"America in One Room" study has vital clues to healing our democracy

This study highlights vital information about politics in our country today:

https://www.nytimes.com/…/…/america-one-room-experiment.html - study shows that polarized Americans moderate their views after a weekend of information and discussion with people of other views.

https://www.nytimes.com/…/these-526-voters-represent-americ… - the same study, highlighting how discussions built trust in democracy and empathy.

Having studied civics education in U.S. high schools and its various effects on how people interact with democracy as adults, I can see how these studies point towards useful, healing ideas. Starting at a young age, we can empower classrooms to hold thoughtful discussion with complex issues and compromise-heavy decision-making as a model for a healthy democratic society. As we grow into adults, we can strengthen our skepticism-muscle for sound-bite media, quick-fixes, and vilification of the "other side". As creators, customers, and citizens, we can work towards healthier and more ethical products in media, entertainment, and technology - leveraging our dollars, our labor, our vote, activism, lobbying, nonprofit missions, word-of-mouth, and many kinds of financial, political, and social pressure.

Are you worried about the damage of divided, antagonistic politics? Then wading out of the deep end of our sound-bite-driven media is likely part of the solution. The shore may seem far away, but the only way to get there is to turn in the right direction, keep our heads above water, and keep going.

the way the world is, the way I wish it would be

the news has been terrible lately, with an awful mass shooting and much depressing politics. you know what I want to do at times like these? I want to tell stories.

not to escape. the opposite. the arts allow us to go to a dark place and sit with the feeling of it. I want to imagine how hard it is to face the worst, real and possible and impossible. I want to put myself in other's shoes and put people in mine. I want to come through the other side and sometimes not. I want to explore the universal and the particular, the understandable and the baffling, the parts where we stay strong and the parts where we break down, the times when we learn and the times when we don't.

I want to tell stories about the way the world is and the way I wish it would be, the way I fear it could be, the way it never will be. I tell them to others and I tell them to myself.

I tell them whether I want to or not.

Because we are telling stories, but these times can feel like listening to each other having nightmares, crying out in the dark. when you're caught up in moments of pain you can forget there's a before and after. there's not just this terrible moment, not just me alone. but the stories we tell ourselves whether we think about them or not teach us who we are, what direction we're going. we all have this hand in shaping that, consciously and deliberately or unconsciously. I want to do more than stumble in the dark. I want to live my life guided by more than crying out in my sleep.