YOU in The Power Mesh: Your Positions

Whether you hold political power as an elected or appointed leader, or civic power as a citizen, your actions and inactions shape the future. Your beliefs, attitudes, and intentions—both conscious and unconscious—drive these behaviors.

Earlier posts in The Power Mesh explored some of what influences our thoughts and actions: needs, worldviews, shadows, and dreams of the future. Think of these as the backdrop for understanding how we speak and act within this 21st-century Tower of Babel that our polarized nation has become.

This post gets more specific. It looks at the positions we take on the issues dividing us—and what drives them. Take a few minutes to delve into the reasons for your positions on critical issues.

Why Do You Support What You Support?

Each of us has a list of political issues that matter deeply. Yours may differ from mine, but the question beneath them all is:

What’s behind our positions on important issues?

In our action-driven culture, the norm is to react rather than reflect. Psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote about the dangers of “thinking fast” vs. “thinking slow.” He reminded us that it’s easier to respond to immediate needs than to examine where our reactions come from—or to stop, get facts, and control emotional responses.

Thinking fast is often robotic behavior. In our era of expanding AI, our ability to reflect, probe, imagine, and take charge of our behavior will distinguish us as humans. Our polarized politics require us to think before we act today—but they also provide opportunities to strengthen these skills, which will be vital in the future.

Neuroscientists remind us that our rational brain (prefrontal cortex) can override our reactive, fight-or-flight brain (limbic system) when we are tempted to act without thinking. When unconscious motives or emotions take the wheel, our rational brains can steer us back toward conscious choice—but that takes energy and focus!

As AI and other forces reshape our world and our relationship with technology, it’s time to think before we talk and act—to ask what drives our positions as we shape our nation’s direction and our own destiny through both action and inaction.

A Simple Technique for Examining Your Positions

Focus for a moment on you and why you take the positions you do. A powerful self-reflection method is the 5 Whys.

Ask yourself “Why?” when you feel strongly about a position—and then repeat that question four more times to discover the deeper reasons for your positions.

Here’s an example from my own thinking about the federal government’s role in universal preschool education:

1. What is my position and how passionate am I about it?
   The federal government should provide funding to the states for preschool education. On a 10-point scale I am a 9.
2. Why do I take that position?
   Because early-learning opportunities are uneven nationwide and are vital to the nation’s future success and competitiveness.
3. Why do I believe/care about that?
   Because early education shapes a person’s lifelong success.
4. Why do I believe/care about that?
   Because my research—and my lifelong work on how the brain learns—makes it clear that children’s brains develop most rapidly in their earliest years, setting the foundation for further learning and success.
5. Why do I believe/care about that?
   Because I value the human potential of every human being; and I believe that no one is predestined by genes or environment to fail. Learning is how we fulfill our potential.

Try the 5 Whys for Today’s Polarizing Issues

Now, apply the Five Whys to one or more of these hot issues dominating today’s debates. Don’t rush. Sit with each answer before asking “why” again.

Immigration

• What should the federal government do about immigration today?
• Why do you believe/care about this? … (repeat four more times)

Taxing the Rich

• Should people in the top 5% of income pay more taxes?
• Why do you believe/care about this? … (repeat four more times)

Presidential Power

• What limits should exist on presidential authority?
• Why do you believe/care about this? … (repeat four more times)

Women’s Reproductive Rights

• What powers should women have versus the government?
• Why do you believe/care about this? … (repeat four more times)

Go deep. Ask where your positions and feelings come from—and what facts support them. What are your fundamental beliefs (moral, ethical, spiritual) related to this issue?

Understanding Others Through the 5 Whys

This technique is also a non-hostile way to better understand others who seem hopelessly “on the wrong side” of the issue.

Consider sharing this exercise with friends, colleagues, and family. Discuss—not to agree, disagree, or argue—but to understand, expand perspectives, and maybe uncover new possibilities.

To explore rather than react, you may need to bite your tongue, breathe deeply, and just listen. You may find common ground. You may shift your position. And they may discover their own unconscious motives and perhaps see fallacies in their argument.

If anyone’s opinions shift (including yours), that’s a bonus, not the goal.

We Need New Ways to Interact in a Polarized Mesh

The problems facing us are complex—demanding creativity and informed debate, not combat. Yet the ways we deal with them—arguing without listening, bullying, bribing, misinforming, dropping out, gerrymandering, playing win-lose, or engaging in games of chicken—only strengthen polarization and don’t work in the long term. They entrench division when we need out-of-the-box thinking.

This does not mean you shouldn’t take strong stands, protest, and fight for what you believe is right.

To find new solutions, start with yourself. Scrutinize your own positions. Know why you support what you do. Then listen to others with curiosity, asking:

• “Why do I/you support this?”
• “Why do I/you believe that?”
• “Why do I/you care about it?”

These questions open doors, invite understanding, and help translate a common language for the many Babel voices inside and around you.

After decades of facilitating tough conversations in government and business—with leaders and throughout these institutions—I’d still give myself only a C+ at this skill. It’s hard work, and today’s angry polarization makes it even more difficult.

But it’s essential work—because the future depends on our ability to understand and challenge our own positions and to transform polarization into creative tension, mutual insight, and new solutions.

If we start with self-understanding, we can then upgrade how we understand, communicate, collaborate, and solve the problems we all face.

We just might turn this tangled Power Mesh into a network for renewal and shared imagination.

It starts with our own—YOUR—knowing the WHY of your own positions, and even being open to change.