Is Politics "Divisive"? How To Have Positive Political Discussion
Channel: Alex Zorach
Date: 2014-07-27

Here I explain why I don't agree with the widely-voiced assertion that politics is a "divisive" subject.  I talk about how I have had many fruitful conversation with people who have political views radically different from my own.  But I also talk about conversations where conflict escalates and people get very angry when discussing politics.

I then focus on one idea that I think is a major cause of the conflict in political discussions, which is the idea that people are bad people because they hold views sufficiently different from your own.  I explain that I think this is a very destructive idea, and I talk about how you can replace it with a different idea, the idea that people generally have good reasons for believing what they do, that you will be more likely to have more positive conversations about politics.