, an alumna of Hands of Peace, a US project that empowers American, Israeli and Palestinian youth to become agents of change in the Middle East. Through building constructive attitudes between Israelis and Palestinians, the organization strives to promote dignity, freedom, and lasting peace. That Levy was assaulted and taken hostage is tragic on multiple levels, not least because she sought to promote exactly the model of constructive, depolarizing high-quality listening that can be most effective in building a peaceful future in the Middle East, a region that desperately needs generous, capable, and open-minded leadership.

Taking a broader historical perspective, both the Jewish and Arabic traditions enormously value listening. While the ancient Greeks depicting their gods lavishly in art and sculpture, the Judaic tradition posited an unseen deity, visual representation of whom was idolatrous, but whose speech and commandments required sensitive and attentive listeners. Evident in the Shema—a declaration commencing with “Hear, O Israel” —the Judaic tradition has always promoted a culture of deep, active listening, both as a conduit to deeper connections with the divine as well as active engagement with the community. Similarly, the Qur’an emphasizes the importance of active, attentive listening; in fact, studies on the effects of listening to Qur’anic verses has shown that it creates profound therapeutic effects.

Today’s Israelis and Palestinians are thus inheritors of long and dignified traditions of high-quality listening — a circumstance suggesting that storytelling could be key to building a culture of peace. This may seem a utopian or idealistic prospect amid gunshots, rockets, and airstrikes — not to mention the political shockwaves that the conflict has sent through the world in the past seven weeks — but ultimately societies are made of people, and people respond neurologically to story in ways we know can be transformative. We know story works. We know listening works. The obvious question now is what kinds of stories can be effective as a conflict reduction strategy — and we’ll have more thoughts about that in future posts.