By Stephanie Lepp
My first experience with political activism was completely alienating.
I was a freshman in college, and I joined the Redwood Action Team at Stanford (acronym: RATS) for a city council meeting in Mendocino — a coastal town north of San Francisco. We were there to protest the logging of the Northern California redwoods.
At the time, an environmental activist named Julia Butterfly Hill was living in one of those redwoods. We called her on a cellphone, and she gave us a pep talk, on speaker, from her redwood tree.
It was all very exciting…but I noticed something strange.
I noticed that the people we were protesting against looked like very humble people. They were loggers with their families, and they looked like migrant workers. And I thought to myself: I don’t want to be on the opposite side from those people. I want to be on the same side as the trees and the people. The way these lines are drawn doesn’t make sense to me.
That was the end of my involvement with RATS, and with politics — for a while. But it was also the beginning of my fascination with integrating different perspectives, which recently led me to create Faces of X. (“X” means any topic, not the network formerly known as Twitter.
Faces of X is a series of short videos that integrate different perspectives on divisive social issues. First, each video presents the strongest arguments on each side. Then — through the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis — each video integrates those arguments into a synthesis.
Tangle gave me the opportunity to share Faces of X, and explore the power of synthesis.
Throughout history, thinkers from places as disparate as ancient Greece and imperial China have practiced the art of contemplating different perspectives in order to find a more comprehensive view. But in America today, we can hardly interact with different perspectives, let alone integrate them. Our viewpoint diversity has become a weakness rather than a strength.
In response to polarization, it’s easy to fall into reflexive both-sides-ism — presenting different perspectives as equally irrelevant or valuable, regardless of the evidence or ethical considerations. American media should be more balanced, but in a way that doesn’t create false equivalence or obscure truth. This is precisely what Tangle aims to achieve, and why we love it.
Meanwhile, even in the so-called “heterodox” space, nuanced thinking can often devolve into knee-jerk contrarianism. Knee-jerk contrarianism has become a new orthodoxy, just as pernicious as the old orthodoxies. Someone I recently met at Pamela Paresky’s gathering of Thought Criminals actually called it “heterodox orthodoxy.” (Thought Criminals is a monthly gathering in New York which explores ideas that challenge prevailing orthodoxies in the context of free speech and intellectual diversity.)
At what point of cultural adoption does heterodoxy cease to deserve that label? We’ve learned how to do equal-opportunity criticism — critiquing both progressive and conservative viewpoints — but what about equal-opportunity praise? What about taking insights, no matter where they come from, and integrating them into a bigger picture, in a way that doesn’t devolve into superficial both-sides-ism?
That was precisely the challenge I faced as a freshman in the redwoods: how to integrate the perspectives of the trees’ advocates, and their lumberers in a way that transcends superficial both-sides-ism. And that’s precisely the challenge I take up in Faces of X.
Faces of X is a series of short videos that seek to integrate different perspectives on divisive societal issues, like capitalism, gender, and race.
Each video features two conversants, played by the same actor, who start by “steel-manning” (presenting the best version of) different perspectives on the issue. Then, each video attempts to integrate the steel-man perspectives into a synthesis. Synthesis goes beyond both-sides-ism, because it considers different perspectives without assuming they’re equally significant. Eventually, a synthesis becomes a new thesis in our evolving understanding of reality.
How might we articulate a synthesis perspective on capitalism? Liv Boeree — game theory expert and host of the Win-Win podcast — stars in the Faces of Capitalism episode:
Here’s the key section from the synthesis (2:56-3:24):
Capitalism is the most extraordinary engine of economic growth we’ve ever seen. And, its benefits have not come for free. It’s not that capitalism is evil, just partially blind. It’s great at maximizing profit, but that comes (in part) by externalizing costs. And those costs have always been high, but now they’re globally existential. Which means: it’s time to change the game.
And now, we increasingly can change the game, because of capabilities that capitalism enabled us to build — like for example: closed-loop production systems, and platforms for decentralized coordination.
In other words, capitalism has brought us to a terrifying and miraculous point at which humanity must change, and is newly able to change.
The point is not that capitalism has upsides and downsides, which would be akin to both-sides-ism. The point is that capitalism’s downsides are bringing us to the brink of self-destruction, but its upsides are what’s enabling humanity to move on.
Similarly, how might we articulate a synthesis perspective on gender? Faces of Gender stars Buck Angel — speaker, entrepreneur, and sex educator who underwent one of the first FTM transitions and was interviewed by Tangle in a piece about pornography. For decades, Angel has been at the center of the most hotly debated aspects of trans identity and its relationship to biological sex. And in that time, he’s been canceled by the progressive young trans community for questioning youth medical transition and highlighting de-transitioners.
In Faces of Gender, Angel acknowledges that he has been harsh, but because he cares about the safety of trans youth. His words attempt to integrate progressive insights into a synthesis view:
Here’s the key section from the synthesis (4:21-4:44):
I think we’d all love for everyone to feel comfortable in their bodies. But the truth is: no one feels comfortable 100% of the time – especially not teenagers. There will always be people for whom gender transition is the right path. And — to the extent that we create a culture where more people feel more comfortable in whatever body they inhabit — that path will be chosen with greater confidence.
The point is not that gender transition is not the right path for everyone, which is obvious to the point of unhelpful. It’s that we must create conditions where the choice to transition is influenced less by social media-driven body insecurity and healthcare-driven over-medicalization, and more by people’s actual sovereignty and self-dignity, which might make gender transition a less common and more credible choice.
The potential pipeline of Faces of X is infinite. I’d love to produce Faces of Guns, Faces of Feminism, Faces of Artificial Intelligence, and more. What Faces of X video would you love to see?
Taking a step back, what are we actually doing when we integrate different perspectives?
One nice metaphor is parallax vision. The view from our right eye is slightly different from the view out of our left eye. Each eye gives us a view that’s true and partial, but it’s only by looking through both eyes together (along with other visual cues) that the world goes from flat to 3D.
Another useful metaphor is the truth cylinder. Again, we’re playing with increasing dimensionality. The square and the circle are ‘true’ 2-dimensional shadows, but the cylinder is the 3D ‘truth.
Put simply: perspective integration can give us a more holistic view of reality.
In contrast, the internet often gives us binary choices: pro-vax or anti-vax. Pro-choice or pro-life. Woke or anti-woke. Choosing one or the other leaves insights off the table. Vaccines shouldn’t be taken always, nor should they be taken never, so the question isn’t “pro-vax or anti-vax” but “under what circumstances should vaccines be taken?” With respect to abortion, most Americans don’t identify with purely “pro-choice” or “pro-life,” and instead favor abortion rights with limits. And with respect to wokeness, the oppressor-oppressed frame is critical and overdue, but not always the most relevant.
Still, when we talk about integrating different perspectives, we don’t necessarily mean all perspectives. Some perspectives are inherently un-integrate-able. ‘No abortion under any circumstances’ and ‘abortion under all circumstances’ don’t play well with other perspectives. In seeking a synthesis perspective on race, if the thesis is the anti-racism proposed by Ibram X. Kendi, the anti-thesis is not racism or white supremacy — that would be un-integratable. The antithesis is actually the color-blindness proposed by Coleman Hughes. We must be discerning about which perspectives we’re integrating, and how we frame the sides of the debate.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely that one side is entirely right. It’s also unlikely that all sides are equally right. It’s more likely that most of us are partially right, but some of us are more right than others. That doesn’t make for a great tagline, but it avoids the pitfalls of tribalism and both-sides-ism in pursuit of a more comprehensive view. Our view will always be partial, and we can always strive to see more faces of the diamond that is reality.
It is said that the root cause of our interrelated crises is: our inability to see reality as a whole. It’s our inability to see that our department stores are stocked amazingly…due to sweatshop labor and polluted air, and that the values of choice and life…give each other meaning. We live in a media environment that divides us into tribes, and fragments reality into seemingly disconnected parts. Our media environment was itself developed by a fragmented consciousness that prioritizes short-term profit at the expense of other values — and makes people, to quote Faces of Capitalism, “worth more outraged and addicted than conscious and free.” In its own small way, Faces of X seeks to cultivate our capacity to perceive the wholeness of reality.
Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, 'It’s an optical delusion of consciousness to believe there are separate things. There’s one whole that we call ‘Universe,’ and our task is to develop our capacity to perceive it.'
Since my experience in the Mendocino redwoods, I’ve returned to politics; because I now have a way to put tree-huggers and loggers on the same side — by steel-manning their perspectives and integrating them into a bigger-picture view.
The next time you’re arguing with someone about some hot political issue, consider: under what circumstances is what the other person is saying true? What if your views are not completely clashing, but somehow complementary? How might you integrate your views to create a bigger picture?
Stephanie Lepp is an award-winning producer and storyteller and leader of Synthesis Media, an independent production studio devoted to giving you a bigger picture. Watch Faces of X, and share it with someone you’d love to find synthesis with.
