Provocative New Book Challenges Us to Really Ask "Why?"

By Andrea Batista Schlesinger, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.. Posted July 15, 2009.

So it is not that we have lost the capacity to think beyond our frames of reference; it is that we aren’t presented with enough opportunities to do so. But when we are presented with such an opportunity, surrounded by people we don’t know and who have different experiences and views, talking about an issue that affects the quality of all of our lives, we wind up going in unexpected directions. Proof of this is the frequency with which participants change their minds.

“[The participants] follow lines of inquiry,” Lukensmeyer told me. “And . . . they don’t necessarily come out with the programmed answer that they would have come in with. Huge numbers, up to 70 percent of participants, change their position.”

When we bump up against new perspectives and experiences, when we are asked new questions that force us to think more deeply about our assumptions, we can change our minds. We don’t have to—but the fact that we can is most important. This type of interaction, these expressions of deliberative democracy, are the antidote to the inward direction of our daily lives. When we create the right environment for people to come together around a shared goal, and the format and the facilitation to help them expose their own biases but move toward an end, we can arrive at consensus. In that consensus, there is power.

But when participants exit the town hall meeting, they return to a culture in which deliberation across ideology is not encouraged. In fact, according to Lukensmeyer, it is actively discouraged.

“For the vast majority of people’s time,” she said, “they are spending their lives and experiences in structures and processes that are not carefully designed to help them inquire and think and discuss; they are sitting in structures and processes that are intentionally designed to get them to think in a way that someone wants them to think.”

Perhaps the problem is that we ask too little of ourselves in our democracy today. If we knew that it was up to us to ask the questions that would determine the quality of our lives, if we were given actual assignments to improve our communities (beyond voting every four years), maybe then we would view differently our responsibilities as citizens. Maybe then we would willingly undertake whatever questioning it took to get to consensus, rather than focusing on finding the perfect posture from which to hold our ideological ground. Maybe, if it were up to us to solve the problems of our whole city or state, we would see those with whom we disagree as necessary partners, would engage rather than avoid. But, isolated not only from one another but also from a clear understanding of how our participation matters, the Big Sort remains—until Lukensmeyer and those like her force us to question it, one 21st Century Town Meeting at a time.

Click here to buy a copy of The Death of "Why?"

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Andrea Batista Schlesinger is the executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.

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