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Joan Blades: Do you have
politically diverse friends?
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What do you talk about with them?
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I'm a progressive; I live
in a town full of progressives,
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and 15 years ago, I didn't have
any conservative friends.
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Now I have a wonderful mix of friends,
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and they include John.
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John Gable: I am not a progressive.
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I'm a Republican who grew up
in a Republican family
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in the conservative South,
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and even worked in Republican politics,
locally and at the national level.
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But the last 24 years,
I've been in technology
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and living in a very progressive area.
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So I have a lot of progressive friends,
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including Joan.
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JB: I was born in Berkeley, California,
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a notoriously progressive college town.
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And I live there now.
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In 1998, six months into the Monica
Lewinsky-Clinton impeachment scandal,
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I helped cofound MoveOn.org
with a one-sentence petition:
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"Congress must immediately
censure the president
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and move on to pressing issues
facing the nation."
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Now, that was actually
a very unifying petition in many ways.
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You could love Clinton or hate Clinton
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and agree that the best thing
for the country was to move on.
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As the leader of MoveOn,
I saw the polarization just continue.
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And I found myself wondering
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why I saw things so differently
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than many people
in other parts of the country.
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So in 2005, when I had an opportunity
to get together with grassroots leaders
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across the political divide,
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I grabbed it.
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And I became friends with a lot of people
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I never had a chance to talk to before.
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And that included leadership
in the Christian Coalition,
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often seen as on the right
the way MoveOn is seen as on the left.
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And this lead to me
showing up on Capitol Hill
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with one of the Christian Coalition
leaders, my friend,
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to lobby for net neutrality.
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That was powerful.
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We turned heads.
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So this work was transformational for me.
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And I found myself wondering:
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How could vast numbers of people
have the opportunity
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to really connect with people
that have very different views?
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JG: I was born Oneida, Tennessee,
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right across the state border
from a small coal mining town,
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Stearns, Kentucky.
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And I lived there
for the first few years of my life,
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before moving to another small town,
Frankfort, Kentucky.
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Basically, I grew up
in small-town America,
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conservative at its heart.
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Now, Stearns and Berkeley --
they're a little different.
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(Laughter)
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So in the '90s I moved out west
to a progressive area
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to work in technology --
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worked at Microsoft, worked at Netscape.
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I actually became the product manager lead
for Netscape Navigator,
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the first popular web browser.
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Now in the early days of the internet,
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we were just moved
and inspired by a vision:
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when we're connected to all
these different people around the world
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and all these different ideas,
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we'll be able to make great decisions,
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and we'll be able to appreciate each other
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for the beautiful diversity
that the whole world has to offer.
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Now I also, 20 years ago, gave a speech
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saying it might not work out that way,
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that we might actually be trained
to discriminate against each other
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in new ways.
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So what happened?
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It's not like we just woke up one day
and decided to hate each other more.
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Here's what happened.
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There's just too much noise --
too many people, too many ideas --
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so we use technology
to filter it out a little bit.
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And what happens?
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It lets in ideas I already agree with.
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It lets in the popular ideas,
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it lets in people just like me
who think just like me.
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That sounds kind of good, right?
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Well, not necessarily,
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because two very scary things happen
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when we have such narrow worldviews.
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First, we become more extreme
in our beliefs.
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Second, we become less tolerant
of anybody who's different than we are.
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Does this sound familiar?
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Does this sound like modern America?
The modern world?
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Well, the good news is
that technology is changing,
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and it could change for the better.
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And that's, in fact,
why I started AllSides.com --
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to create technologies and services
to free us from these filter bubbles.
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The very first thing we did was create
technology that identifies bias,
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so we could show different
perspectives side by side
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to free us from the filter
bubbles of news media.
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And then I met Joan.
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JB: So I met John outside
of Washington, DC,
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with an idealistic group
of cross-partisan bridge builders,
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and we wanted to re-weave
the fabric of our communities.
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We believe that our differences
can be a strength,
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that our values can be complimentary
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and that we have to overcome the fight
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so that we can honor everyone's values
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and not lose any of our own.
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I went for this wonderful walk with John,
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where I started learning
about the work he was doing
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to pierce the filter bubble.
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It was powerful;
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it was brilliant.
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Living in separate narratives is not good.
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We can't even have a conversation
or do collaborative problem-solving
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when we don't share the same facts.
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JG: So one thing you take away from today
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is if Joan Blades asks you
to go on a walk,
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go on that walk.
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(Laughter)
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It changed things. It really changed
the way I was thinking about things.
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To free ourselves from the filter bubbles,
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we can't just think about
information filter bubbles,
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but also relationship
and social filter bubbles.
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You see, we human beings -- we're not
nearly as smart as we think we are.
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We don't generally make
decisions intellectually.
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We make them emotionally, intuitively,
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and then we use our big old brains
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to rationalize anything
we want to rationalize.
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We're not really like Vulcans
like Mr. Spock,
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we're more like bold cowboys
like Captain Kirk,
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or passionate idealists like Dr. McCoy.
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OK, for those of y'all who prefer
the new "Star Trek" crew,
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here you go.
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(Laughter)
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JB: Don't forget the strong women!
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JG: Come on, strong women. OK.
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JB: All right.
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John and I are both "Star Trek" fans.
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What's not to love about a future
with that kind of optimism?
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JG: And having a good future in mind
is a big deal -- very important.
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And understanding what the problem is
is very important.
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But we have to do something.
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So what do we do?
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It's actually not that hard.
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We have to add diversity to our lives --
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not just information,
but relationship diversity.
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And by diversity,
I mean big "D" diversity,
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not just racial and gender,
which are very important,
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but also ...
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diversity of age, like young and old;
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rural and urban;
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liberal and conservative;
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in the US, Democrat and Republican.
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Now, one of the great examples
of somebody freeing themselves
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from their filter bubbles
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and getting a more diverse life
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is, once again, next to me -- Joan.
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JB: So the question is:
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Who among you has had
relationships lost or harmed
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due to differences in politics,
religion or whatever?
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Raise your hands.
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Yeah.
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This year I have talked to so many people
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that have experienced that kind of loss.
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I've seen tears well up in people's eyes
as they talk about family members
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from whom they're estranged.
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Living Room Conversations were designed
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to begin to heal political
and personal differences.
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They're simple conversations
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where two friends with different
viewpoints each invite two friends
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for structured conversation,
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where everyone's agreed
to some simple ground rules:
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curiosity, listening,
respect, taking turns --
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everything we learned
in kindergarten, right?
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Really easy.
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So by the time you're talking about
the topic you've agreed to talk about,
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you actually have the sense that,
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"You know, I kind of like this person,"
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and you listen to each other differently.
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That's kind of a human condition;
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we listen differently
to people we care about.
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And then there's reflection
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and possibly next steps.
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This is a deep listening practice;
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it's never a debate.
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And that's incredibly powerful.
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These conversations
in our own living rooms
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with people who have different viewpoints
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are an incredible adventure.
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We rediscover that we can respect
and even love people
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that are different from us.
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And it's powerful.
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JG: So, what are you curious about?
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JB: What's the conversation
you yearn to have?
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JG: Let's do this together.
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Together.
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JB: Yes.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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JB and JG: Thank you.
