I spend a surprising amount of time in rooms where I hold the ideological minority.
I care about climate action, social justice, institutional accountability, and the way systems shape people’s lives. I also sit, regularly and willingly, with conservatives, often Christians, who care deeply about personal morality, sin, and individual responsibility. We read the same texts. We love the same communities. We want people to flourish.
And yet, when we talk, it can feel as though we inhabit different universes.
They talk about personal sin.
I talk about institutional sin.
They say, “The meaning is obvious.”
I say, “This is one interpretation among many.”
They feel I am diluting truth.
I feel they are shrinking it.
And here’s the thing I’m learning the hard way: the reason these conversations fail is rarely because of facts, logic, or even theology.
They fail because people feel attacked.
Not always overtly. Not because anyone is shouting. But because, underneath the words, there is a quiet emotional message being sent:
“You are wrong.”
“You are naive.”
“You are morally compromised.”
“You don’t understand.”
And the moment that message is felt, even if it is never spoken, then real conversation ends.
I’m learning to speak differently so that someone who disagrees with me does not feel attacked. Not persuaded. Not converted. Not defeated. Just… safe enough to stay in the conversation.
A lot of this learning comes from trial and error. But two books crystallised it for me:
- Validation by Caroline Fleck – which
explains how people can feel understood without you agreeing with them. - Amplify by Adam Met – which
explores how to talk about climate in ways that connect with different
audiences rather than preach to the choir.
And a podcast episode that struck me recently: George Saunders speaking to Akshat Rathi on Zero,
in the episode “George Saunders goes inside the mind of a climate denier: Imagine series.”
Saunders had written fiction from the perspective of someone who denies climate change. He tried, deeply, to inhabit that mindset with empathy. And yet he admitted something uncomfortable:
The people he would like to convert, don’t read his books. And he finds himself preaching to the choir.
He asked Akshat Rathi how to reach across the divide.
Akshat, who has interviewed oil executives and people who do not act in good faith on climate change, aims to have conversations from which the other side also walks away with respect because they’ve come back on his podcast because even though the questions were hard and they were pushed back, they felt like it was a conversation where he heard them and that they felt it was a fair
conversation.
That conversation felt painfully familiar to me.
Because I also speak, write, and try to persuade. And mostly get nods from people who already agree.
So, what does it actually take to have a conversation where someone who disagrees with you doesn’t feel attacked?
1. Stop trying to be right in the moment
This is a hard shift for me.
In heated discussions, I tend to aim for clarity. I want the argument to be correct, precise, morally consistent. I want to point out the gaps, the contradictions, the blind spots.
But what this is actually doing is broadcasting: “I am more thoughtful than you.”
Caroline Fleck writes that validation is not agreement; it is communicating that someone’s inner experience makes sense. People calm down when they feel understood, not when they are corrected.
So instead of saying:
“You’re missing the systemic part of this.”
I’m learning to say:
“I can see why this feels like a personal responsibility issue to you.”
Nothing about that sentence surrenders my view. But it lowers the emotional temperature.
Because the other person hears: “I’m not being dismissed.”
2. Name the values you share before the conclusions you don’t
Adam Met, in Amplify, argues that climate communication fails when we lead with data and policy instead of shared values. People care about what aligns with their identity, not what defeats their
argument.
I realise we’re often doing the opposite.
When someone says, “People just need to reject sin and live in God’s grace,” my instinct is to point out structural injustice, corporate influence, political systems.
But what if I start here instead:
“All of us here care about people living well and not harming others.”
Now we are standing on the same ground.
Only then can I say:
“I just think some of the harm comes from systems people don’t individually control.”
That shift, from opposition to expansion, changes the tone completely.
3. Don’t call their interpretation “wrong” call yours “additional”
This is transformative.
They say: “This is the obvious reading.”
My instinct: “It’s not obvious at all.”
What I now say:
“That’s one way to read it. I read it slightly differently because…”
It sounds trivial. It is not.
Calling someone’s interpretation “wrong” threatens their identity. Offering yours as an additional lens invites curiosity.
You’re no longer taking something away. You’re adding something.
4. Replace correction with curiosity
When someone says something, I think is misguided, I now ask:
“Can you say more about how you came to that view?”
This does two things:
- They feel respected.
- I learn where the belief actually comes from.
Often, it is not ideology. It is experience. Fear. Tradition. Trust. Community.
And once I understand the roots, I stop arguing with the surface.
5. Separate the person from the position
George Saunders did this brilliantly in fiction: he inhabited a climate denier without mocking him.
That is incredibly hard to do in real life.
When someone defends oil companies, my mind jumps to environmental destruction. But the person in front of me might be thinking about jobs, stability, family livelihoods.
If I attack the position as immoral, they feel personally accused.
If I say:
“I can see why protecting jobs in your community matters to you,”
they don’t feel attacked, even if I later discuss environmental consequences.
6. Validation first, perspective second
Fleck’s central idea is that validation calms the nervous system.
So now I aim to do this consciously:
- Reflect their position back to them.
- Show I understand why it makes sense.
- Only then share my perspective.
For example: “It sounds like you’re worried that focusing on climate distracts from living for the afterlife. That makes sense if you see God’s kingdom solely as a place to go to after death. I tend to see responsibility as shared between individuals and institutions in order to bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven…”
7. Drop the need for the “win”
The more I try to win, the more people feel attacked.
The more I aim to understand, the more they relax.
And the more they relax, the more open they became.
8. Speak from your experience, not from abstract correctness
“I think this because…” lands very differently from “The evidence shows…”
The first is human. The second feels like a weapon.
9. Acknowledge uncertainty openly
They claim certainty. I claim multiplicity.
But instead of saying, “There are many interpretations,” I try to remember to say:
“I might be wrong, but this is how I’ve come to see it.”
That vulnerability disarms defensiveness.
10. Remember: feeling attacked is emotional, not logical
No one feels attacked because of facts.
They feel attacked because they feel judged.
So I ask myself before speaking:
“Does this sentence sound like judgement or curiosity?”
If it’s judgement, I need to rephrase.
What surprises me most is this: when people don’t feel attacked, they often become more reflective than when they are confronted.
Akshat Rathi’s experience interviewing oil executives is telling. They come back. They talk openly. Not because he agrees-but because he doesn’t attack.
And yet, like Saunders, he still mostly reaches people who already care.
Which suggests something uncomfortable:
The goal may not be to reach “the other side” in one conversation.
The goal may be to create conversations where disagreement is survivable.
Where no one feels morally humiliated.
Where staying at the table is possible.
Because once people feel safe, change, if it comes, comes slowly, quietly, privately.
Not in the heat of debate.
I still sit in those rooms.
They still talk about personal sin.
I still talk about institutional sin.
We still read the same texts.
But often, the conversations last longer. They are warmer. Less defensive. More curious.
If I still feel attached, I try to turn the other cheek and avoid attacking back.
And feeling safe, I’ve learned, is the real prerequisite for being heard.