HOW SCIENCE CAN SOLVE POLITICAL HATRED: A COURSE FOR BUSINESS LEADERS
Overview:
Political hatred has shattered our national identity, crippled our response to a world-wide pandemic, split up countless numbers of families, and hampered our progress in race relations. It now threatens our business institutions from within and from without.
Internally, the workforce is divided on how to tackle social-justice issues. Externally, partisanship now influences consumer choices, as consumers feel that their dollars are best spent defending their politics. These complex issues land on the desks of business leaders.
I’ve developed a methodology to assist corporate leaders in untangling this amalgam of issues and tackling them in a step-by-step fashion. The first program targets how to navigate the treacherous Democrat-Republican divide. It requires a time commitment of ten hours and focuses on neutralizing the effects of political hatred in the minds of corporate leaders to allow them to “depolarize” themselves in order to become role models for American consumers as well as their own workforce.
Course Outline:
Republican-Democrat Tribal Behavior: biological roots, biases, and prejudices specific to Americans.
Hatred: differentiating personal vs. political. Why political hatred is addictive and won’t disappear without individual effort.
Why we can’t count on empathy. How empathy disappears instantaneously unbeknownst to us--and how to avoid becoming a “zero-empathy” individual.
Genetic Influence on political activity and ideology. How to deal with the political burden we carry from birth (while the conventional thinking is that it’s a learned behavior).
What it takes for a Democrat to fully understand Republican morality.
What it takes for a Republican to fully understand Democrat morality.
Methods to lead consumers out of the herd mentality that’s based on hatred of the other party
Irresponsible Individualism vs Mutual Responsibility and the Common Good.
Evaluation and Practice Session: applying the above to navigate political issues and to lead a political dialogue across today’s Republican-Democrat divide.
Sessions (via Zoom or in-person) last 50 minutes. Lecture: 35 minutes. Discussion: 15 minutes.
HOW TO PREVENT FAMILY BREAKUPS OVER POLITICS:
Overview:
We see it in the daily battle over the latest news or social media post. All across America, families are at the point of implosion as they fight over politics. This explosion of family conflicts is directly related to the ever-increasing political hatred in America. Political hatred has also shattered our national identity, crippled our response to a world-wide pandemic, and hampered our progress in race relations.
Arguments over politics are simply not the same as arguments over other family issues. They’re particularly vulnerable to the dividing line that exists between Republicans and Democrats for reasons that include:
Family members have far greater expectations of allegiance from each other.
Many feel victimized and actually become threatened when a family member doesn’t share their political views.
They feel betrayed when a family member exercises their basic right and votes for the other side. Quite often, they see that family member as “canceling out their own vote.”
This ten-hour course allows family members to conduct, lead, and achieve successful political dialogues--or to recognize when not to press family members about engaging in these discussions at all.
Course Highlights:
Partisan Brain 101: what it is--and how it produces tribal Behavior, biases and prejudices.
How political hatred overwhelms family ties because by destroying empathy.
Politics vs Morality: understanding the counter-intuitive notion that the Democrat and Republican systems both rest on moral foundations.
The four agreements that people must come to before entering a political discussion--and why they’re often a difficult pill to swallow for people on the left and the
Methods to Free Ourselves from Political Hatred, Part I: impulse Control, avoiding victimhood, language of emotions, and making sense of contradiction/discordance.
Methods to Free Ourselves from Political Hatred, Part II: including radical listening and choosing to attribute less significance to political differences.
How to engage a family member in a political discussion that avoids mind traps, including reliance on facts, feeling victimized or morally superior.