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[00:00.42] So a question that I always get asked is: How?

[00:05.48] How do we integrate different perspectives?

[00:09.19] Well, it's an art and a science and something that has been explored at length by thinkers from Georg Hegel to Ken Wilber.

[00:18.49] But for us here today, I'm going to distill it into three questions that I ask myself.

[00:24.60] Here we go.

[00:25.39] First question: Is there an either/or that can be flipped to a both/and?

[00:31.50] Well, on the issue of race -- yep, we're going there -- the problem is framed as either the system, which is racist, or the individual, who should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

[00:44.78] But naturally, the drivers of racial disparity lie originally with the system, but now also to an extent with the individual, which means we must build systems that empower individuals.

[00:58.86] The question isn’t just do race-based policies work but how might we use race based-policies in a way that allows us to not need them anymore?

[01:09.77] Second question: Is there an opportunity to shift from “what’s right” to "under what circumstances, if any"?

[01:20.11] On the issue of abortion, we can shift from “Who’s right, pro-choice or pro-life?” to “Under what circumstances should abortion be legal?”

[01:30.21] And if we leave out "all circumstances" and "no circumstances," and we integrate the rest of the views of the American public, we will likely end up with a policy that generally elevates the rights of the woman up until a point of viability, and then elevates the rights of the fetus, while making exceptions for rape, incest and a threat to the life of the mother.

[01:54.91] And finally, are there perverse incentives that are making the issue harder to resolve?

[02:01.82] So on the issue of gender transition, we are up against a social media business model that drives poor body image, outrage and polarization, and a healthcare industry that is built around intervention.

[02:18.81] So if we addressed these upstream incentives, then more of us could trust that an individual is making a gender transition not because social media made them feel awful about their body, but because that's truly the right thing for them.

[02:34.49] Now this kind of integration does get confused with both-sidesism, the idea that all sides are equally relevant and valuable.

[02:45.38] It also gets confused with relativism, the idea that there’s no absolute truth, and everything is contextual.

[02:54.14] But the reality is it's unlikely that one of us is entirely right. Usually that's a sign of tribalism.

[03:02.11] It's also unlikely that all of us are equally right.

[03:05.83] That's both-sidesism.

[03:07.96] What's most likely is that most of us are partially right, and some of us are more right than others, which doesn't make for a great tagline.

[03:17.78] But that's what's up when we're contending with the complexity of reality.

[03:23.89] So next time you are in a gridlocked argument about some hot political issue, assume that the other person has some nugget of insight, and your job is to find it and incorporate it into your perspective. Challenge yourself to not just listen to each other and hang out on the horizontal plane, but to enter a new dimension.