Tania Israel

Beyond Your Bubble is a short book full of information on how to talk to people with whom you disagree passionately in order to come to a position of mutual respect. It has several exercises to help readers practice their cross-partisan dialogue and sample conversations between people with opposing viewpoints coming to an understanding that while they disagree, their disagreement is rooted in admirable values that should be respected.

The world is divided and families have fractured over partisan divisions on issues such as abortion, immigration, and universal health care. Tania Israel’s book is based on research on how to talk to people, research that demonstrates that facts not only do not matter, they actually work to harden people’s opposition and make them more extreme. She suggests talking about why we believe what we believe in terms of our lives and our values, not with facts or research.

I can see Beyond Your Bubble being useful for families who are fracturing over political division. Few families are free of the divide created by partisanship and the delegitimization of loyal opposition. I struggled with the book for a couple reasons. First, the text sounds like a transcript of a workshop. The language level and approach is overly-simplistic and often sounds condescending. What works for a Ted Talk does not work when it is in writing because we can grasp things more quickly and refer back. Using the language you would use in a workshop when writing set my teeth on edge.

The other challenge is just plain disagreement. She thinks coming to a position of mutual respect for each other’s values is a win. I can understand that anti-vaxxers value purity, keeping chemicals, and pollutants away from their children and how much they want to protect their children. On the other hand, they kill people and endanger us all with the risk of developing vaccine-resistant viruses. Sorry, mutual respect is just not possible. I don’t want to be okay with tolerating their position. While I am certain Tania Israel has strong values, there is this quality to these exercises that remind me of Alinsky’s tools for radicals that worked equally well for reactionaries.

Beyond Your Bubble will be released on August 4th. I received an ARC from the publisher through Shelf Awareness.

Beyond Your Bubble at the American Psychological Association
Tania Israel author site

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