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Explores the application of Baha'i principles towards society building.
(Music) Society builders pave the way to a
better world, to a better day.
A united approach to building a new society.
Join the conversation for social transformation. Society Builders.
Society Builders with your host, Duane Varan.
(Duane) Welcome to another exciting episode of
Society Builders, and thanks for joining
the conversation for social transformation.
In our current sequence of episodes, we've been
exploring the science of depolarization and how we
can best bring antagonistic groups closer together.
Now, you'll be pleased to hear that
we are not alone in this ambition.
It shouldn't surprise you that if polarization is
one of the biggest problems of our age,
there will be many, many, many like-minded people
working to address that very problem.
And today we're going to talk to an expert
who is part of an initiative at Princeton University
to map out such initiatives, a task that has
already resulted in them identifying over 6700 organizations committed
to addressing polarization in the United States alone.
And they're not done.
There are literally thousands of organizations that are
not yet included in their mapping exercise.
So today's episode should help you weigh up and
consider the kinds of like-minded organizations you might
want to collaborate with as you contemplate how to
best respond to the challenges of polarization.
Now, my guest today is Nealin Parker, who
is the perfect person to address this theme.
Nealin has remarkable pedigree.
She served as a senior administrator during the
Obama administration, both in her capacity as, first,
Deputy Director and then Acting Director of the
Office of Transitions Initiatives at USAID.
Now, USAID is the agency of the
US government responsible for administering aid to
the rest of the world, America's social
and economic development agency, so to speak.
And the transitions office is the part of
USAID that is responsible for countries either currently
in a conflict or just recovering from one.
So her role here directly addressed aid
in the most dire of circumstances.
She also previously served as Chief of
Staff at the Department of Housing and
Urban Development, commonly referred to as HUD.
That means she was Chief of Staff to
a cabinet level appointee of the Obama administration.
I mean, that's really serious.
That's senior.
And currently she's Executive Director of Common Ground,
which is the US branch of Search for
Common Ground, which is one of the largest
non governmental peacebuilding organizations in the world.
Now, Nealin has also taught at Princeton University,
where she was one of the founding co-
directors of that major initiative that I referred
to earlier to map our organizations in the
United States working to bridge divides.
It's called the Bridging Divides Initiative.
And today we'll get a chance to discover
what she's been learning about the kind of
initiatives, the kind of organizations committed to depolarization.
So without further ado, Nealin,
welcome to Society Builders. (Nealin) Thank you.
It is wonderful to be here.
Thanks for having me.
(Duane) I'm so excited because today we're going to explore
how people can collaborate with others in finding their
path to helping deal with this polarization issue that
we've been talking about across these past episodes.
Now, Nealin,
before we get into that specific topic,
first, let's get the audience acquainted with you.
Of course, you're the Executive Director of
Common Ground USA, which is the US
Office of Search for Common Ground.
So tell us a little bit about who Search for Common
Ground is and what it is that this organization does.
(Nealin) That's wonderful. Thank you.
Thank you for that opportunity.
Search for Common Ground is actually
a Nobel Prize nominated organization.
It works in 40 countries around the world
and has worked for over 40 years in
trying to prevent conflict from turning into violence.
And the US piece is taking the best
lessons that we have from countries recovering from
conflict and translating them back to this country
and polarization in our context.
So the thing that's wonderful for me is that
I feel like I work with people who both
understand deeply how bad it can get and also
never lose hope knowing that it can get better. (Duane) Wow.
That is such a massive idea, this idea of
reflection, looking at conflict zones around the world, gleaning
lessons from those situations, from those crises, and then
seeing what aspects of those kind of, like, apply
to the different kind of crises we're facing here
in the United States.
What a massive undertaking.
(Nealin) Yeah, it is a massive undertaking, which is
why I'm grateful to be standing on the
shoulders of giants who've come before me.
(Duane) And in addition to the work that you
do with Search for Common Ground, you were
also one of the founding co-directors of
the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.
Tell us a little bit about
what the Bridging Divides Initiative is.
(Nealin) So the Bridging Divides Initiative has
in some ways a similar origin.
I worked in countries recovering from conflict for years
before coming here, and I saw different strategies and
tools that people had around the world.
And one of them is to have documentation of where
political violence or war, where violent incidents are happening, so
that you can understand some of the patterns and some
of the areas that are at higher risk and then
be able to respond to those.
So at the Bridging Divides Initiative,
we did two different things.
One is we worked with an organization to try
to not only document what are the things that
are happening here, but to try to analyze that
in real time so that people could be responsive.
The other thing that we did was to try to
map out who could be responsive, who is, in a
sense, an asset for reducing the temperature, for creating a
context that was less conducive to political violence.
And so we mapped out about 6000
different organizations across the country in all
states that were doing things like building
community, that were working across differences.
And we have a variety of differences in this country.
And so it wasn't just here is somebody
who identifies as working across a political divide.
It was people who work across the varieties of divisions
that we have in a whole bunch of different ways.
And the thing that was interesting to me, coming
from working in countries that are recovering from conflict,
is so few of those organizations self identified as
what I would call peace building.
People who are working not just to end conflict, but
to build that kind of social cohesion and just society
that is self sustaining, a kind of positive peace.
That's something that is a known term and
a used term internationally and in the United States.
People who do that work sometimes
call themselves civil rights activists.
They sometimes call themselves librarians.
They sometimes call themselves democracy defenders.
They sometimes call themselves
everybody's favorite grandma.
And that range means that there are a
lot of, again, what I called assets.
There are a lot of people who are doing
the serious work of this in so many different
ways that haven't been tapped or don't see themselves
as the bigger part of this movement.
But I see them as fundamentally the only
way we get through these difficult times.
(Duane) Yeah, it's so amazing.
When I started doing the research around the polarization
theme, I was shocked when I came across the
Bridging Divides Initiative to see just how many thousands
of organizations there are just in the United States
that are dealing with this construct of bringing antagonistic
groups closer together in some way or form around,
as you say, all kinds of different kinds of
divides, whether that be religious divides, racial divides, of course
political divides, all kinds of things that are standing
in between people.
But the scale of it, over 6000 organizations
doing this work, it's just incredible to see
how strong the social response has been to
this issue of polarization, really.
(Nealin) I think that's right.
But I also think that that was a
deep undercounting of what is out there.
There are so many more organizations.
The way that we did it, the methodology
that we used was to take organizations that
had connected to a broader network already.
And the idea was we wanted to be
able to share information out to that broader
network and we wanted those organizations to kind
of be able to connect with each other.
We weren't ourselves the infrastructure that would be able
to bring everybody together, but we wanted to be
able to reach out to that broad group and
have, if there were a crisis, theoretically be able
to activate those folks to be able to respond.
So already you can tell that so many organizations are
not going to themselves sign up for as a nonprofit,
would to be part of a larger coalition.
Faith organizations in particular, I would say, are missing
from that map, and that's actually a great thing.
It means that we are undercounting the infrastructure that
we have in this country to be responsive.
And I said faith organizations, not just like
we're undercounting some marginal pieces, we are undercounting
some very fundamental and strong networks in this
country that can be responsive.
(Duane) Yeah, I noticed that as well as I
was looking through the 6700 plus organizations in
the list, there are very few faith organizations.
And as we've been discovering in our interview with
Rabbi Roli Matalon and in our interview with Andrea
Bartoli, I mean, of course, the Baha'i's as well,
it's very clear that religious communities have a very
strong engagement with this polarization issue as well.
So I see your point, but it is exciting to see
that the 6700 is the tip of an iceberg here.
There are literally many, many thousands of organizations, and
that means that wherever you live, there are probably
other people who are also concerned about this problem
and who are doing something about it.
(Nealin) Yes, my friend, that is the point.
That is exactly right.
(Duane) And so what we want to do today is we
want to give the audience a little bit of a
sense of who these organizations are, these thousands of people
across the country who are coming together in some kind
of community driven initiative to respond to the polarization.
Who are these and what forms do these take?
What are the different types of initiatives that
these organizations are taking to respond to and
combat this kind of polarization in society.
(Nealin) So I think it's going to be hard for us to
capture it in one sitting because there is so much out
there and because there's so much variety out there.
So one of the things that I would say is, like the
map, this is going to be a little bit of a tip
of the iceberg, but I hope what we can do is give
people a little bit of the flavors of options that are out
there enough to catalyze your interest to kind of go out there.
If you have an interest, there
is somebody out there doing it.
There is a running club, there is an art studio,
and they are all bringing things together in different ways.
So one of the things, if you don't mind, I'd like
to step back a little bit to where I was before
of what does it mean to be a peace builder?
What does it mean to contribute
to depolarization in this country?
And one of the things that I said before
that I'll just sort of bring back here is
that when we're looking at a healthy and just
society, there are things that kind of need to
move in the right direction at the same time.
So there are groups that are working on
faith and trust and efficacy of institutions.
So connecting you with your mayor and connecting you on
solving a problem locally, that's one body of work.
There are also people who are working
on specifically building community or on depolarization.
And then there are people who are working
on reducing hate or reducing myths and disinformation.
And all of these seem like big buckets of
things, and they are big buckets of things.
But anybody who's working on any of those pieces is
contributing to a healthy and just society, and a society
where the likelihood of violence reduces overall and where the
likelihood of being able to go through hard things and
come out on the other side stronger increases.
So that's everything from like a
really tense election to another pandemic.
If we had these pieces, people having trust in our
government, in our elections, in our institutions, people having trust
in each other and the media, and people really wanting
to reduce the incidence of violence themselves, then you get
like a self perpetuating good out there and the ability
to take hard things, have them happen, but come out
stronger on the other side.
So in terms of how do you get involved, those
are the kind of different areas that I think about.
And then what do you do?
Often you start out by just finding out information.
So getting educated is a thing to do.
If you're on this podcast and listening to it,
hopefully in your car with a nice cup of
tea or something lovely by the fire, something.
This is a moment where you are doing the thing, you
are getting educated, but there's more that you can do.
So, for example, you can learn about
somebody who thinks differently than you do.
And you may not see that as a massive action
that is responsive to this huge problem that we're facing,
but it is an incredibly important first step.
It is the first step of every peace agreement
that ever ended any war is people who think
that they don't have something in common.
Listening to each other to solve the shared problem
of ending that war, and it's the basis of
anything else that you're going to do.
So there are organizations
like Living Room Conversations.
If you say, like, I don't know
how to start even having a conversation.
They have templates.
And you can host a conversation in your home.
You can start out by attending, and then you can
host one in your home, or you can just look
at their guidelines for here's how you would go about
having a conversation, a dialogue about difference.
There are groups like the Preemptive Love Coalition, which
has become a partner with Search for Common Ground.
They host Love Anyway Feasts, and these are gatherings
where people can come together across differences and host
a dinner and learn about each other.
And anybody can be a host of something like that.
Again, if you need a little bit extra about
how you're like, okay, I can talk to people
who are different, but there are, like, politics.
Politics is too hard for me.
I can't do that because I
have too many feelings on that.
There's an organization called Braver Angels that specializes specifically
in talking about what they call the red blue
divide, but that lies on top of politics.
They kind of go beyond the parties themselves and think
about it in a little bit of a broader context.
So you can learn information about how
to have some of these conversations.
So this is like starting to like, what
are the actions that you want to take?
You can join an alliance, for example, with
Braver Angels, but you can also get involved
in what is happening in your local community.
And again, one of the things that is
so important is that that kind of, like,
weaving of belonging at the local community level.
So there is, for example, a network of librarians that
is part of the Listen First Coalition, and they host
events that are open to everybody in their town.
If you like books and you can't see
because it's a podcast, but I'm surrounded by
books and these kind of things.
And if you're somebody who wants to be part of community and
a community that is open to all people, that is a space
that is known as a really open place that anybody can be
part of, and it's a kind of low barrier to entry, you
might be like, you know, I'm not ready for big thing, but
I want to be a part of something.
Being part of building a community in your
town is actually part of the main. (Duane) What are some of the organizations that
do that, that build this kind of depolarization
effort around cooking around food?
(Nealin) So, first of all, food is a great unifier in the world.
And in our country, and there is a reason
that we say we need to 'break bread together',
not just meaning that literally, but meaning that figuratively.
And so a lot of groups, they understand
you have food as the focal point and
you are able to bring people together.
So things like Make America Dinner Again, or I
mentioned before, the Love Anyway Feasts where you bring
people together around a meal and everybody brings part
of what brings the food that makes them happy.
And that's part of what the conversation is,
the people supper or resetting the table.
There are so many organizations that really anchor in
that sense of food and cooking and community around
that food being part of what brings us together.
(Duane) Fantastic.
And there are also a lot of
organizations that focus specifically on students.
Of course, universities in particular are
like these places where these issues
are often talked through very actively.
There's an active discussion about difference.
What are some of the organizations that
are focused on bringing students together?
(Nealin) Yeah, that is such a good question.
And I think such an important group of people
in the country, not only is it because these
are the future leaders that are going to have
to pull us through, but exactly as you said,
universities can be a center of this beautiful space
where people are trying to figure this out.
And there aren't easy answers.
And so they can kind of be the front lines for
polarization or for pandemics or for any number of things.
So, yeah, there are a lot of
organizations that are thinking about that.
One that I have really enjoyed
seeing their growth is Bridge USA.
And there, there's an opportunity to join campus chapters,
which is great because it means that you can
either join a chapter with existing, or if you
want to start a chapter, then you don't have
to do this thing all alone.
There are other people who have started chapters at
other universities that can be a resource for you.
I think one of the things that I found a lot
in this work is that people think that they are an
island and they either feel like I'm working on my own,
how can I have this big impact, or I'm working on
my own and I don't know what to do.
And it can feel really lonely.
The zeitgeist of our time is
one of pulling people apart.
How can I be part of something bigger than myself?
So I really enjoy these chapter organizations that
allow people to be part of something larger,
even as they're focused at the local level.
There, there are other organizations like
campus conversation or sustained dialogue.
And I've also worked with a group called Solia that
does campus work, but online, and it connects students over
a long period of time, but it connects them online
ahead of orientation, so that by the time they even
get to the university, they have skill sets that help
them have dialogues across difference, so that the culture that's
created of that class is infused with these ideas of
how to work across difference.
And then even before you get to
university, there is the American Exchange Project,
which is a high school project.
Although if there's anybody out there who is willing
to be a host, I know that they are
looking for some really amazing hosts out there.
It is the coolest idea.
It's how to bring kids who are growing
up in one experience into the homes, the
sort of like, core of another experience.
So you can have a student in Brooklyn having
a rodeo experience from the inside out, with a
student their own age who is hosting them in
that community, or with other students who are having
this experience from across the country.
So you can either be a student who's signing up
to have that experience, or you can be a host
who's signing up to say, here's what I love about
my community that I hope somebody else gets to know.
And giving students that opportunity to learn across difference
at that age can be really life changing.
And you can get somebody, a young person who
you've got the next 70 years, knock on wood
of their lives, dedicated to making sure that other
people have the experience of working across difference.
And of course, so much of the challenge of the
divisions of our age really is still centered around religion.
(Duane) What do you see in the way of
organizations that are working to create interfaith dialogue,
to bridge those differences between religious communities?
(Nealin) Again, there are too many to be named
in a short period of time here.
So I just want to have a moment of
gratitude for the people who are working in organized
ways and also just church to synagogue and across
all of these different faith communities.
So a couple that I would mention, the Shoulder
to Shoulder Campaign, which allows you to be multiple
faiths, but they have a strong Christian community that
is being allies to the Muslim community, the Telos
Organization that has taught people how to become peacemakers.
They have a focus on Israel,
Palestine and the Deep South.
But I think one of the things that I
would say about the interreligious work is in so
many ways, it's ahead of even the polarization work.
It's teaching lessons to the rest of us
about how to do this, because so often
when people are thinking about political polarization, they're
thinking about how to change someone else.
How do I make you believe what I believe,
and that's how we're going to get along.
And the thing that I love about the interfaith
work is that it's moved beyond that concept to
how do I show respect for your beliefs?
And you show respect for my beliefs.
How do we live together with our separate beliefs in.
So, you know, groups like Interfaith America started
out thinking, really focused on interfaith work.
But because the way that interfaith work is
so transferable to so many other divisions, they've
started working on a number of efforts, including
partnerships with Habitat for Humanity.
So they're talking and working across
divisions into that local volunteer space.
So another fabulous organization working on faith with
faith communities, but really focused on attacking that
toxic polarization is the One America Movement, and
they're also creating online trainings and resources.
So that's also an easy way for you to get connected
in, even if you don't see something happening in your own
community, a way for you to connect to those resources.
(Duane) You mentioned Habitat for Humanity.
It reminds me of a whole nother universe
of these organizations which are focused on service.
So the path to finding that path to unity
is really grounded in this idea of service.
Maybe you could highlight a couple
of organizations in that realm.
(Nealin) Yeah, so volunteer organizations.
One of the things that is really important is
that we don't stop at just talking across differences.
If you have a conversation across difference, that
is a way to start what turns into
a relationship, that turns into collaborative action.
And that collaborative action is what you need to
be able to sort of make a real difference.
So one of the things that I think is
so powerful about these service organizations is that they
are starting from a place of action.
Habitat for Humanity is building houses
to be able to bring
the ethos of doing that work across difference is,
first of all, I think it's a natural thing.
But in addition to that, it's a really powerful way
to think about how to do this because it doesn't
just end at the conversation, and it's a natural way
to bring people who might otherwise be very, very different.
So somebody who knows how to hammer and somebody who
knows how to shovel may not have other things that
they know of in common, but if they need to
be able to shovel and then hammer together to build
that house, they already have one thing in common.
They already both got up that morning and said,
the thing that I want to do with the
precious resource of my time is I want to
build a home for somebody else that is a
starting place for coming together around other things.
We care about this community.
We want good things to happen here.
So Habitat gives you an opportunity for that.
Things like City Year are really focused
on bringing volunteers from experiences that are
different than where they're volunteering and allowing
that to be part of the program.
And in fact, all Americorps programs are really thinking
about themselves as how can we as individuals be
part of this bridge, but also how can the
work that we do, the volunteer work that we're
doing in our communities, be part of that?
The Red Cross and United Way are two other
service organizations that are thinking about how do we
do this work, not only with the benefit of
the community building, but how do we do it
really intentionally, thinking about how we do this build
in ways that brings people across difference. (Duane) Amazing.
Such incredible opportunities.
Now, Nealin, we've gone from people not knowing
that there are any organizations out there who
they could potentially collaborate with to a universe
where now it just seems like there's an
infinite number of organizations.
I'm sure people will feel a little bit overwhelmed
suddenly about, well, I want to collaborate now, but
which of these many organizations should I collaborate with?
How do people go about figuring
out which organization to collaborate with?
How do people navigate through that choice?
How do they find the organizations that
they're best suited to collaborate with?
(Nealin) So you should always start with what interests
you, and that will help you figure out
which of the many, many organizations are good.
But I've given you, as I said, the tip of the iceberg.
The map that exists on the Bridging
Divides Initiative website is a great place
that you can search by location.
So if you're looking for what's something near me,
or you can search by topic and area of
interest, these are places that you can find some.
Another really great place to go is the Listen
First Coalition website, and that has just a ton
of organizations, and you can click on anyone to
find out more about what they do.
And as I said, it's hundreds of
organizations that are part of that coalition.
I have mentioned only a few of them here.
So I would strongly recommend that you go
online and look at the list of coalition
members there to give you an idea.
(Duane) And we'll have links for these
on the description for this podcast.
This is the a note for my listeners.
If you look at the description of the podcast,
you'll see the URLs for both of these directories.
(Nealin) Great. Thank you.
(Duane) So now we have thousands of organizations, but
I'm sure there's a lot of variability in
the quality of the programs that are there.
How do people know how much thought and discipline and
how well structured any of these programs really are?
(Nealin) That is a really good question and a
discerning question, and it is not the case
that all organizations are created equal.
I would say that the ones that I've mentioned here
are ones that have been vetted, but there are many
more beyond that I wouldn't want to discount.
I think one of the things that I would look
to is, do you feel like you have done enough
research on the organization itself, so you can look at
the website and then you can do, as you would
with any other organization, a search of that organization.
Do they come up in the news in any way?
If it's a really local
organization, they probably won't.
But then you can also start where
I said before, you start by learning.
So you can start by downloading a resource guide
and see if that resource guide resonates for you.
And then all you've lost, really, if you look
at it and you say, really, this doesn't actually
feel like it solves what I'm looking for, and
it's not really what I'm interested to.
All you've really lost in that moment is the time it
took for you to download the thing and read over it.
And in some ways, that might actually
help you be a bit more discerning.
Anyway, the thing that I would say about this
is it is a little bit like you are
going to know if you walk into.
If you walk into an experience and you don't
feel like you are any more comfortable now than
you were before, or if you walk into an
experience and you feel like actually this feels not
good, that's something just to listen to.
This kind of work is the kind of work that
fills people with connection and belonging and joy and hope.
And I'm not saying that it isn't hard sometimes.
In fact, it can be very hard.
But if it doesn't have those elements to it, if
you don't feel that, then that's something to listen to.
Don't lose hope.
There's probably another organization out there
that you can collaborate with.
(Duane) So a little bit of experimentation, experiment.
Try something out.
Reflect, engage in some reflection on it.
And then if it does work, share with
some of your friends, share it with others
so that they can also benefit from that.
(Nealin) That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
In general, I would say that my experience has
not been that there are bad organizations out there.
It's actually been much more of a problem
of people not knowing the organizations are out
there not being connected to those organizations.
So I can only say yes to sharing
the information of the ones that work.
That's actually a gift not only to you and your
friends, but one of the things that our country is
looking for is success stories, is stories of people who
at the local level are doing this right.
Please do share those experiences.
Bring more people in and help them feel like they
are connected to something bigger than that one experience.
(Duane) Nealin, a big change that has been happening in the
Baha'I community lately really has been much more focus in
the challenge of our times, if you will, at the
neighborhood level, where before we would be thinking much more
at like a city level or a very large group.
Now increasingly we're figuring out how
to engage in dialogue with neighbors.
We're working and collaborating
at the neighborhood level.
What do you think the benefits are
of that kind of neighborhood focus?
That neighborhood level of focus.
(Nealin) I'm really excited to hear that.
And there's been designated a
national crisis of loneliness.
And the change for people feeling belonging
happens so often at the smallest levels.
Family, friends, neighborhood.
And feeling like there is community
at that neighborhood level is doable.
It's tangible.
It's a place where you can make the difference
and where you can actually see the difference.
It's also a place that often doesn't have governance in
place to try to fill that void, if you will,
or provide some of those services or bring people together.
And so it's a place that needs us.
It needs individuals who are
committed to building that connection.
I think one of the things that I would
say is also the case is that we need
to think about what is the definition of neighborhood
and how do we make sure that we aren't
re upping divisions by focusing on a neighborhood as
it exists right now, but instead thinking about calling
people into neighborhoods and bringing diversity into those neighborhoods.
And I really do mean diversity in as
many ways as you can think of it.
If there is a community, and quite frankly,
in our country, there's the big sort, there
is increasingly homogeneity in our communities.
And people who have a bit of an echo
chamber online, that's something that we talk about a
lot, but they're having more and more of an
echo chamber in their own community.
So the work to me, at the community
level, at the neighborhood level, is both intra
neighborhood work and also inter neighborhood work, and
making sure that we create physical spaces that
naturally bring diversity to them.
(Duane) That is such a great point, Nealin, and
I hadn't really thought about it that way,
but if you think about the way that
often divisions are cultivated at that neighborhood level.
When we're faced with that scenario, what is it
that we can do to really kind of help
provide a bridge to bring diversity into that neighborhood
where it may not naturally exist that way?
(Nealin) Some cases, I think there is a need to physically
go to other places and make sure that you have
a greater understanding of what it's like for somebody else,
which is why I really love the american exchange program.
But in other cases, diversity does exist in your
community or very near your community, and so you
can just define it in a slightly different way.
It is the case in some places that there
are entirely different communities on either side of railroad
tracks or on either side of streets.
But if you define your community as something that
crosses those very minimal barriers, then you may find
that you actually have a very diverse community.
You may live in a community that has an
elder care resource in the middle of it that
nobody is really visiting or incorporating into the community.
And so you would get a different sense of who your
community was if you were bringing some of that in.
As I said, some of it is
about unearthing the diversity that you have.
And other times, it is actually important
to look beyond your immediate community.
We live in a digital age, and it
has a lot of downside, but it has
an opportunity to reach beyond your physical space.
That is something in many
ways unique to our generation.
Just like a quick trick on how do you find diversity
in your community if you're in a place that has public
transportation or it has public spaces where people come?
I, for example, periodically take
taxis and periodically take buses.
And the conversations that I have on public
transportation give me insight into what is happening
in worlds that I would never otherwise see
and are a real opportunity.
So just putting yourself physically in spaces where
other people may come can give you a
different vision of what your community is.
(Duane) So, Nealin, the Baha'I community, as
you know, is a global community.
Don't think just big cities.
You know, visualize villages in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and the Highlands
of Papua New Guinea, you know, literally all over
the world, small communities, but everywhere.
And recently, the Baha'I community adopted this goal
of having a single priority for communities worldwide,
which is this focus on society building, which
will be the singular focus for Baha'I communities
for the next 25 years.
So Baha'I really want to learn a
lot about how to engage in society building.
So what suggestions would you have for
the Baha'I community, given that new focus,
if you will, for the community?
(Nealin) This is amazingly good news for me, and
I am just so excited to hear about
that prioritization and also that framing for it.
I so often hear this framed in a kind of
negative valence of fear of like, we are falling apart
and we need to do something about it.
But the positive focus on who we are and who we
want to become, that is in and of itself powerful.
It sounds to, I just to hearken back
to your earlier podcast with Peter Coleman.
He is one of the people in
our country doing academic research that I
think really speaks to this positive focus.
We're not trying to figure out how to avoid war.
We're trying to figure out how
to build a positive peace.
And that focus on where do we
want to get to actually matters.
If you can see it, you can get there.
And maybe conversely, if you can't see it, if
all you can see is what you're trying to
run away from, it's very hard to get there.
And again, this sort of
like, are we anti authoritarian?
Are we anti civil? War?
Is a lot of what you hear, and I know that
you have a global listenership, but in the United States, that's
a lot of where the focus is right now.
And there is a lot of good information around that.
I would like to throw out one piece
which Search for Common Ground worked with organizations
about, I don't know, five dozen organizations around
the world trying to build.
What are the pieces that we need to bring
together for a country to be healthy and resilient,
to sort of like, bring people together?
And I earlier referenced this a little bit.
It's the 'Peace Impact Framework'.
And there are five things that they
found that countries or communities that were
strong and healthy and self sustaining had.
And they looked at these five different things, and
they found, like, for example, countries that did well
through the last pandemic weren't the richest countries.
They weren't the strongest countries militarily.
They had something else.
And the five things were they had low levels of
violence, which you might think of as a little tautological,
but don't for a second, because violence is a very
complex thing, but it is a self perpetuating thing.
So if you can reduce any kind of
violence, then you help create the space for
the other work that you have to do.
The second is trust in each other.
So we were talking about polarization, building
that community, building, belonging, reducing polarization.
And when I'm talking about polarization, I don't
actually mean that we disagree on issues.
That's always going to happen.
And, in fact, that's really healthy, and
you want that kind of disagreement to
help you come to an understanding.
But you need to have people see each other as human.
And when you get to the point where you dehumanize
each other, then you're out of a healthy space.
Third is that people need to feel agency
about solving problems that matter to them.
So if you feel like you can do something about
a waterline that's busted in your backyard or race relations
in your country, both of those, if they are salient
to you, if you can make a difference on them,
and if you can have greater equality of opportunity that
will help make a healthy and just society.
The next one is connection to institutions and to
feel like those institutions are trustworthy and effective.
So in the United States, there are a
lot of people who don't feel trust in
our security sector, our police force.
They don't feel trust in our elections,
they don't feel trust in our government.
And not having trust in any of those things actually
makes people want to take on those functions themselves, but
in a way that doesn't have the checks and balances
that you want to see in a country.
So working on educating people about local government
resources or about what is fair and not
fair in an election, those are our contributions.
And finally, the last one is a little
bit harder to conceive of, but it's the
way that money flows in a society.
So the explanation that I often give about the United
States is think how much money is going into campaigns
that remind us of all that we don't share.
So, political campaigns that tell us why we shouldn't like
each other, why it's an existential important issue to not
be like this other part in the United States versus
how much money is going into this to remind us.
And everybody in the United States can
easily say, oh, not the same amount.
There are many more resources going into
dividing us than bringing us together.
So if you can start to shift the
way that money flows, then you have a
sustainable way of bringing a country together.
So that's called the peace impact framework.
And it's been a way that's been really helpful to me
in trying to think about what are the different kinds of
work that we need to do to bring a country together
that's kind of like the big picture level.
It sounds like Peter talked a
little bit about contact theory.
Contact theory is at this really micro level where
you have got to connect to somebody across difference.
That can be your starting point.
We're going to be healthier and stronger as a society.
If we figure out natural ways to bring difference together
in a collaborative way, where that difference is part of
what success looks like, I don't think that we want
a world where we don't have that variety.
Maybe some people do, but I don't.
And I actually don't think that any of us
are seeking a kind of monolithic world out there.
So then we have to accept
that there's going to be difference.
And what we want is to have that
difference, be able to live in harmony.
And again, as I said, I feel like my experience
with the Baha'I community, and also the interfaith community more
generally, is that there is a real understanding of that
and a profound set of internal beliefs that allow you
to naturally create that in your community.
So at the micro level, understanding more about contact theory
and more about what it can do and also some
of its limitations, as I said, it's not enough just
to come in contact with somebody else.
The thing that I often really, really encourage is
that second piece where you have collaborative action and
where it's not just we should talk to each
other across difference, because I think that's morally good.
It's that when we talk to each
other across difference and come together to
make change, it's actually more successful.
And there is a way, like in
the measuring of what success looks like.
It's not just, oh, Bob and Sally talked
to each other and they had skills.
They've learned skills about how to talk to each other.
Yay.
There's a whole group of people that
are going to think, that's awesome.
There's a whole group of people that are
going to say, I actually don't really care
if Bob and Sally talk to each other.
I have this other problem that I want to get solved.
I have racial issues that I care about.
I care about climate, I care about whether
our village is connected to the market.
I care about all of these things.
But in each of those circumstances, you
can usually find where talking across difference
is going to make that work better.
You want your village to be connected to the market.
You've got to go down the
road that crosses another village.
And if you don't know how to talk
to that other village, it's going to be
really hard to get your resources to market.
That's one example that is played
over and over and over again.
We exist in a world with each other.
We need to figure out how
to work out those differences together.
(Duane) So, Nealin, if you were in a community and
you were trying to figure out what to do,
how to engage with and how to collaborate with
other people, like minded people like you.
How would you go about doing it?
(Nealin) I would start by listening to your
podcast, and then that's good advice.
I mean, it was a joke, but it wasn't totally a joke.
So the first thing that I would do is that
I would do some asking around in the community, and
I would ask people who are your connectors, who has,
in a sense, who has authority, who has constituency?
Those are kind of big words, but it's basically
like, who's somebody who gets things done and who
are people who help bring people together?
And I would ask that about individuals, and
I would also ask that about organizations, because
you could find out things like, you know,
what really brings people together in this community?
Football.
And often it's things like music and sports and food
and fun that are the things that unify a community.
So there's already work happening, and I would want
to make sure that my first steps were working
on supporting the things that already existed and not
replicating the things that already existed.
And then from there, I would talk to those people
who bring people together and find out what is it
that you find works and what doesn't work, and what
do you need to be even more successful.
And I would at the same know I'm me.
So I've been doing this work for a while, but there
was a reason that when I started working in the United
States, the first thing I did was to map out what
everybody else was doing and to try to talk to them
about what was working and what did they need to do.
So I did that.
I tried to do it on a national level.
I would do the same thing in any community,
anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world.
But then I would also take the knowledge that I
had from having done this and try to connect.
So, okay, you're saying it works really, really well
to bring people together over food, but maybe the
person who's bringing people together is like, yeah, but
sometimes we don't know what we want to talk.
I don't know how to sort
of broach some of these conversations.
Well, there are organizations out there
that have lots of resources.
I mentioned before, Living Room
Conversations that have online resources.
And if that's the problem, then you've
got something that you can share there.
If there are problems, like, well, I've got
people who are interested, but I don't feel
like they're ready to get into a conversation,
but they want to learn something.
There are groups like all sides or the
flip side that actually can email you information.
You can say, here's how I see things.
And they will email you stories that are
really well thought out, the best case view
of that story to your inbox.
So again, who knows what the problem is?
The people there will tell you what they are.
And from there you can kind
of connect to these other resources.
Or you can say, actually, the problem isn't
these other resources, it's that there isn't a
public transportation system to get them there.
And then that gives you an opportunity
to say, well, what if we work
across difference to solve that problem together?
That's where I would start.
(Duane) Nealin, this has been so much fun and you've done
such a great job in persuading us that there really
are other people out there that we can collaborate with.
And hopefully what the audience will take away from
this is that desire to find some other organization
that they can collaborate with and learn from, reflect
on, experiment with, and then share with others what
their experience is like so that we can gain
momentum in this business of collaboration around finding like-
minded people to pursue these tasks with.
(Nealin) I feel confident that we can and I'm so
grateful to be here with you and all of
your efforts to make that more likely.
(Duane) Thank you so much for joining us on Society Builders.
That's it for today.
Now in our next episode, we're going to look
back at all the guidance we've been receiving from
the world's leading luminaries in the science of depolarization.
And we're going to try to bring
some synthesis to what we've learned and
how this relates to our Baha'i principles.
Wow, that's going to be a real challenge, right?
I mean, we've been learning so much.
So make sure you don't miss that episode.
That's next time on Society Builders.
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