Mónica Guzmán emphasized the importance of curiosity, openness and thoughtful discussion during a moderated lecture in the Hinckley Center Assembly Hall on May 8.
Guzmán is a journalist and author of the book “I Never Thought of It That Way,” in which she stresses the importance of putting yourself in other people’s shoes when discussing complicated subjects.
One topic, brought up both in the book and the lecture, was going “beyond your ken.”
“If something is ‘beyond your ken,’ it’s beyond your sight,” Guzmán said. “It’s really just beyond your knowledge.”
She continued to emphasize that when something is “beyond your ken,” people tend to fill in the blanks of what they don’t know with projections. These assumptions can be exaggerated in the imagination, which leads to misperceptions about the “opposite side.”
“We tend to assume a lot,” Guzmán said. “We tend to assume that anyone who holds this other idea will hurt us and the world.”
Originally from Seattle, Guzmán reflected that there was a bit “beyond her ken.” This became apparent after the 2016 election. She asked herself, “What am I missing?” Utilizing a feature online, Guzmán found the closest county that voted exactly opposite to her own.
She found a small agricultural county right on the border of Washington that comprised about 2,000 people. After doing some research, Guzmán decided to have a peaceful conversation to learn more about the other side's perspective.
“The liberals from Seattle drove down to meet the conservatives in this Sherman County,” Guzmán said.
When they met together for the first time, their assumptions about each other ran rampant. However, by asking a series of questions about why each individual leaned a certain way, they learned and began to understand each other's points of view.
“Oftentimes there’s an assumption that we make in our politics,” Guzmán said. “And that assumption is, ‘If you oppose what I support, you must hate what I love.’”
One of the solutions emphasized during Guzmán's lecture was the power of research. By gathering evidence, better practices and avenues can become apparent. Another solution is to incorporate a more emotional dimension in conversations.
Guzmán highlighted five “dials” to check the emotional status of a conversation before getting involved: embodiment, parity, attention, containment and time.
“A lot of times when we jump into spaces with a political disagreement, things can really just take off,” she said.
By utilizing the five “dials” as controls during a conversation, disagreements can turn into discussions.
Tanner Day, an attendee of the lecture and a current master of computer science student at BYU, appreciated the different aspects emphasized through the “dials.”
“I’ve been really interested in trying to get better at having really good conversations and addressing thorny issues,” Day said. “I liked the dials because all of those aspects are really important to take into account when having those types of interactions.”
Another attendee, Amanda Peterson, loved the lecture and said she could’ve listened to Guzmán talk for several more hours.
“I love that we had some action items to try hedging language,” Peterson, a career director at BYU, said. “We could have done this for like eight more hours.”