Chris Walsh: Thank you all for joining us again for another great conversation on how pluralism is working in our country. Very thrilled to be with Marianne Viray, who’s the Executive Director of Disagree Better. Marianne, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us today.
Marianne Viray: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Walsh: Well, let’s start by, if you would, tell us a little bit about your organization and what exactly it’s doing.
Marianne Viray: You bet. Disagree Better is a new nonprofit, but it was incubated in 2023-2024 at the National Governors Association, led at the time by Governor Cox of Utah. And he gathered 22 other governors to participate in a chair’s initiative that he was allowed to hold and pursue during that period of time, with the main goal of having these governors model healthy conflict and constructive disagreement in awareness ads and in events that they held around the country. And so, the nonprofit was spun off from that, because there was something about having leaders model good behavior, democratic norms, engagement, curiosity, stealing each other’s ideas, being open, listening to another perspective, there was something about that that America responded to. And so, the powers that be decided that they needed a nonprofit to continue to preach this message and invite other and additional leaders to also be part of this effort.
Chris Walsh: Which I’m so glad that you have. I mean, it’s a fantastic mission. In fact, the ideas of healthy conflict, or disagreeing better, in my view, is just they’re synonyms for pluralism in a sense. But I’m just curious, what does pluralism mean to you and the organization? How do you view that term?
Marianne Viray: No, absolutely. I think you hit it right on. It is the working definition, isn’t it? I think we really ascribe to the definition of pluralism as a scholar like Yuval Levin has written: that it’s a framework for constructive engagement across differences. That’s what pluralism is. It’s not merely coexisting, but it is engagement. It’s not thinking alike, but it’s acting together for the betterment of all. And we only get to what the betterment for all is through dialogue, through discussion, through deliberation, through working through differences and finding and generating new common ground and understandings. It’s absolutely the core of what we’re doing in practice.
Chris Walsh: Which I love to hear. And when you think about that – and this is maybe not an easy question, but would love to hear your thoughts – when you’re trying to encourage this dialogue, this engagement, this practicing of pluralism, what would you say is the secret sauce of doing that? What are the tangible ways you actually put this into practice?
Marianne Viray: I think the tangible ways are, it’s the harder work of actually engaging, of having dialogue, of getting past the soundbites and the tweets to sitting down with people who think differently than you do and hearing them out, and asking what experiences led them to the perspectives and opinions and policy positions that they have. And I think that when we are able to do that, then there is deeper understanding, there is a deeper relationship that then you’re both interested in preserving and protecting and collaborating because you understand more about why someone believes the way they do and how much common ground you probably actually have.
Chris Walsh: And so that leads me to my next question, which is: we actually had Governor Cox and Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas here a couple of years ago talking and modeling, disagreeing better. And in the course of telling us their story, Laura, Governor Kelly, said something that kind of stuck with me. It was a great laughing line, but she said, when he first came to me about this meeting, Governor Cox, he said, “oh, isn’t this kind of cute?”
Marianne Viray: That was sweet. That’s so nice. We just need to be nice.
Chris Walsh: Right, but you kind of get that hint of skepticism, right? You live in such a polarized time. So, I’m wondering, how do you respond to skepticism about what you just described? Yeah, sure, it sounds nice to get in a room and talk to one another and overcome our differences, but how do you talk to people who are skeptical about this?
Marianne Viray: Yeah, one idea I have is that I think some skeptics have kind of fallen into believing the exaggerated narratives pushed out by social and mainstream media that perpetuate fear and misperception. A really wonderful research organization in the United States called More in Common calls this a “perception gap.” That we think worse of each other. We think we are more divided than we actually are. And by a factor of two, you know what I mean? It’s significant, this gap of what we agree on, or what we disagree with is a lot worse than the truth. And so, I think that the skeptics fall into the industrial outrage complex’s message of how divided and how far apart we are because that just eats fear for breakfast.
But people have more in common. The values that we hold are more similar than we are led to believe by media. And the only way to validate that for ourselves is engagement, is participation, is being part of civic institutions and organizations where you rub up against other people and you find your commonalities.
I also think the skeptics think that we’re trying to shush somebody. And that is absolutely not the case. Pluralism only exists with robust participation of all sides, of all voices, of all factions. And it’s only when there is robust dialogue and disagreement where the best ideas are going to come forward.
Chris Walsh: Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. But thinking about these skeptics a little bit more, I’m sure they would ask, well, how do you know what you’re doing is working? How would you measure success? And I leave it to you to take this anywhere you want, but I would appreciate if you would talk a little bit about in your answer, the videos that Governor Cox and others did, coming together from different sides of the political aisle, but also the Stanford study that has looked at how these videos have impacted ordinary Americans.
Marianne Viray: Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the chance to talk about this. So, during this campaign that the governors led at the National Governors Association, they put out about nine videos of two governors – or a governor and a mayor – of different parties talking and modeling constructive dialogue. And so, these were neighboring governors who had worked together on issues that were relevant to both of their states.
And Stanford – the Politics and Social Change Lab – wanted to see if these ads actually changed anything in America. And so, they ran a really big social science experiment. They showed these ads to people, and then they later asked them a bunch of questions about how these ads impacted them. And what Stanford found was actually that these ads changed people’s behaviors. Because respected and known leaders modeled a behavior, people were more interested and more willing to be intellectually curious, intellectually humble, hate the other party a little bit less, and liked the leaders better for having been in these ads. And so that research, and now a white paper that’s been published that they issued, says broadly that leaders modeling healthy conflict change people’s behaviors because leadership matters. Americans look to cultural leaders and political leaders to set some of our norms and behaviors and expectations. And when our leaders are modeling good behaviors, then that inspires Americans to step up and behave likewise.
And so, we want to put better social norms out there through these advertising campaigns, almost as an awareness campaign about the tenor of our civil discourse and the importance of talking and working together. And we believe that having leaders model this can inspire a nation in ways that can move the needle and reunite us.
Chris Walsh: Which is really encouraging given – just as we talked about earlier – the feeling of being so far apart on all these issues. Even if it doesn’t reflect reality, we feel that way. So, it also sounds like this is helping to improve things like citizenship, how people engage within the country, and how they meet their responsibilities and duties as citizens. Not really a question, but I would welcome any thoughts you have on that comment.
Marianne Viray: No, absolutely. What we found is that people that saw these ads were inspired to take the next step; not only think about “well, maybe I could have a conversation with my neighbor who flies a flag I don’t like.” But also, they were interested in reaching out to a member of Congress. They were interested in researching organizations where they could practice these skills of disagreement and dialogue around differences.
And so, we hope, and this is what we believe Stanford showed, is it opens the door to a whole range of interventions and opportunities for engagement in civic spaces that people can choose from and select what works best for them. Is it a one-on-one phone call? Is it going to a convening? Is it joining a local club? Is it just showing up at a school board meeting and putting voice to an issue they care about or asking their members of that school board or city council how they value and how they work together? Just even that question would have value and merit for a committee to just see that somebody in the public cares about how they conduct their work, how they lead, and how they solve problems together as a body.
Chris Walsh: Now, hopefully someone watching this interview, hearing the great work that you’re doing, is as inspired as we are by the ability to actually engage with people who think differently than us and to disagree in a way that’s not toxic. So. I’m curious, Marianne, what advice would you give to those who are seeking to replicate what you’re doing in their own communities or their families or wherever it may be? What concrete steps can they take to do what you’re doing?
Marianne Viray: You know, I think there are a couple of things. One, I’ve heard Governor Cox say this several times where he has said “I’ve never convinced anyone of anything by criticizing them or calling them an idiot.” Like going low like that, demeaning someone, their character, their intent, has never won anyone an argument in the history of arguments. Do you know what I mean? It’s just, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t bring people to your cause. It actually makes them double down on what they believe. Even if you know factually they’re wrong and the evidence doesn’t support their perspective or their position, if they feel demeaned and belittled, you’ve lost. You’re not going to- so approaching disagreement and dialogue requires an openness, requires
this commonality of our common humanity; that we sink or swim together. It’s not us versus them. It is us. And that means all of us. And that means even those that I have a different perspective with, I have to work to understand and find the areas where we overlap on something.
And so concrete steps are: listen with curiosity. Don’t listen to win an argument. Listen to understand. Ask questions. Ask for the whys behind the positions. Tell me what lived experience, what in your life have you experienced that leads you to believe what you believe? And when we start talking about our lived experience and what we’ve gone through, that’s personal. And that is an understandable position. You can’t argue with someone’s lived experience, you know? And so that brings humanity back into it. We can regulate our own blood pressure. We can regulate our own breathing. You know, we can regulate our own tone in how we engage. We can be hot. We can be passionate. We can disagree vehemently, and we can do so with dignity and respect for the person with whom we are disagreeing. And we can hold those two things, but it takes a fair bit of practicing these skills of having hard conversations. We don’t just come into society or into life with those skills. We’ve got to practice them.
Chris Walsh: I think it’s important and great advice. I’ve heard that democracy is more about disagreement than it is agreement. So, thank you for helping us to disagree better. Best of luck with the new NGO, and thanks for sharing what’s working.
Marianne Viray: Oh, it was my pleasure, Chris. Thank you.
