Telling people you’re a lobbyist is like telling them you don’t wash your hands after using the restroom. But I’m not like other lobbyists, I’m a cool lobbyist. At One Kind Act a Day, kindness is our currency as we help political groups, businesses, communities, schools, and individuals make better habits of kindness. One day, I was discussing kindness in politics, and someone made a comment that struck me. They spoke on the division between parties, the vitriol directed towards people different than us, and said, “How can we love our nation if we hate half of the people in it?”

This echoes President Ronald Reagan who said, “If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.” How are we doing in loving our fellow countryperson? Turn on the news or attend a political rally and it is evident to see, we are divided in a bad way. The research agrees. A study in 2018 found that partisan animosity has increased drastically since the 1980s and that political participation is no longer driven by love of one’s party, but primarily by hostility towards opposing parties (Iyengar, 2018). Politicians vilify each other. The floor of Congress is full of schoolyard level insults about people’s appearance or mental fortitude. Contempt is king right now.

How Do We Fix This?

Charles Darwin once observed, “With all animals, sympathy is directed solely towards the members of the same community, and therefore towards known, and more or less beloved members, but not to all the individuals of the same species” (The Descent of Man, 1871). Essentially, we are kind to people in our group and unkind to “outsiders”. In my work I have found, just as Darwin said, that it is hard to get people to be kind to someone they perceive as an outsider. Instead, it is easier to draw bigger circles of inclusion and widen our view of who is inside our group. The larger the circle, the more people are included, and the wider one’s kindness. Hopefully, we can come to realize that we are all part of the same community of humanity and thus can be kind to everyone.

Now with this we don’t want everyone to be the same person and have the same beliefs. We don’t want carbon copies of each other. Our differences are a strength.

As a very young man I lived in Romania. In 1989 on Christmas Day, dictator Ceaușescu was removed from power. In that turbulent time a prayer was said for the nation of Romania which always stood out to me. The words of the prayer mentioned “stability of government established on the foundation of human dignity. Where there once has been division, let there not be plurality in process, but unity in purpose.” In my youth I wondered at those words. How can there be plurality in process without division?

The answer is in the second part.

“Unity in Purpose”

Our differences don’t create more problems, they offer more solutions. We can have Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, etc. But in the end, we all share a purpose and identity as Americans. Thus, while we have differences in belief there is still commonality in our shared identity, and unity in our purpose. We can be united in helping the American experiment to succeed, even if we go about it in different ways.

How do we retain our individuality and remain united?

Every year the Chair of National Governor’s Association establishes a focus for all 50 governors. During his time as Chair, Utah Governor Spencer Cox started Disagree Better. Cox said, “We know that conflict resolution takes work and involves difficult conversations. It’s much easier to sow division than to persuade or find solutions. But we also know that no one ever changed someone’s mind by attacking them. Through healthy conflict, we’re confident that we can find common ground and improve our families, our communities, and our nation. Together, we can disagree better.” (NGA.org) Though Governor Cox’s term as the NGA Chair is over, we need to continue carrying the message of Disagree Better.

Another great initiative is The Dignity Index which seeks to stop contempt by calling it out and showing a better way to communicate. They rate the rhetoric of political speeches to show that our words have power, and if we use them with dignity we will validate and build the human race. Their index rating is a great tool to help us use kinder language to each other, not just in politics but in all aspects of life. I’ve been able to see people grasp this concept when we use The Dignity Index in our Kindness Initiatives everywhere from schools to prisons. The words we say matter.

The recent founding of Disagree Better, The Dignity Index, and One Kind Act a Day show that people are done with contempt and hungry for cooperation. We are ready to build bridges, we just need to make the efforts to do so, to change our narrative.

Our hatred will destroy us faster than opposing policy will. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” We need more kindness and civility. We are ready to build bridges, we just need to make the efforts to do so, to change our narrative. So, in this election year let’s draw larger circles. Let’s not attack people but challenge ideas, and when we disagree, let us do so better. Let us trade contempt for kindness.