This is Democracy – Episode 222: Civics Post-Pandemic

[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:21] Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy.

[00:00:27] Jeremi Suri: We are back from our rare week of vacation at the end of the year. Zachary, did you miss the podcast while we were away? Well,

[00:00:35] Zachary Suri: I missed, uh, these wonderful conversations, but uh, I certainly didn’t miss all the preparatory work that goes , right? It

[00:00:40] Jeremi Suri: was nice to have a have a week off. Well, we’re in for a real.

[00:00:44] Jeremi Suri: Today we’re starting 2023 with our first podcast of the New Year with one of our favorite people, a leading scholar. But, but more than that, a, a true mench, someone who is, uh, studying, uh, psychology and society and leadership at a cutting edge, but also bringing that work to, uh, a large audience, uh, around the world.

[00:01:07] Jeremi Suri: Uh, this is someone who’s well known to many of our listeners, uh, professor Art Markman. Art, thanks for joining us today. Oh,

[00:01:14] Art Markman: it’s, it’s really a pleasure to be here talking with both

[00:01:16] Jeremi Suri: of you. Art is the Annabelle. Ian Washam Centennial, professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:01:26] Jeremi Suri: He’s the founding director of many, many things. I’m just gonna name some of them, uh, the Human Dimensions of Organizations Program, which is a fantastic leadership program. Uh, he’s the former executive director of the IC Squared Institute, which is really unique institute bringing scholarship and policy, particularly at the local and state level together.

[00:01:44] Jeremi Suri: And he’s currently vice Provost for continuing and professional education and new education ventures at the University of Texas at Austin. Uh, in his spare time, art is a prolific and insightful writer for many, uh, important publications, both academic and uh, non-academic. He writes for Psychology Today for Fast Company, for the Harvard Business Review, publishes in all the leading peer reviewed journals and psychology and other fields, and he’s written a number of wonderful books that I want to recommend to those of you who have not read them yet.

[00:02:17] Jeremi Suri: Uh, smart. Think. Which is really a wonderful book on learning to think, uh, more effectively. Smart Change is another book focused more on organizational change. Bring Your Brain to Work. Wonderful. Title. I wish I had thought of that. Title First Art and, uh, brain Briefs co-written, uh, with our colleague, uh, Dr.

[00:02:35] Jeremi Suri: Roberts. Duke, uh, beyond the UT Campus Art is often heard in various settings as a prominent public lecturer. And he’s the co-host, uh, with Bob Duke, uh, of two guys on your head, which is a K U T radio show and podcast that I highly recommend to many of you. And most importantly of all, art, uh, plays saxophone in an Austin SC band called, uh, Phineas Gage.

[00:02:59] Jeremi Suri: What art does not do is sleep, obviously. Is that correct? Art ?

[00:03:03] Art Markman: Uh, you know, no. I’m a big believer in

[00:03:04] Jeremi Suri: sleep. I think you actually sleep more than I do. You’re just more efficient than I am. I think that’s what it is. So, , before we turn to our conversation with art, and today we are gonna talk about, uh, the effects of the pandemic, uh, which is still going on, but is in a different phase from where it was, uh, to almost three years ago.

[00:03:25] Jeremi Suri: We’re gonna talk about the effects of the pandemic on the ways we interact with one another as citizens, the ways our civics have changed, uh, for good and for bad following the pandemic. Uh, but. We talk about that we are going to turn to our, uh, scene setting poem for Mr. Zachary Siri. Uh, Zachary, what’s the title of your poem today?

[00:03:44] Jeremi Suri: Our

[00:03:44] Zachary Suri: Lonely Midnight

[00:03:45] Jeremi Suri: Feasts. Okay. You’re getting me hungry already. Let’s hear it.

[00:03:50] Zachary Suri: It seems a wonder the sky doesn’t fall, that the world still spins. We don’t see at all for, we’ve escaped from the guts of the beast, from our cold and our lonely midnight feasts. So pardon us if we forget the tunes of anthems.

[00:04:08] Zachary Suri: We sang like the lakeside loons, as if the truth could be bought with a song that comes to nothing, just a worthless. So pardon us if we should curse the times or seek some comfort in the childish rhymes. Our lives are about the flippings of dimes. Some they look forward still, some look behind. So pardon us if we don’t understand how urgent the ghosts, how cold the hand that meets injustice.

[00:04:38] Zachary Suri: That will stop the band, which tries to play on top of the graves. So we forget what our own spirit grave. It seems a wonder the sky doesn’t fall or change its hue or swallow us all.

[00:04:55] Jeremi Suri: I love it. Zachary, what is your poem about?

[00:04:57] Zachary Suri: My poem is really about the discombobulation, uh, of living, uh, with so much death, uh, but also of being on our own for so long, uh, that I think so many of us.

[00:05:06] Zachary Suri: Experienced, uh, during the Covid 19 pandemic or the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, I should say. Um, and the ways in which people, um, in that strange head space turn either to a sort of desperate cynicism. Or reliance on small things and still others look for easy answers and big sweeping, uh, worldviews, uh, that often become extremist or, or deeply

[00:05:34] Jeremi Suri: troubling.

[00:05:35] Jeremi Suri: Right, right. So you’re struck by the, the disorganized and different responses from people. , right. So Art, uh, I, I can’t think of anyone more well qualified to comment on this than, than you. You’ve observed this as a citizen, as a teacher, and of course as a scholar. H how would you characterize the responses of, of people to the pandemic?

[00:05:54] Art Markman: You know, I, I mean the, it’s interesting. I, I think when you watch the movies, uh, when there’s a threat, big threat from the outside, there’s always been this belief that that would band everyone. and that, and you know, sort of like in, in Independence Day, you know, the aliens come down and suddenly, suddenly we’re all one.

[00:06:12] Art Markman: But, but actually I, you know, I, I think I, and, and, and of course you, you know, Jeremy, you would know this from a, from a historical standpoint, that’s actually rarely the case. And it certainly wasn’t the case here where, uh, in fact the, the threat from the outside, uh, heightened. Of the divisions that people were experiencing because, you know, in some sense we were, we were afraid, uh, and, and we were unsure of what to do.

[00:06:36] Art Markman: And, and we, you know, there was a, there was a wonderful onion headline at some point that said something like, unprecedented use of the word unprecedented . Uh, you know, because, because we just, none of us really knew how to act and, you know, consequently we, we tended to retreat back into the comfort of, of the familiar.

[00:06:57] Art Markman: Uh, conversations that we were having with people. And, and I think that, that it, it, um, it, it tended to reinforce, um, our, our preexisting beliefs. And it cut down on the, on the number of interactions we ended up having with, with other people, folks who, whom we might disagree with, that that might actually temper some of our, our, uh, each of our more radical.

[00:07:23] Art Markman: Uh, tendencies. And so I think, I think in many ways a lot of people ended up spinning further, you know, further in whatever direction they, they tend towards Anyhow.

[00:07:33] Jeremi Suri: So, so if I, if I hear you right or you’re saying it, it narrowed our worlds, it made our world smaller.

[00:07:39] Art Markman: Well, it, it certainly made our social world smaller and, and it, you know, that that was true both in terms of the actual people we interact with, but also if we think about media, you know, we be, because we weren’t having to have conversations with lots of people, we even tended to consume.

[00:07:55] Art Markman: Part, you know, a, a particular narrow strain of media that, that often, that was fairly consistent with, with, uh, our, our existing beliefs. So yeah, I think, I think for most of us, our world did get narrower.

[00:08:07] Jeremi Suri: And, and is it fair to say that this had a widely unhealthy effect on people’s psychology, or is that, Is that overstating the case?

[00:08:15] Art Markman: Um, you know, I look, I think, I think the whole situation had an, uh, had a generally unhealthy effect on most people’s psychology. I think, you know, one of the things that, that we know from decades of psychology research is that, is that the ability to influence the world or what, what psychologists usually call agency, um, has a big impact on your psychological wellbeing.

[00:08:36] Art Markman: When you feel like you are the author of your destiny, you feel pretty good about. And when you feel like you are being carried along by events, you tend to feel relatively bad about it. And of course, the pandemic was something that most of us couldn’t, had no control over whatsoever. Uh, and, and consequently, I think most of us felt stressed and bad about it to begin with.

[00:08:58] Art Markman: Uh, and so when you combine that with the social isolation, it was, it was just not a good time for most.

[00:09:05] Zachary Suri: How do you think, uh, grief, uh, what, what, what role did grief play, uh, in this psychological, uh, moment in American history? Because, I mean, we were living through times and we continue to live through times when thousands of people are dying of this illness on a regular basis, and yet there never really seemed to be a moment of, of public grief Yeah.

[00:09:27] Zachary Suri: That, that anyone in society could, could feel attached. .

[00:09:31] Art Markman: Yeah, Zachary, that’s such a, a, an interesting way of thinking about it. You know, I, I, as I’ve, as I’ve thought about the pandemic, one of the, one of the things that’s made grief difficult is that grief generally occurs at the point where there is some, some distinct passing or loss.

[00:09:47] Art Markman: And so, you know, the, the death of a loved one, of course, you know, the five stages of grief that we all hear about that, that Kubler Ross described. She actually described those first, not about. But but in the reactions of people who were given diagnoses for terminal illnesses. But what’s fascinating about each of those is that there’s a certain finality that comes to death or a certain finality that comes with the diagnosis, uh, for, for an illness that, that is indeed terminal.

[00:10:14] Art Markman: And, and with the pandemic, while there were lots of people who did. . Um, for most of us, the pandemic was, was just this long period of uncertainty. Remember back in March of 2020, we were thinking, well, surely by May this will be over. And then by May we were thinking, well, okay, maybe October or November. And, and it took an awfully long time for us to realize, no, this is actually gonna be going on for an awfully long time.

[00:10:39] Art Markman: It’s very hard to grieve a moving. . And so I think we were left with much more anxiety than the ability to, to go through a process of grief that’s actually healing

[00:10:50] Jeremi Suri: a and I guess the uncertainty issue plays out in another way too, right? There’s no. Obvious end, right? There’s not a moment when the war ends, right?

[00:10:58] Jeremi Suri: When the Nazis surrender, and so many of us, myself included as a historian, assumed there would be a kind of 1920s, a post-war moment of celebration and exuberance. And we, we never seemed to have had that

[00:11:13] Art Markman: right, or we, we tried right in, in May of 21 when, when people started getting vaccinated and before the Delta wave hit, I think people were like, oh, it’s over.

[00:11:23] Art Markman: And then, and then, you know, there was the specter of, well there was still a little bit of covid out there, and then the next wave hit and we thought, well, okay, it’s not over. And so I think we had a couple of false hopes and then, uh, but yeah, you’re absolutely right. There was not an an, an arm to stay.

[00:11:39] Art Markman: Where, where we could all, you know, have ticker tape parades in the. .

[00:11:44] Zachary Suri: And, and one of the things we talked about actually at the beginning of the pandemic when we discussed the 1918, uh, pandemic in the United States, the Spanish flu as it’s often termed, was the way in which generations of people who lived through that moment, uh, collectively forgot or refused to talk about their experience, an experience that in terms of death toll was worse than the first World war.

[00:12:06] Zachary Suri: Do you think we’ve, as a society fallen back on that same strategy of. .

[00:12:12] Art Markman: Well, I, you know, I, I, I think it is definitely something we’d, we’d like to forget. You know? It’s, it’s, it’s funny, I mean, you know, there, there’s very little of it captured in, in television and in, in movies and in, in other, and in stories really.

[00:12:26] Art Markman: We, we, we have the time before, the time after, and, and even most of the media that was produced, the, the, the, the films and the TV shows really skipped over the masks, right? So, so it, it, we, we have to some degree erase this from, from our collective memory of what’s going on. And, and I, so, so yeah. I think it’s, it, it does seem to be recapitulating that, that, that era And,

[00:12:50] Jeremi Suri: and just to dwell on that a little bit, art, because it’s, it’s so interesting, right?

[00:12:54] Jeremi Suri: I mean, with the analogy to a war, again, you can make heroic or dystopian movies of World War I that are entertaining. Yeah. But a movie about people sitting at home suffering. Yeah. Or, or sitting at home waiting and not suffering. Uh, it, it, there’s really no entertainment value in that. It’s hard to put together a narrative structure.

[00:13:14] Jeremi Suri: What effect? Do we know from psychology that these sorts of forgotten moments have on people? I mean, it’s an experience you have, but it’s an experience where you, you not only lack agency, but you lack an articulate narrative. Yeah, a way of talking about it. What, what, what can we expect that. To, to mean to people.

[00:13:34] Jeremi Suri: You know,

[00:13:34] Art Markman: I, I think one of the things that, that is potentially concerning about this is that it, it could create a kind of persistent anxiety for people. So, um, my, my wonderful colleague Jamie Pennebaker in psychology at at ut has done some wonderful work on expressive writing. When people have gone through a trauma and, and one of the things that that expressive writing about a difficult incident does is it helps you to create a narrative that essentially weaves the strands of your life story together into something coherent, which is particularly important when you’ve gone through something difficult.

[00:14:09] Art Markman: I think that, that what we’re seeing is because people are just kind of owing away. The last few years, rather than really analyzing it and telling a good story about it, we have a bit of a disconnect among all of the threads of what happened that that could actually create some, some long, longer term anxiety because we, we haven’t really told a good story.

[00:14:33] Art Markman: about this era in which there was fear and there were, and we all, I think all of us were, were touched by the pandemic in one way or another. Most of us know a few people at least, who died of Covid. And, and if you don’t really, um, Grab control of that and turn it into a, a narrative part of your life. You, you run the risk of just having this general anxiety that doesn’t seem to have a source that can have an impact on how you continue to see things moving forward.

[00:15:04] Art Markman: And, and that’s really not a healthy place to be.

[00:15:08] Jeremi Suri: I’ve seen some of that. I think art, in the way you described it, so well, really, um, in some of our students mm-hmm. , you know, they lost crucial years of their high school experience, their social experience and other, and, and they don’t know where, where to begin to talk about it.

[00:15:25] Jeremi Suri: and, and, and I think they feel discouraged from even talking about it. Yeah.

[00:15:29] Art Markman: Yeah. I, I think that’s absolutely right. It’s, it was a, you know, for, for, for, for high school students and college students where these are the, the, the period of life that many of us look back on so fondly and, and for them, they, you know, they didn’t have some of those key experiences, but they.

[00:15:46] Art Markman: We are not really encouraging people to talk about that and to talk about the loss that’s associated with it, but, but rather just, you know, figure out how to soldier on from that. And, and, yeah, I, I think it’s, uh, I think actually we should be encouraging people to talk about what that loss was and to talk about what they’d like to make up.

[00:16:04] Art Markman: Uh, for on that, uh, because I, I think it’s, it’s, it’s just an important part of the, of development to, to have a, a rich story about, about your, your upbringing. You, you know, it’s funny when you, when you think about it, I mean, I, I know my, my grandfather. What, what went, uh, went through the Great Depression as a, as a younger, uh, as a child and teen and, you know, it, it had a continued impact on his outlook on finances in life throughout his life.

[00:16:37] Art Markman: And I feel like in part that was because he did not, and was probably never encouraged to step back and ask what did, uh, that that era and not having enough money and not having. Food. What impact did that have on, uh, on his psyche?

[00:16:55] Jeremi Suri: Precisely. I, I think certainly for my grandparents, there was a similar trauma, uh, and then there was an even more difficult trauma, the trauma of being a refugee of migration.

[00:17:05] Jeremi Suri: Mm-hmm. . And, and that was even harder to talk about. Yeah. Um, Zachary, what, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, you experienced this. I, I think as a

[00:17:11] Zachary Suri: society to a certain degree, we have, we’re, we’re very comfortable with talking about. Personal trauma or, or the things that we’ve personally overcome, but talking about these things on a collective level is really difficult.

[00:17:22] Zachary Suri: So I think that, that there’s a sense that like, okay, all of us suffer this together, particularly among young people, right? There’s this sense of collective suffering, um, but it’s not something that you talk about because it’s something that, that, that implicitly everyone around you, you assume to understand, even though we all experience the pandemic in different ways.

[00:17:40] Zachary Suri: So I think to a certain degree, We, we’ve attempted to move on with a sort of acknowledgement of this shared experience that remains tacit and, and unspoken.

[00:17:51] Jeremi Suri: Hmm hmm. Art. Are there good models for addressing this, this lacuna? Yeah.

[00:17:56] Art Markman: Well, I mean, as I say, I think, I think that that some of the work that, that Jamie Pennebaker does of suggesting that we.

[00:18:03] Art Markman: That we actually write about it. Write, write about what did it, what did it feel like, what was it like, you know, those, those, the darkest moments you had, what were they like? It’s unpleasant to do that. It’s no fun to write about difficult times, but it does help to create that story. And I think that that actually in this case, because of exactly what Zachary was saying, that it’s a.

[00:18:24] Art Markman: Uh, experience that, that after writing about it, sharing that writing, talking about it and, and sharing some of the language around it. You know, one of the, one of the, the, one of the things that that makes language so powerful is it gives us words to name things. And once we have those words and, and can use those, it, they become things that we can then manipulate psychologically.

[00:18:48] Art Markman: And I think if we had a sh a more of a shared vocabulary around, Uh, around the pandemic, it actually might help us to, to move on from it, uh, a little bit more easily.

[00:19:00] Jeremi Suri: art. Do you think that, uh, the difficulty we’ve had in narrating and naming our feelings of the last few years, has that contributed to what so many of us have seen, which is, uh, what what appears to be a degrading of civic institutions and civic relations?

[00:19:18] Jeremi Suri: The way people talk to one another, the way they interact with one another? Um, do, do you see these as related pH. Well,

[00:19:26] Art Markman: you know, I think in order to engage in civic life, you, you, you have to be willing to talk about things, and you have to be, you have to have some amount of common ground. You know, the, the core to being able to have any discussion and and for that discussion to be meaningful is for there to be some, some sort of common ground, meaning that there’s both a common set of concepts that you wanna refer to and a common language for talking about it.

[00:19:50] Art Markman: And, and if you lack. Then, then it’s very hard to communicate. There’s some classic studies done in the 1960s about giving directions, uh, in New York City and, and what they found was if, if a New Yorker was giving directions to another New Yorker, they needed way fewer words to tell them how to get from one place to another than if the new a New Yorker was speaking to someone who wasn’t from.

[00:20:16] Art Markman: because in, you know, a New Yorker could just say, look, go head, head downtown four blocks, and then, you know, make a left. And it’s, it’s a half a block, a half a block up the street. Whereas, you know, you have to orient somebody towards like, which direction is uptown versus downtown and things like that. If, if, if you’re speaking to somebody who’s not a New Yorker, and I think that what’s happened to.

[00:20:34] Art Markman: to in, in, in our, with us right now is because we don’t have a lot of common language and, and I think this extends to common language related to the political response to the, to the pandemic as well. We don’t have common language for that, which makes it difficult for us to then begin to talk to each other.

[00:20:54] Art Markman: About the pandemic, but about lots of other things as well, because I do think the pandemic brought to the surface very different beliefs about what the government should be doing about, about the relationship between individuals and civic institutions and those differences. We’re, we’re never named in a way that that gives us a, a common way of discussing that.

[00:21:16] Art Markman: And, and that’s just made it very difficult for us to communicate with each other about some of the very difficult things that have happened politically over the last few years.

[00:21:25] Jeremi Suri: It, that’s so well said. Art, and, and I feel this myself. I, I want like you to be able to talk to everyone, but I have found it so hard to talk to people who are.

[00:21:35] Jeremi Suri: Vaccine deniers. Mm-hmm. or, or Covid deniers. Um, and it seems as if those attitudes have only hardened. Um, how do we understand that and, and what do we do about it?

[00:21:48] Art Markman: Yeah, I mean, I, I think the first thing that we have to do is, is to recognize that, that we are in a. In a real way, speaking a different language from people who hold this vastly different set of beliefs and have not really, uh, had an opportunity to have conversations about those with anyone other than the folks that they.

[00:22:09] Art Markman: Believe in and believe, uh, they believe the same way that they do. And so what what happens is a lot of people will, will write a lot of words about this and they’ll post them on the internet or post them as comments on social media. I occasionally get emails from people based on things that I’ve written, uh, you know, with who, who hold different beliefs.

[00:22:27] Art Markman: But, but there’s no conversation happening. And I think that that’s actually that critical piece is ultimately, That, that in order to communicate with people who hold very different beliefs about the pandemic, uh, for example, than, than than we do, is to actually have conversations in which there’s a real back and forth.

[00:22:47] Art Markman: Because the, what, what conversation does is it, it forces each of us to think similarly for some period of time, even if we believe we disagree. , we have to agree on the terms of the discussion in order to be able to communicate effectively. And, and that’s what that, you know, so the, the paradox is that when you have a conversation with someone that you disagree with, you leave that conversation thinking more similarly to them than when you started.

[00:23:17] Art Markman: Even if you believe you disagree more at the end of the convers. ,

[00:23:22] Zachary Suri: but how do we do that with people or, or, or not just with, I, I I don’t think it’s an individual people group or, or person necessarily, but, but how do we as a society reckon with the fact that coming out of this pandemic, uh, that those conversations are no longer or they, they don’t seem possible anymore.

[00:23:40] Zachary Suri: Not just because we disagree with each other so much, but because we can’t seem to agree on a basic set of facts. Right. On the basic premise from which all. conversations about health policy or education or et cetera have to begin? Yeah,

[00:23:54] Art Markman: I mean, it’s, it’s, it has, it has become even more difficult. I agree with you because there’s, there’s, it’s so hard to figure out where even the basis for the conversation ought to be.

[00:24:04] Art Markman: I think, I think, you know, that what you said is exactly right and, um, you know, I think that that, that to the extent that we want to communicate though, we have to start by trying to find some common ground somewhere. Right. And, and, and figure out if there’s, if there’s anything. Uh, that we can agree on, and, and sometimes the, the way to start that conversation is, is to focus on things that we might both value rather than trying to establish a set of, of facts or, or a set of causal.

[00:24:36] Art Markman: Beliefs. You know, I think that that, that at times we, we might at least be able to find some commonality in, in the, in some of the values that we have that we can use to then begin as a, as a wedge to start having some kind of conversation. .

[00:24:52] Jeremi Suri: That makes a lot of sense. Um, and, and what are the things we, as a society, you think can do to encourage the conversations to go in that direction?

[00:25:00] Jeremi Suri: I mean, we’re, we’re recording this right now as we’re watching even one party that claims to be about the same things in Congress, the Republican party unable even to talk about how to choose a leader of their own party. Right? So, so how would you recommend in that kind of setting or any setting that we as a society begin to move conversations in?

[00:25:20] Jeremi Suri: Very productive sounding direction. Art,

[00:25:24] Art Markman: you know, I, I, I actually think that one way to do it is, is to make the conversations a little bit more local. Uh, you know, and, and of course, you, you know very well that the power of local politics. . Right. And that, you know, as much as, as much time as we spend thinking about the president of the United States and Congress, uh, and even the governor of a state and the state legislature, that so much of what affects our daily lives is what happens at the local level.

[00:25:53] Art Markman: Uh, you know, that are, are my streets paved? Is their water coming to my house? Do I have power? And, and some of that is, you know, much of that is influenced by, by local. And, and I feel like maybe the way out of this is, is to stop looking to Washington, DC, uh, in the United States and stop even in Texas looking to, to the State House in Austin and just start thinking about what’s happening in my neighborhood, what’s happening more locally, because I think a lot of the disagreements begin to fade, be when, when we’re talking about things that are happening in the.

[00:26:33] Art Markman: and, and we can use that to build up some set of common ground that we can then begin to use over time to, to hopefully address some of the, the thornier issues that happen as you pop up to the national level. But I, I think there’s, you’re much more likely to find that agreement at the local level, or at least agreement at, on the terms of discussion, even if you don’t agree on how to resolve the problem.

[00:26:56] Jeremi Suri: Right, right. No, and I think it, you know, it brings us back to. Uh, a literature that you, I’m sure know better than I do, right from the fifties and sixties, very much on the sociology of neighborhoods and the ways in which neighborhood communities are built. The challenge of course, is neighborhoods tend to be a little more homogeneous.

[00:27:14] Jeremi Suri: Right? And that’s one of the reasons that makes these conversations a little easier sometimes. But it has costs as well, does it not?

[00:27:20] Art Markman: Oh, a, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, you, you certainly, there, there’s always a danger when you end up in a pure echo. Uh, and, but, but I, I do think that, that if you, if you, you know, you, you don’t necessarily need to stick in your own neighborhood in order to be able to, to talk locally, right?

[00:27:37] Art Markman: I mean, you know, if in in Austin it’s overall is it has some diversity to it, even if, even if a particular street doesn’t. And so, you know, finding people who, who really you, you know, you disagree with on some fundamental issues, but are still, but still share the common ground of, of, of our geography, you know, would, would actually create those opportunities to have discussions that, that are.

[00:28:03] Art Markman: Um, potentially fraud because you’re speaking to somebody who, who may have significant disagreements with you, but at least you know, you are focused on things that are, that are more local and, and therefore may be a little bit less tinged with, with the national political discourse.

[00:28:20] Jeremi Suri: Do, do you think we’ve done that as a university art?

[00:28:25] Art Markman: You know, I, I, not over the last few years that successfully, uh, in part because of the pandemic, right? I mean, I, I think, uh, you know, we, we, we, we pivoted as a university, uh, early on to, to, um, to, to do a lot of things on Zoom. We taught on, uh, uh, on Zoom. We, we had gatherings on Zoom, but, which is, you know, a great platform for.

[00:28:47] Art Markman: Convening people so that we can do something during a pandemic. But you know, it’s a terrible platform for having side conversations, right? Because really only one person can talk at a time. And so I think, I think the, you know, the, the real question is gonna be what happens as we exit. The, the pandemic as we or at least exit that acute phase in which we’re not getting together.

[00:29:09] Art Markman: You know, do we create opportunities for people to convene, but, but opportunities for people to convene in spaces in which we, uh, then promote some degree of conversation. So I, I have. You know, had the privilege over the years of attending the Great Conversations program that the Annette Straus Institute at, at the University of Texas runs.

[00:29:28] Art Markman: And one of the things I love about that is it, you know, there’s a, there’s a panel and so everyone sits and watches some speakers, but then there’s the encouragement to have a, a local conversation at a table that isn’t necessarily made up with a bunch of people that, that, that are. folks you’re likely to agree with.

[00:29:45] Art Markman: And I, I find that to be really, uh, uh, you know, that kind of experience and that that’s a very powerful thing that a university can do. .

[00:29:53] Jeremi Suri: I agree a hundred percent. Zachary. Yeah. How

[00:29:56] Zachary Suri: do we get young people, college students, uh, and younger high school students, et cetera, who maybe have no experience of this kind of productive civics, uh, who have either only seen, uh, the divisive politics or the divisive, uh, civic discourse, uh, and have never actually experienced, uh, The power of these local conversations and of true civic engagement.

[00:30:21] Zachary Suri: Yeah. How do we get them to understand the importance of that and also just basically how to do that? Yeah.

[00:30:27] Art Markman: Um, it’s such a good question. And, and, and, you know, I, I, I mean, I would, I would love to see high schools, um, create. Opportunities for, for, you know, classes to get together, you know, just an individual class, say a, a history class or a, you know, to, to get together with three or four community members and just, just have a discussion.

[00:30:50] Art Markman: Right. I mean, you know, practice having discussions with people and practice saying things where you realize that, that the opinion you hold might not actually be the majority opinion. And, and you know, just, just getting some practice articulating some of the things that you believe. In a, in a setting in which it’s a true conversation.

[00:31:10] Art Markman: So it’s, it’s not a debate. There’s, there’s not gonna be a winner of the conversation in which, in which your goal is just to be understood by the people around you. I think that’s the only way we can do it, is to practice it. And, and I agree with you that there’s a lot of people who’ve had no practice with that whatsoever.

[00:31:27] Art Markman: And I do think that the pandemic has, has limited the opportunities for, uh, for high school students and college students to be able to practice that. .

[00:31:37] Jeremi Suri: It, it seems to me art, it’s a set of skills that, for a variety of reasons, a, a wide swath of our population either lacks or has forgotten. Uh, do you agree with that?

[00:31:47] Jeremi Suri: And what would you do to try to rectify that?

[00:31:50] Art Markman: I, I do think that that’s, that that’s the case. I think we, we, we, we have not really encouraged people to sit around and have just conversations about things in which, and particularly to have conversations in which the goal is just to learn about the person that you’re talking to as opposed to, you know, believing that you have to win the conversation.

[00:32:13] Art Markman: Right. You know, I, I think, I think we, we have turned conversations into, In which, you know, at the end of the day, somebody’s gotta have some, somebody’s gotta emerge as the winner. Someone has to have convinced the other person of something. And I think, you know, we need to get back to the days of, of, you know, just having a conversation with people.

[00:32:30] Art Markman: Right. And, and maybe the best way to practice that is, is, is not to start with controversial topics, but just to encourage people to, you know, get out a little bit more with the people on their street and, and just, you know, I mean, get outside and have a conversation with your neighbors. You know, it’s, it’s funny, I, I, I mean, how, how rarely most people have the opportunity just to stand out on the yard and, and converse with their neighbors.

[00:32:59] Jeremi Suri: Absolutely. I mean, it, it seems to me it’s of a peace with an overscheduled life. Yeah. Where we, we don’t leave ourself time for the purposeless discussion, which of course has a deeper purpose, but is not directed, as you say, at lobbying someone or trying to get a particular outcome. Uh, yeah. But we don’t, we don’t have time for that in our lives.

[00:33:17] Jeremi Suri: Right.

[00:33:18] Art Markman: Yeah. No, I think that’s right. You know, the other thing is when you have those conversations with people who you disagree with on other matters, you come to realize their fundamental human. , and it seems like a weird thing to say, but, but you know, I think it’s easy to demonize the other right, to, to take somebody and label them as being, you know, in a different, you know, they, they, they believe they’re a member of a different political party than I am.

[00:33:41] Art Markman: So they are the other, and there’s just something wrong with them. And, and ultimately when you, when you sit down and, and have a conversation with people, you realize, no, actually, you know, 99% of what we’re trying to do in our lives is pretty much the same. And then, Then there’s a little bit of stuff that, that, you know, around the edges that differs and, and when you recognize that it, it does create, I think, a lot more common ground and a lot more respect.

[00:34:07] Art Markman: That then enables us to begin, ultimately to tackle some of the more difficult issues where, where we do have significant disagreements across people.

[00:34:17] Jeremi Suri: Right, right. And we know this is true because, uh, when we study, uh, hateful ideologies and hateful groups, uh, what they always try to do is dehumanize the enemy.

[00:34:27] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. They tried to depersonalize. The enemy seem inhuman, so that justifies whatever the kind of hate or violence is. So clearly the opposite matters. Uh, that’s right. In one way or another. That’s so, so art, as you know, we always like to close on a, a note of a sort of practical usefulness, uh, bringing this vast knowledge that you’ve shared with us, uh, basically to a practical level from any of our listeners.

[00:34:53] Jeremi Suri: And you do this better than anyone I know. What, what are the things our listeners can do who are motivated after listening to what you’ve said to actually make a difference? Uh, clearly they should go out and talk to their neighbors more, but what are some other steps, uh, that you would suggest to listeners who wanna make a difference in this direction?

[00:35:10] Art Markman: Yeah. I, I mean, I, I would say first of all, don’t, don’t underestimate the value of a cup of coffee, right? I mean, you know, invite somebody that you know, and you know, you sort of disagree with them. Invite ’em out for coffee with, with no. Uh, intention other than to, to get to know them a little bit better.

[00:35:28] Art Markman: You know, just do that once. I think that, that, that matters. You know, another thing is, is to create, you know, is to, is to create a signal of our common, uh, or some of our commonality. One of the things that I was suggesting after the 2020 election was that everyone should stick an American flag out on their yard.

[00:35:49] Art Markman: Just, just to demonstrate that, that, you know, regardless of the party affiliations we may have that, that fundamentally we still all, you know, are, are all, have some pride in, in, in being, uh, part of the United States. You know, so, so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not just having those conversations, it’s, it’s going out of your way to signal that, that we have some degree of, of commonality.

[00:36:12] Art Markman: And then I would say the third thing is, you know, to the extent that, that we wanna be involved, Politically with people at the moment, maybe focusing more on local issues than national ones, uh, for the moment is, is a great way to go. Um, not that there aren’t significant national issues that need to be addressed, but, but actually we, we may find the, the best way to, to join hands with people who we don’t agree with on lots of other issues is to focus on a certain number of things that are happen.

[00:36:47] Art Markman: In our, in our backyards, that, that if we can, if we can realize we can work together to solve some problems locally, we. We might create a little bit more of the trust that we need to be able to work on some of the thorny or

[00:37:01] Jeremi Suri: national issues. Zachary, what do you think? Art has given us a compelling case for Coffee, for Flags, and for going local.

[00:37:09] Jeremi Suri: Yes. I,

[00:37:10] Zachary Suri: I, I agree. I think, um, you agree on flags. I, I, I, , you know, my thoughts on, on flags already, but I think that, uh, the, the, the power of, of very, not just local in terms of issue-based, local issue-based conversation, but local in terms of the people, you know, the people you already interact with, but have maybe never thought to, to really, uh, have a deep conversation with.

[00:37:35] Zachary Suri: I think that’s really powerful. Um, but I also think that what this real post pandemic civics lesson teaches us is that we. To have more civics lessons and more regularly. I think one of the things, one of the biggest failings I think of our school system during, uh, the pandemic was not to prioritize, uh, civics education.

[00:37:55] Zachary Suri: I think that, that, that, that one of the things that, one of the most valuable things that a student can take from the classroom is, is how to have a civil convers. . And I hope that, that these conversations don’t just occur on podcasts or among academics, uh, but also at schools, um, and between young people.

[00:38:14] Jeremi Suri: Well, and I think what this conversation has displayed and art has given us so much good material here is that a conversation about civics is about much more than simply reading the constitution. Exactly. Though that’s very important too. And it’s certainly, uh, a conversation about civics is. Politically conservative or politically progressive.

[00:38:31] Jeremi Suri: It actually, uh, is not about politics at all. It’s about the very ways in which we interact as citizens, uh, democracy, as our, as our guiding spirit. Franklin Roosevelt would say is about much more than the laws and the, the parchment paper. It’s about the behaviors and interactions of people, and I think that’s what art has shared with us.

[00:38:50] Jeremi Suri: Final question to you, art, to close us out. Are you optimistic?

[00:38:54] Art Markman: Um, I, you know, I, I mean, I am optimistic, but I, I, I, I fear that that’s also just a trait of mine, that I tend to be a glass half full kind of person. But, but I, I, you know, I, I have, I mean, look, I, I would say that things are never as bad as they seem when times are bad, just as they’re never quite as good as they seem when times are good and, and I.

[00:39:16] Art Markman: Feel like, you know, people are resilient. And if we’re, if we’re willing to get out there and to, and to have those kinds of conversations, we, we can begin. To heal from the pandemic and, and hopefully heal from, from some of the, the other political things that have happened, uh, around the same time,

[00:39:34] Jeremi Suri: you know, you’ve given probably the best definition of democracy also, right?

[00:39:38] Jeremi Suri: It’s, it’s never as chaotic as you think it is, nor is it ever as orderly as you hope it would be. . Right? And that’s the, that’s the world we’re in and that’s the opportunity we face Art, thank you so much for sharing your, your insights and your wisdom with us

[00:39:51] Art Markman: today. It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for the invitation to talk.

[00:39:55] Jeremi Suri: and Zachary, thank you for your poem and your wonderful questions and insights. And thank you, most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for another. Of this is Democracy.

[00:40:10] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Its Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Kini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. See you next time.