I’ve been thinking about polite conversations about impolite subjects.

Bob is a friend since college, now a retired but intellectually and politically active scholar in a university town in the east. For decades, his fitness routine has been to walk each of several generations of golden retrievers twice a day, often prompting conversations with fellow dog-walkers. In recent months, he kept joining mid-stroll with Dennis, a fellow retired scholar. As they walked, they talked about kids and grandkids and whatever esoteric tome each of them was currently plowing through. It was a frequent delight that warmed even the chill of winter afternoons.

Earlier this spring, the conversation stumbled into the war in Gaza, a subject they’d never touched on. Though he didn’t have a clue as to Dennis’s views on the matter, in his uninhibited way Bob shared his defense of Iran as a longtime victim of Israel’s aggression, his commitment to the Palestinians’ right to their own land, and his distrust of Israel’s leadership. Dennis was caught off guard and remained silent. This seemed beyond the bounds of proper conversational limits, and certainly outside the bounds of the kind of light, casual familiarity that they had previously enjoyed.

But Bob pressed on, railing about Netanyahu until his new friend spoke up in protest. Bob once more launched into a defense of his convictions, at which point Dennis cut him off in mid-sentence, "I don’t want to be in this conversation with you any longer." 

Bob stopped speaking. Dennis continued, "In fact, I don’t want to continue this friendship," and tugged on the leash as he walked away, silently. 

When Bob and I talked on the phone a few days later, he told me that he'd wanted to call Dennis, but couldn't figure out a way around their differences, that he couldn't imagine future conversations that felt calm and pleasurable once again. I pointed out that he didn't know what Dennis actually thought - only that his outburst had been, for a variety of possible reasons, too much.

I'm used to wading in inappropriately in conversations like Bob's. Like him, I've damaged relationships without ever changing another person's mind - the importance of being right was paramount. Not every conversation is like this, where one person unloads and the other walks away; sometimes both of us are dug into positions and convinced of our own wisdom, ready to die on the hill of whatever the issue is. 

In recent years, I've shied away from situations like these, and instead tried to figure out what drew me in to begin with. What is it that keeps so many of us in combat with certain family members and friends despite the predictable outcome: neither of us will change our convictions, and eventually we’ll compromise or ruin our relationships?

In conversations around complex or highly-charged issues, my experience is that too many people with deep commitments to one or the other side have gathered too little information, done too little thinking, and considered too few options to be trustworthy when they hold forth.

Lazy thinking frequently has a close companion: moral simplicity. If we think only on the surface of important issues or admit into our understanding only facts and stories that bolster assumptions and beliefs we already hold, we come to an understanding that misses the intellectual complexities and comes to rest on shallow reasoning. From this perspective, we find it easy to determine which side is right and which side is wrong. I listen more carefully to friends or talking heads who honor the moral ambivalence of complex issues before stating their convictions. I immediately distrust anyone who has blind moral certainty about issues that are inherently morally complex or deeply nuanced.

Becky and I recently spent three hours over dinner with Ted and Keli, our closest Jewish friends who exemplified for us a willingness to think carefully and critically about a situation that is very personal to them. They have two grown sons, one who lives in Israel and is married to an Israeli lawyer, the second who lives near the family home in Seattle and is a fervent defender of Palestinians. Each son makes a passionate and reasonable case for opposite sides in the conflict, which has forced Ted and Keli to listen to each, come to understand their differing reasons, honor and respect the convictions of both sons, and love them fervently despite the tension all five of them have been living through since October 7th, 2023. They are serious thinkers about their sons and the war that divides them and so many others.

For many years, there was a prevailing wisdom that polite conversation did not and could not include sex, politics, money, or religion - unfortunately excluding the vast majority of my interests. I do not adhere to a practice of avoidance; I think we are not well served to simply run away from some of life's most interesting questions. At the same time, I see too rarely those qualities that would make any engagement on these questions meaningful, generative, and humane: a tolerance for intellectual and moral complexity, and a willingness to be self-critical and self-reflective.

That lack of complexity is easy to identify in positions I consider blatantly vile: racists, misogynists, homophobes, Christian Nationalists whom I consider neither Christian nor patriotic nationalists, economic elitists who insist that they have a right to their grandiosity and political power, and anyone who espouses a view of the human family in which they deny the sacred equality of every person.  I resist the arguments of anyone who thinks that personal freedom is more important that the common good, that “I” is more important than “we.” What I generally find is a profound lack of curiosity, and a sense of certainty: both signals that this is likely to be a useless conversation.

I attain some balance to my strong criticism of such positions by my equally strong conviction that I am only a credible witness to the extent that I can be self-critical. I know who I am and where I come from. I didn’t receive my intellectual and moral convictions from tablets brought down from a mountain top; rather I think and try to be a good person in categories that came out of the family I grew up with, the mentors who molded me, the friends I’ve done intellectual and moral combat with, and the evolving Christian faith that has anchored me since I was a little boy. I am also aware that there is much I don't know, haven't experienced, and don't understand, and I try to remain open to learning more.

Important issues require of me that I gather reliable information, organize the facts responsibly, then require that whatever opinion I come to is bolstered by careful thinking. Such issues also require that I’m willing to search without the assumption that my intellectual efforts will lead to the only morally tenable position, because I know that political and ethical convictions are as complex at their core as they are intellectually complicated. And I now know that whatever my intellectual and moral conclusions are on these important issues, I must behave with a continuing commitment to self-criticism.  

I want to see the flaws in my own convictions as clearly as I see the weaknesses in the position others hold. I know I’m not the only person searching for intellectual and moral clarity, and I'm deeply interested in talking to other fellow searchers; I'm equally disinterested in talking to those who are certain they've already arrived.