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In this episode of the Pluralist Points podcast, Ben Klutsey, the executive director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, speaks with Kurt Gray [ [link removed] ], a psychology and neuroscience professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, about our moral understanding and how we react to perceived threats. They discuss why a “protection” narrative is better than a “destruction” one, the pros and cons of moral outrage, why stories matter more than facts in political disagreements, and much more.
BEN KLUTSEY: Thank you for joining “Pluralist Points.” Today I’m speaking with Kurt Gray. Kurt is a psychology and neuroscience professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he teaches organizational ethics. He also directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab [ [link removed] ], investigating fundamental human beliefs. And he runs the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding [ [link removed] ], which uses interdisciplinary methods to understand how best to bridge moral and political divides.
He’s the author of “The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters [ [link removed] ].” His latest book, “Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality in Politics and How to Find Common Ground [ [link removed] ],” is the subject of our conversation today. Kurt, thanks for joining us.
KURT GRAY: Yes, thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Moral Disagreements
KLUTSEY: I just wanted to kick things off with a question to get a little bit into your background. You’ve been teaching and researching psychology for a decade. What prompted you to write this book, and what sparked your interest in the topic of navigating disagreements in these spaces?
GRAY: Yes, great question. I wish it was only a decade—I’d be a younger man—but let’s say a decade. I have two real interests in this. There’s the academic interest, which is how do we construct our morals, which are so powerful in our lives? Really, people live and die for these things, but they’re ultimately invisible, right? There’s no “there” there. You can’t hold them. How can we construct such an important thing in our lives?
Then I think the second question is more practical, maybe. That’s about encountering moral disagreement in my own life, not only with friends, with my wife. . . . The example I open with is a case of road rage. With family members, I’ve got some family who live in Nebraska. They are largely evangelical Christians, mostly conservative. I know they’re good people. The progressive folks that I mostly hang out with have very much different views than they do.
How do I reconcile these two worlds, these two camps of good people? That’s really what inspired me, this academic construction of morality and this very practical, good people on the left and the right.
KLUTSEY: Thanks for that. The road rage story in the book is really interesting and exciting, and I’m hoping we can weave that in at some point.
Perceptions of Harm
KLUTSEY: In the book, you make the case that our moral understanding is informed by competing perceptions of harm. How did we develop these perceptions of harm, and how do they shape our moral understanding?
GRAY: I think if you think of what humans ultimately evolved to do, it is to protect ourselves from harm. If you go way back before we were even humans, the proto-humans that eventually evolved into homo sapiens were, I think more than we recognize, afraid and threatened and preyed upon by other animals.
There’s this narrative trope, in a sense, that we’re predators, cave people with our stone-tipped spears. I think if you really dig back into anthropology, we’re a lot more prey than we think, and we spend most of our time hiding in trees from big cats who would come to eat us and our family. I think this ingrained fear, this ingrained worry about threats really dictated our psychology.
Then, if you fast-forward to us living in group society, the threats now are not wild animals, but the threat of evil from other people. In today’s group society, we’re worried mostly about the predators of the other side, of those who might do evil. The example I’ll give is: If your kids are playing outside and a white panel van drives by a couple times, you don’t think it’s a locksmith that’s lost in your neighborhood, right? You think it’s a predator coming to abduct your kids. Of course, it’s not true, but that’s where our mind goes.
Destruction vs. Protection
KLUTSEY: Right. Now, one of the frameworks that you introduce in the book, which I like very much, is the destruction narrative versus the protection narrative. Could you unpack this for us and explain how it helps us to understand moral and political divides?
GRAY: Sure. There’s a lot of research in psychology, and in moral psychology in particular, that looks at how we make sense and perceive the other side. I’m talking like if you voted red and they voted blue, or vice versa. Generally, those perceptions are not nice. They are exaggerated. You think the other side is more evil. You think they’re more stupid.
I think the finding that really gets me interested is this finding that you think the other side is motivated to destroy. If someone makes a policy tradeoff on the other side—let’s say, dealing with a reduced social safety net for lowering taxes—that’s a difficult policy decision. If you are pro-bigger safety net, then you think people who make that decision basically want to stick it to the poor people, right? They’re trying to destroy America. On the other hand, if you are more pro-growth, pro-reducing taxes, then you think that those who might want to raise tax to increase the social safety net are also trying to destroy America.
No one’s trying to destroy America, mostly, especially not everyday people. Everyone’s just trying to do their best and make the policy things that they think is best for the country. Rather than a destruction narrative, which is what we have, I think the truth is it’s a protection narrative. People are trying their best to protect themselves and their country. When we recognize that, then we approach politics and morality very differently.
KLUTSEY: Have you seen a shift, sort of practically, seeing people move from the destruction narrative to the protection narrative in real time?
GRAY: There are, oftentimes in the conversations that my students have, I’ll notice this as they talk about—I teach a class on the science of moral understanding. They’ll go out and have conversations with their roommates, with their parents, about things from euthanasia to racism to taxes. I definitely notice between time A and time B, when they first talk about these conversations and then when I read how the conversations unfold when they bring this more protection narrative in their mind, the conversations go much better.
I can see it at scale in these classes as people have really engaging, thoughtful and really connecting conversations when they understand the other side, the person on the other side is not trying to destroy anything but trying to ultimately protect themselves and their family.
KLUTSEY: Do you find that when they come into your classes, like their entire formation, it’s been informed by the destruction narrative, like K-12 education, like how they’re raised at home? It seems as though these things are sort of reinforced over and over.
GRAY: That they’re reinforced with the destruction narrative when they come in, you think?
KLUTSEY: Yes. Yes.
GRAY: Yes. I think it’s certainly what the media is feeding them. It’s often what the parents are feeding them. I kind of want to stand up on behalf of the kids these days. I know you probably do, too, if you’re talking to other folks or talking to potential donors.
KLUTSEY: Absolutely. I get it.
GRAY: Right. They’re like, “Oh, kids these days,” but the kids these days are actually really hungry for these conversations. I think the people who are creating this destruction narrative are social media platforms, are the media, even perhaps older folks who are a little more entrenched in their views. I think they are coming to class with this understanding, but they are really excited to think about protection.
Moral Foundations Theory
KLUTSEY: Yes. I wanted to see if you could contrast your framework related to harm with Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory [ [link removed] ], which you cite in the book as well. Moral foundations theory identifies five categories—care, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity—that resonate differently depending on one’s political leanings. How does your approach to moral understanding differ from or complement Haidt’s framework?
GRAY: Great question. I think we should say from the outset that nature and the mind does not easily lend itself to numbering. I just think that the premise of saying how many moral concerns are there, I think, is in a sense a fool’s errand. At the beginning of his career, Jon Haidt said that there were three, and then it moved to four, and then five, and now there are six, right? I don’t think that there’s a set number of moral anything in our minds.
I do think that the moral foundations framework has been useful because it’s brought to bear the kind of language and discussions around values that maybe progressives and conservatives might have in the current media. I think if you look at the history of where moral foundations came from—ultimately from cataloging conversations in India and Brahmin Indians about purity and group-based concerns—then you can see this through line, which is like, well, how do evangelical pastors talk about morality in their churches versus union leaders?
I don’t think that there’s really good evidence that one moral concern or the other is owned exclusively by conservatives. Take the example of loyalty, which Jon would argue is a special conservative thing. I think that’s true if you look at loyalty toward your church, which is one way that he’s measured it. If you look at loyalty toward a labor movement or union solidarity, that’s 100% a progressive loyalty.
I just think the evidence isn’t there. I think the idea wasn’t fully baked before that book was written, “The Righteous Mind [ [link removed] ].” I do think it’s good to think about how liberals and conservatives might disagree. I think if you go underneath the talk about values, then liberals and conservatives, they both really care about protecting people in society from harm. But they make really different assumptions of vulnerability, about who or what is most vulnerable to being victimized in society. My work shows that that’s really what drives our moral disagreement, not disagreement about keywords and values.
Moral Outrage
KLUTSEY: Yes, that’s really interesting. Now, let’s dig a little bit deeper into the title of your book, “Outraged [ [link removed] ].” You describe moral outrage as a commitment device, a psychological tool that motivates people to punish wrongdoers, even at personal cost or risk. Is there a benefit to moral outrage?
GRAY: Certainly, traditionally. The example I really like is the culture of honor, which exists in a large part in the South, in the hills of North Carolina, not far from where I live. The argument goes that if you are a sheepherder—and there’s lots of North Carolinians who immigrated from Scotland—you’ve got your sheep, and you’re worried about people rustling them. It’s hard to protect them. It’s hard to protect them, right, because someone could come in the darkness and could take one and you maybe wouldn’t notice at first.
What you need to do is make sure that everyone knows that you are easily offended. If they try to take just one sheep, or even not even a sheep and just insult you, that you will be crazy enough to, let’s say, attack them. Maybe it’s irrational in the sense that you’re going to risk your life and limb for an insult, but it’s rational in the broader sense that people know not to mess with you if you get outraged enough.
If you scale that up to groups, outrage not only teaches a lesson in a sense to the other side, like not to mess with your values, but it allows people on your side to coordinate and fight the threat that you see. Think of the group of farmers with their pitchforks, outside the house of Frankenstein’s monster or whatever. It allows us to coordinate our actions and fight threats.
It can lead to bad things back in the day, “Scarlet Letter [ [link removed] ]” kind of things. It really leads to bad things today when we have social media, when our environments are so different from where the idea of moral outrage as something rational evolved.
KLUTSEY: Yes. In some ways, this connects to cancel culture. Sort of the performative aspects of it that we see, I think, is sort of similar to the way that moral outrage might be expressed so that people are deterred from certain behaviors, from saying certain things. Does that track with what you’re seeing?
GRAY: I think it’s certainly connected to cancel culture. Getting outraged at—and not just acts anymore, but language or the company you keep. I do think it’s important to, again, with this kind of protection narrative, to highlight how even people who get outraged online and even people who call for cancellation, I think these folks are not doing it typically in a performative way, but because they genuinely perceive some threats there.
We have some research that shows that intentions to express outrage on things like Twitter are not driven by a desire to win internet points, because who really wins when it comes to Twitter? Instead, this genuine concern about fear or threats—it doesn’t mean that those threats that you perceive are necessarily correct and real, but they are genuinely perceived. But it certainly connects up with cancel culture. That’s right.
Beyond Threat Detection?
KLUTSEY: Yes. We are much safer than our ancestors, yet we still perceive even benign threats as significant due to our evolutionary wiring, as you outlined in the book. Can we ever escape this constant threat-detection thing, and should we? I imagine that there are some helpful aspects to it where you become more aware and, in some ways, it helps to protect us.
GRAY: Such a great question, and I spend some time wrestling with it in the pages, right? Especially, I think organizations that are more classically liberally oriented like to emphasize the progress that humankind has made. How if you want to be born in society, any society over the last few millennia, you’d probably want to pick America today, right? Healthcare is the best and technology is the best. Of course, there’s still things we can do to improve, but it’s as safe as we’ve ever been.
Yet it doesn’t feel that way—again, because we’re so hardwired to detect threats. Now that we are safe, the threats we detect and the threats we really worry about are things like someone saying the wrong thing on Twitter, which maybe our ancestors who were worried about getting eaten by saber-toothed cats would have a good chuckle. “You’re outraged about what? My kid just got eaten by an eagle. Come on.”
On one hand, I don’t see us ever just sitting back and being like, “Oh, wow,” at any point in time, “we live in a utopia.” I also think it’s a good thing that we constantly yearn for moral progress, because it means that even the ever-increasing harms or injustices that might exist as we progress the moral arc of the universe through society, we still maintain a focus on repairing those injustices and fixing them. I think that’s a good thing for our species and our society.
KLUTSEY: Now, when you think about moral outrage, generally speaking, do you see it as something that might peak, that is peaking, that is on the decline? What’s your sense of where things are in terms of moral outrage?
GRAY: I think it’s probably as high as it’s ever been. It’s hard for me to make judgments of what’s going to happen in the future. I’d like to think it’s going to decrease, especially as people get exhausted and burned out with outrage. I think there’s a lot of hunger in people’s lives to push aside the anger and reconnect, especially offline, with friends and family.
I think this latest election maybe surprised some and didn’t surprise other folks. I think whether you’re on the left or right, I think there’s a lot of genuine desire to just leave aside all the craziness and just reconnect with friends and family. I’d like to think that it’s on the decline. Part of that’s going to be hinging on how much we’re going to use social media. Facebook just decided to no longer fact-check things. That could complicate the picture, right? We’ll see. We’ll see what tech platforms do. I think in everyday lives, people want less outrage.
Failure of Facts
KLUTSEY: Yes. Now, when addressing some of this, you note that facts aren’t always helpful. Can you unpack that a little bit and tell us why facts aren’t always helpful in helping us reduce moral outrage?
GRAY: You bet. Again, if you think about how our minds are made, they are not made to be really great at statistics. I’ve taught undergrad statistics before. It takes like a whole semester to figure out what a T-test is, what a mean is, what a distribution of data is. If you are sitting around a campfire, let’s say, you are not talking about statistics. You are talking about stories.
Here’s a funny thing, is when we ask people—we ran a big study [ [link removed] ]. We asked Americans, what would it take for you to respect someone who disagrees with you in a conversation? Most folks, they say, “Give me the facts. I want the facts. I want the stats. Don’t give me the stories. Don’t give me the editorializing.” We say, “Okay, if that’s what you say, here are some facts from the other side.” Then people say, “Not those facts; those are not the right facts.”
This is why I think the facts fail to increase respect in our conversations today. It’s because we have different sets of facts, we have different media ecosystems, and your facts are not their facts. It’s also the case that facts—going back to this idea of what are our morals, facts are not the same things as our morals.
If you come to a conversation and someone says, “This is what I believe about abortion or taxes or euthanasia,” and you’re like, “Well, here’s a fact,” no one is going to say, “Oh, you know what, I didn’t know that fact. I guess I’ll just give up my moral convictions. Dang, you were so right about that fact.” Morality is just different. When it comes to morality, to understand, to better bridge divides, we can’t use facts. Our studies show you have to use personal experiences, really reveal how you came to your views personally and convey those experiences to others.
Metaperceptions
KLUTSEY: Yes. Thanks for that. Now, one of the things that’s really important in your discussion around moral outrage is the role of metaperceptions and how we think other people think of us. I’m curious about your thoughts on what the building blocks are. What are the building blocks that inform our thinking of how other people think about us? You mentioned media; obviously social media is a part of this. What are the things that constitute this sense of metaperception?
GRAY: Great question. I think you summarized what metaperceptions are eloquently. It’s a real pain to write about. It’s not what you think of the other; it’s what the other side thinks of you. I think the us-versus-them structure of American society in our elections, I think they owe a lot of the blame to metaperceptions. If we’re locked in battle with the other side, then it’s natural—again, this destruction narrative—to think that the other side hates us.
Why would they do things to attack us? Why would they do things to help their side at the cost of our side? You could just chalk it up to, well, that’s just the structure of American politics, and they don’t really hate you, but they’re just doing their best for their side to win. I think because when we make sense of other people’s actions, it’s so easy to take the negative spin, especially with the media talking about it, that metaperceptions very quickly go from zero to -100, like they’re actually, really trying to hate us.
I think the nice thing about metaperceptions is that it’s easily corrected. There’s research out there that says, “Hey, the other side, you know why they do this? It’s not because they hate you; they’re just trying to figure their stuff out. And they’re just trying to make really difficult decisions in a complicated policy environment.” Then when you tell people that, it doesn’t really last for a long time. The goodwill doesn’t last for a long time, but you can keep reminding people of it.
I think it is useful to know that, “Look, everyone’s just trying to do their best. We all put our pants on one leg at a time, and we all vote for policies that we think are going to help ourselves.” Metaperceptions are just one of the misconceptions we have about the other side—they’re evil or they’re stupid. It’s fairly easy to correct, and hopefully the more we correct that, the more people can be charitable toward people who disagree with them.
KLUTSEY: Yes. Are we seeing these metaperceptions worsen over time? In the book, you do highlight some of the data, to what extent each party thinks of the other side as evil or just dumb and all of these things. I think it’s there. I wonder if it’s continuing or it at least has stabilized.
GRAY: I like this question about change over time, and I think the short answer is, it’s not clear about metaperceptions because I don’t think we’ve been assessing them over a long period of time. I think it is clear that we’re the least charitable we’ve been toward the other side in a long time. I think part of that is because we don’t actually have a chance to interact with someone.
It used to be that you would actually talk to someone who voted differently than you on a Little League team or out at dinner. Now, I think we’re so segregated in our left-versus-right environments. We don’t have a chance to realize that someone on the other side is a good person just like you and people who vote like you. I think that’s a problem with society today. I know there’s lots of groups who are trying to fix that. I think that’s really what we need to do, is have more meaningful contact.
Importance of Stories
KLUTSEY: Storytelling, something you highlight in the book as being really important in helping to sort of reduce dehumanization and moral outrage. What are the kinds of stories that are helpful in doing these things?
GRAY: Yes, great question. I think it goes back to our moral minds and how they’re focused on perceptions of harm. And so because our morals are ultimately grounded on concerns about protecting ourselves from suffering and mistreatment, everyone can understand stories that ground your moral beliefs in concerns about harm.
We ran this study where we had people have conversations about the gun debate. Those conversations either revolved around facts—“Here’s the number of times that people use handguns to defend themselves in America every year”—or stories—“Here’s a time that my mom used a gun to defend herself from a home invader.” That kind of story, the personal story of protecting ourselves, really increased perceptions that the other side’s rational, perceptions that the other side deserves respect.
Because you can understand your own personal concerns about harm and your family in a way that just parroting back statistics you heard on NPR, let’s say, does not make you seem like a rational person worthy of respect. Really just remembering that perceptions of harm are a common currency across moral conflict. That’s really what should motivate our stories.
Bridging Divides
KLUTSEY: Yes. Thanks for that. In the book, you also talk about some of the mechanisms for connecting and bridging divides. An example you use is the one by John Sarrouf from Essential Partners [ [link removed] ]. The acronym is CIV and it’s connect, invite and validate. Can you explain this concept?
GRAY: You bet. John Sarrouf is a pioneer in bridging divides. He’s at Essential Partners in Boston. I just want to say, I don’t want to blame him for the CIV framework, but all his insights, all the good about this framework is his. The cutesy CIV—he’s very serious—is not what he came up with. I think I like the chunking it to CIV because it is the beginning of civil conversations.
C is connect, right? Before you talk about politics, you want to have a connection with someone as a normal human being. We’re so much more than politics. When you want to talk to someone, you should ask about their interests, their thoughts, their concerns about their lives.
I was at a party in the new year and I asked someone, “What are you most excited about in the new year?? I don’t know how he votes. He says, “You know what I’m excited about? There’s a ton of SpaceX launches. I love space. I grew up loving space. I’m excited to watch those launches.” I didn’t know there were SpaceX launches. I didn’t know he cared about them so much. Awesome, right? Here’s a way now to connect with someone.
After connect, I invite. If I want to learn about politics, I’ll invite whoever I’m talking to share their beliefs. It doesn’t mean demand. “How could you do this? I can’t believe you voted for this. Explain yourself to me.” That’s not an invitation. An invitation is something you can say no to. It could be something like, “Look, I know we voted differently, I think, in the last election. I’m really interested in understanding why. I understand that this is maybe not the time you want to talk about it. If you would like to talk about it, I’d love to listen.” That shows openness, that shows interest.
Then once you’ve invited someone and they’re willing to share with you, then the V comes of CIV, and that’s validate. It doesn’t mean agree with someone. What it means is acknowledging and thanking them for having the courage to share their beliefs because it’s hard to share your beliefs. Everyone understands that you’re worried about getting attacked. It’s thanking them for being willing to share. That could just be like, “Thanks very much. I appreciate you putting it into words.”
I do want to say that probably when someone shares their beliefs with you, they’re going to offend you in some way. They’re going to repeat some talking point. You’re talking about abortion, they say “baby killer” or “hate women,” depending on what side you are. You got to roll with it a little bit. You’re like, “Oh, I think what I’m hearing you saying is that the reason that you voted this way is because you’re concerned about the rights of fetuses, and you don’t think that they’re being adequately protected right now. Is that what you’re saying? Okay, right.”
Now you can move forward in conversations. I’ve used this kind of general framework both in class for students to have better conversations, and in my own life—on planes, on Uber rides, with people who really disagree with where I’m coming from—to have more civil discourse.
KLUTSEY: What makes for a good practitioner of these practices? I often get asked, “How can you have a conversation with someone who demonizes you or whatever the case may be?” I bring up Daryl Davis [ [link removed] ], and you brought up Daryl Davis a couple of times in the book, as a great example. I imagine that a lot of these things are skills that you build over time. I imagine that you would say, “We should be practicing this frequently, so that we get we get better, we get better at it.” Right?
GRAY: Certainly. You’re absolutely right. Daryl Davis is an incredible example. He’s frequently the person that I mention, especially when people say, “Well, pluralism is all fine. What happens if someone hates who I am because I’m a woman or because of my race?”
I think Daryl Davis is an incredible example of someone who befriended hundreds of KKK members, despite being a Black man and the target of their hate. I can bet, as I’m sure you can bet, the first time he had that conversation, it probably didn’t go as well as the 200th time that he talked to a Klansman, especially because these conversations are so activating and because we’re so hardwired to be threatened in these situations.
The first time you talk about politics with someone who disagrees with you, even if they’re your uncle, they’re in your family, you get so activated. John Sarrouf from Essential Partners likes to say it takes a fifth of a second to turn on your fight-or-flight instincts, and it takes 20 minutes to calm it down. That’s a huge asymmetry. It’s like orders of magnitude.
I think you do need to practice and you do need to do exposure therapy. If you’re afraid of spiders, the way to get unafraid of spiders is to get closer and closer to a spider, and eventually to start petting tarantulas. If you’re upset about politics, the trick is to just have more and more conversations, especially in-person conversations, with people who disagree with you.
Is Kurt Gray Optimistic?
KLUTSEY: Yes. I often ask guests whether they are optimistic. I will ask you this as well. Are you optimistic that we will get to a place where we can bridge our divides and differences if we better understand our moral psychology or how moral psychology works?
GRAY: I am an optimist. I think it’d be crazy to be in the pluralist space and not to be an optimist. I don’t know.
KLUTSEY: That’s right.
GRAY: I’m also a realist in the sense that I’m a psychologist. I study not how our minds could be. I feel like philosophers are like, “How could we live?” I study how our minds are. They’re basically unchanged for the last four million years. I’m not going to be like, “Next week, we’re all going to stand around the proverbial campfire and sing ‘Kumbaya’ as we all bridge our differences.”
I do think, as a pluralist, the messy compromises where no one party can really win is a good thing. The way that America is structured, despite its flaws, is a good thing. There’s tension and compromise and discomfort. I think that’s a good thing for our country. In any country, when any one side wins and just forges ahead of the other side, bad things happen, left or right. I’m an optimist in the sense that pragmatism is actually a good thing, and we’ll maybe figure it out together.
KLUTSEY: Now, how do you define pluralism?
GRAY: Yes, that’s a great question. I like to dodge these definition questions as a psychologist. “What is life?” I don’t know. I do know that we’re all alive. I guess I would say it’s certainly a toleration of viewpoints. I have some internal struggles with what I think about anti-pluralist views. Do they deserve a seat at the table of pluralism? Stormfront, the KKK, should they be on this podcast? That’s up for you to figure out, I guess.
I guess in the end of the day, maybe what I think about pluralism goes back to this talk I saw about, one of the biggest predictors of whether nations can move past conflict is just a sense of, I don’t know, being stuck with each other. Maybe that’s pessimistic, but I think it’s actually ultimately optimistic. Just knowing that you can’t win, your side can’t win. You have to make your peace with understanding and connecting and working together with someone who disagrees with you.
To all the folks out there who are anti-pluralists—I talk to folks on the left who were like, “How could you try to understand folks on the right? They’re the evil ones.” When I talk to folks on the right, less often, sometimes they express the same idea. I think, look, if you want to achieve your goals, your left- or right-leaning political goals, you have to create allies. You have to create infrastructure and coalitions.
To do that requires understanding the other side and trying to figure out what they want too, because we’re all mostly trying to do the best we can and are rational as we pursue those goals in a very large way. I think pluralism is important for like, “We’re stuck with each other, but also we need to understand each other to move forward.”
KLUTSEY: Yes. In terms of being stuck with each other, I look at the current Congress, and I say these guys are going to be stuck with each other for a couple of years. What advice do you think would be helpful to them, particularly the ones who want to make a meaningful difference and want to find opportunities to work together on some issues?
GRAY: Yes, it’s a great question. There are organizations out there, and they operate almost in secret to be part of these organizations, where you want to engage in bipartisan cooperation to achieve bills. It’s insane that we have to be secretive about that. I think my advice would be to listen less to social media because the loudest voices are on social media, and it’s not typically the people who actually voted for you. The people who voted for you want you to achieve things for your constituency and your state.
I think listen and understand when you’re going into these conversations. The time for winning is the time for elections, but in between the elections, there’s not winning in the same sense because we’re stuck with each other. As best you can, focus on understanding the other side so you can achieve the goals. I think listen for understanding.
Call to Action
KLUTSEY: Excellent. Excellent. Now, as we wrap this up, what’s your call to action for folks who are reading the book and folks who are listening to this conversation? Is there anything that you want to encourage them, nudge them on, inspire them to do?
GRAY: It’s a great question. I think, again, when you approach a conversation, if you approach that conversation to try to win, then you’ve already lost. We mentioned practice; we mentioned Daryl Davis. I would like to encourage people just to go out there and to practice these conversations.
It can be small. You don’t have to go to a rally of the other side and try to confront someone. In fact, that’s totally the wrong way to do it. Just find someone who you suspect maybe disagreed with you and try to ask them questions to figure out why and understand what they’re thinking. That’s it. It’s a pretty mild recommendation. Just try to understand the why a little bit of someone who you suspect disagrees with you.
KLUTSEY: Great. Kurt, thanks for joining us for this conversation. Really appreciate it.
GRAY: Thanks for having me.

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