I’ve been thinking about a passage from Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. The book—my new favorite—is about creating safe spaces for the soul, “circles of trust” in which people can listen to their own inner teacher. I started reading it to get better at facilitating Reach Out Wisconsin forums. If we’re bringing liberals and conservatives together for political dialogue, I want to learn how to make everyone feel emotionally safe.
In the passage that struck me this week, Palmer first warns against “the arrogance of absolutism,” or allowing one person in a group to try to convert everyone else to his own truth. This rule is familiar to me. In Reach Out, we emphasize over and over that the goal is to learn from each other, not to convert.
But then he also warns of a second mistake I hadn’t considered. He describes “the mindlessness of relativism…the silly and dangerous notion that there is ‘one truth for you, another truth for me, and never mind the difference.’”
In a community, he says, we must mind the difference, not dismiss it. We must come together, speak, and listen to each other’s truths, because:
Whether we know it or not, like it or not, acknowledge it nor not, our lives are interconnected…My understanding of truth impinges on your life, and yours impinges on mine, so the differences between us matter to both of us.
When I first read them, Palmer’s words reminded me of Ron’s mantra about environmental regulation. Frustrated at conservative views on individual freedom, he often says, “Someone else’s ‘freedom’ to pollute takes away my freedom to have clean water.”
These two views of freedom clash in a way that seems irreconcilable. There’s just no way to give everyone the freedom to pollute and the freedom to have clean water.
That’s partly what Palmer is getting at, I think. Because these concepts clash, we can’t just ignore them and “agree to disagree” about them. At some point, we as a society do have to talk about them, to hash out where the balance should be—how much individual freedom we’re willing to sacrifice for clean water or other public goods.
Acting as a peacemaker at Reach Out Wisconsin, my impulse is sometimes to dismiss conflict and just agree to disagree, or to look too optimistically for the things we all have in common. I just really want everyone to get along and be happy. I feel strained when I sense tension building.
But Palmer is right—we need to learn how to wrestle with our differing truths and values and decide on a course together. And our truths will press up against each other in uncomfortable ways.
Palmer is also right to call moral relativism “dangerous.” In his provocative book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins points out that:
[W]hen two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies the passion on the other side.
This adds an additional nuance to what Palmer is saying. Not every issue is one in which both sides have equally valid perspectives and the solution is to meet in the middle.
Slavery is a perfect example. Today, we can all agree that slavery is evil, but just a few generations ago, many people were sure that owning slaves was their God-given right. We’ve only moved forward because many brave people stood up against that immoral “truth.”
Surely, today, some people’s “truths” are equally wrong and misguided. Just as we shouldn’t shy away from hashing out our differences, we also must not dismiss the possibility that on some issues, one side will be more right than the other.
The tricky part, though, is knowing when to be which way. How do I distinguish between a “truth” held by someone else that’s simply wrong, and even dangerous, and a truth worthy of respect even though it’s different from mine? When is it best to agree to disagree, when is it best to seek compromise, and when is it best to stand firm and press for change?
I don’t know the answer. But I’m grateful to Palmer for articulating these concepts so well.
