Skill Building for Peacemakers: Depolarizing Within

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Members of First Universalist’s Peace Circle have invested the last three years in learning about peace – defining it, learning how other people understand it, and studying author and educator Paul Chappell’s powerful insights. This fall, the Peace Circle is hosting three “Skill Building for Peacemakers” workshops to help equip folks with strong, usable skills to be active daily as peacemakers.

The second of three workshops this fall, led by Carol Marchel, is called: “Depolarizing Within: Becoming a Better Angel in Your Own World.”

Much of today’s epidemic of toxic polarization is driven by how we talk with like-minded people about those on the other side. Too often we stereotype, dismiss, or ridicule our fellow citizens who support the other political party, its leaders, and its policies. Political conflict and stereotyping have always been around but were less problematic when people interacted more outside their own silos. Nowadays, people on the other side have become not just strangers but enemies. How we talk among ourselves about them fuels fires that threaten our democracy. In this workshop, we learn the discipline of non-polarizing attitudes and words about the political “Other” with whom we share a national past and future?

This workshop will: help you become more aware of polarization inside us and between us; teach you skills for being critical without demonizing, dismissing, or stereotyping the millions of people who differ from you politically; help you learn how to intervene in a constructive way in social conversations that veer into contempt and ridicule for people who hold other political views—just in time for the holidays, to skillfully meet the challenge of sitting next Uncle Fred or Cousin Ida at Thanksgiving Dinner.