Henry Thomson, associate professor in Arizona State University’s School of Politics and Global Studies, said online platforms encourage anonymous interactions that fuel uncivil political discourse not seen in face-to-face conversations.
“I think the online world—the social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, where students are active and having conversations—has led to a rawness in political discourse,” said Thomson. “People, because they are often anonymous or dealing with others they’ll never meet in person, are willing to say things online that they would never say face-to-face.”
Thomson made these remarks during a Grand Canyon Times podcast episode with host Leyla Gulen, where he discussed campus polarization and free speech following the killing of activist Charlie Kirk. According to Thomson, “I think the online world—the social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, where students are active and having conversations—has led to a rawness in political discourse (…) People, because they are often anonymous or dealing with others they’ll never meet in person, are willing to say things online that they would never say face-to-face.” According to the podcast episode, Thomson drew from international experience to compare U.S. trends with global patterns and highlighted social media’s role in changing university culture.
The impact of social media on public debate is reflected nationally. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that 64% of adults in the United States believe social media has a bad impact on democracy, with 79% saying it makes people more divided in political opinions. This was the highest rate among 19 countries polled.
At Arizona State University, efforts are underway to address polarization through forums for civil disagreement. The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership hosts the Civic Discourse Project, which includes debates on finding common ground and factionalism to foster respectful dialogue amid divisions driven by social media.
Globally, there were 4.26 billion social media users in 2021—a number projected to reach six billion by 2027. <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10439458′>A study published in the European Journal of Public Health said that while these platforms offer connectivity, they also contribute to misinformation and polarization, eroding personal responsibility and civility in discourse.
Thomson is originally from New Zealand and studied Political Science, Economics, International Relations, and German literature at universities in Wellington, Tübingen, Berlin, and Minnesota. Before joining ASU as an associate professor, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College at Oxford University.
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FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Leyla Gulen: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I’m your host, Layla Golan. In this episode, we welcome our guest, Henry Thompson. Henry is an associate professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University, and as a political economist has worked. Focuses on comparative politics, political economy, and international relations with research interests that include authoritarian rule, transitions to democracy, ag, and rural policy.
You know, these themes are outlined in his two successful books, food and Power, and watching the Watchers. Communist elites, the Secret Police and Social Order in Cold War Europe, and you can also catch him on his podcast. Optimistic American. We’re so glad to have you here with us, Henry. Welcome.
Henry Thomson: Thank you very much, Lele.
It’s great to be here.
Leyla Gulen: Well, you sound like a very busy man.
Henry Thomson: I, uh, I do keep busy actually, but it’s more my, uh, two kids under four years old that keep me busy than any of the stuff that you mentioned. [00:01:00] Oh, that would be easy if I didn’t have the little rugrats. Uh, yeah. I use that a lot.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, I hear that a lot about having children.
Sure. Um, so today we’re gonna be talking about. A disconcerting cultural shift. You know, it’s one that we’ve seen play out in the last several years, political debate and contention among college students. You know, rising polarization and the influence of social media have really intensified these disagreements, and it’s broken down the ability to have a civilized discussion.
Of course, you know, we’re having this conversation in the wake of the murder of political activists and firebrand. Charlie Kirk, so, so Henry, why do political discussions among college students so often become divisive rather than constructive?
Henry Thomson: It’s a good question, Layla, because I think maybe, uh, if you went to university like I did, you might remember sort of having pretty [00:02:00] contentious debates, uh, with your friends either in class or over coffee or drinks or something outside of class.
And it didn’t really seem to be that much of a big deal. At least that, uh, certainly my experience and my recollection of my student days. And I think those sorts of discussions are a big part of how. Young people come to form their political opinions, work out. What they think about different ideas is basically by trying them out against their friends and against their professors and their, uh, fellow students.
So there’s been a kind of a decline in this, and I’m not really an expert on the exact causes of this, but I would. Just say that there are a few things that spring to mind to me. The first is just that, you know, American politics and not just in the United States, but in other countries as well. It’s just become way more polarized since the, uh, good old days, I guess, you know, in the, in the early two thousands when I was a student, people just are much more divided over political issues than they were before in they’re kind of hunkered down.
And their relative stances. I think that’s a big, a big issue and [00:03:00] people seem to take offense more often. Personal offense about people who disagree with them, rather than just seeing it as for what it is really, which is a, which is a political disagreement. It’s kind of ironic to me that the country can be so polarized and people can feel actually quite negatively about people who don’t.
Agree with them and they know that they’re out there, and yet when they’re confronted with a dissenting agree, uh, opinion from what they believe, they seem to really get, uh, really get offended. And that’s spilled over, I think, into classroom discussions for sure. And I also think that the, um, the online world, right, the social media, the, um, platforms like Reddit, that students are on Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff that they’re on, and having conversations on it has led to a.
A rawness in political discourse that people, because they’re often anonymous or at the very least, they’re dealing with people that they’ll never meet in person. They’re just willing to say things about them online that they would never say to people in person, and [00:04:00] that I think, has spilled over into, into real life interactions on campus that students see that stuff, that tone online.
And it really chills their interactions on campus as well because they, uh, presumably worry that they’re gonna be dealt with or, uh, confronted in person the way that they are on the internet.
Leyla Gulen: And, uh, by your accent, you were not born in this country. No. Would you, would you say that, uh, it’s the same elsewhere around the world that it’s, it’s sort of a global shift?
Or do you think this is purely American?
Henry Thomson: It’s not purely American. I think that it’s probably more pronounced in America. I mean, I remember as a young guy, I’m originally from New Zealand, and I remember as a young student, uh, sort of seeing. Coverage of American politics on TV and things and being kind of astonished at the level of contention and division in this country.
And yet I would say that, uh, New Zealand has got similar divides now. Um, especially the [00:05:00] pandemic and the pandemic policies in New Zealand brought up these sorts of deep, deep divisions in society that had been kind of latent or muted before. And, you know, I, before I moved to Arizona State, I actually worked at the University of Oxford in the uk.
And it was very, very polarized there. It was more polarized actually than, uh, than when I was at graduate school at the University of Minnesota. And I think there is something about elite universities. The students are very politicized, they’re very engaged. And contemporary political debates and, um, to a degree not as pronounced at big public universities like a SU or the University of Minnesota in those days.
And, um, that seems to be where we see the most contentious sort of debate as well. And so at Oxford it certainly was the case that that, uh, real robust debate among the students just was, to be honest, pretty impossible. And I think that, um, I think that’s still the case today.
Leyla Gulen: Would you say that that bled into their social [00:06:00] lives as well, or was it strictly the debate within the academic realm?
Henry Thomson: I think, I think to be honest, that the academics are probably better about this than the students because professors are used to. Basically fighting each other because that’s basically what they do all the time. You know, you write a paper and you think you’ve got something right? And then your colleagues tell you you are wrong, and you go back and revise it five times and then, and then they concede, well, maybe there’s something enough right here that we’ll let it through and it can be published.
You know, so professors, I think, uh, in many ways are more. Uh, used to and accepting of this kind of hard knuckle, uh, elbows out kind of discourse than the students. And so for me it really was the students that I was quite astounded at the way that they would, um, yeah, indeed. Not just in their interactions in class or at these debating societies and things they had at Oxford, but also in their social lives.
You know, you could tell that there were big divisions around politics and that these were not really being dealt with in particularly productive ways. [00:07:00]
Leyla Gulen: It’s really interesting. Do college campuses still serve as places for open political dialogue or, or they have just become too polarized for a real debate?
I
Henry Thomson: think it really depends which college you’re talking about. Mm-hmm. Um, I can’t really speak to the elite American campuses because I only saw this at the University of Oxford. Although, to be honest, the University of Oxford, a lot of the most contentious debates were actually happening among Americans, right.
Who go to Oxford, uh, as, um, graduate students predominantly, but at a big public university like Arizona State, I have to say, I really do think that the. Political debate is still happening. I think most or many, at least faculty members are trying very self-consciously to allow students to have debates on campus.
There really are such a diversity of views on a big campus like a SU, where you have people coming from all over the country, even all over the world. It’s not this kind of monoculture, intellectually and [00:08:00] politically like you get at the more selective, uh, private. Elite universities. I think that’s where we see more of a, um, to be honest, you know, more of just a conformity because everyone kind of agrees and so the few dissenting voices find it very difficult to speak out in class or whatever.
But at a SU when we all know that. You’ve got every type of political and religious and national, uh, view and predisposition. You know, I could go on, it’s all present here on campus and the students know that. And so I don’t think there is, uh, there is, um, reticent in coming forward with their own views, although it’s not to say it’s not a problem at all, you know, I do think that it varies from context to context, but on the whole, I think that it’s much better here than other places.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. What, what role should universities play in encouraging students to engage with political issues? Respectfully, thoughtfully, you know, uh, with, with dignity?
Henry Thomson: You know, I think that’s kind of one of [00:09:00] the core, real purposes of the university, to be honest. It’s something that I am a little shocked that universities seem.
To have to think self-consciously about. To me that’s something that just has always gone hand in hand with the university. And you know, I’ve studied and um. In four countries, New Zealand, the United States, Britain, Germany. Um, I never thought before the last sort of 10 years or so that it would be something that universities would have to actually self-consciously, uh, pursue is open.
Debate around whatever politics or other, you know, scientific ideas, intellectual ideas. These were all just, it was always just something that was going on. You know, just a cacophony of voices, people expressing all sorts of views from the professors who would have fights, you know, about their various. Uh, research agendas, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, to the, to the extent that we students even know what’s [00:10:00] going on with that stuff. Uh, and then you’d have all these student groups advertising various events and, uh, all putting forward a different perspective on different things. It never, it never occurred to me that this could become a, a problem for universities because it just seemed so baked in.
But there’s something about the present moment. Uh, you know, it, I think we all know it, that something has changed and people have moved so far into their respective camps that even this core fundamental purpose of the university has been somehow undermined and, and called into question, which I, I have to say, I find absolutely remarkable.
And, um. And I guess I just kind of haven’t gone along with it because, uh, I teach this class where I have the students discuss contentious topics, uh, and it seems to go fine. And so to me, the university seems to be doing the thing. It always has, but that doesn’t seem to be the case everywhere.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Well, and this segues into the next question I wanted to ask you.
Given the tragic [00:11:00] killing of Charlie Kirk while speaking at a university event, how should college campus political debates be conducted so that they foster open dialogue, you know, rather than escalate into violence or, or the silencing of voices?
Henry Thomson: Well, it’s a good question. Um, because the Charlie Kirk.
Shooting, which is so awful. Uh, it’s hard to talk about really. And to think about because it’s not so far from here where it happened, right? Yeah. It could happen. Uh, could have happened at a SU. Sure. It’s really quite frightening. And so, um, obviously the Charlie Kirk shooting makes you think about security and where the universities need to be more careful about having events in some sort of more controlled environment where they’re able to control entry.
And maybe it has to be like the football games where. You have to bring in a clear bag, et cetera, and there are metal detectors if perhaps the, the event is of a certain, um. [00:12:00] Of a certain level, right, with a certain degree of, uh, degree of prominence of the people taking, taking part. That’s really sad to me that the universities would have to go to those lengths.
And yet the Charlie Kirk shooting shows actually how, how fragile and scary the situation is. So I think maybe at some level for very, very prominent guests, and I assume for, you know, we had, um, we’ve had. Presidential candidates, et cetera, speak on campus here. Presidential primary candidates. I assume that there’s already security for those sorts of events, but perhaps the security has to be, uh, increased for, for people at lower levels of prominence, not just people who are running for office, but on, on a mass level.
I would say that it would probably do us all good to have more political debate to kind of make it more normal and to, um. Make these sorts of events less exceptional and get everyone on campus used to contention again, so that, you know, it kind of [00:13:00] lowers the temperature on these sorts of debates. I think that would be a good thing as well.
Leyla Gulen: Well, how do you think figures like Charlie Kirk’s influence, um, you know, his, his tone and style of political debate among college students was unique? Uh, so. How, how do they influence sort of that, that discussion on campus and, and do you think that there maybe should be a different tact, maybe not quite so provocative as he tended to be?
Henry Thomson: It’s a good question. Um, personally, I had not followed Charlie Kirk that closely until he was shot. And so I went back and I watched a few of his videos and I actually was struck by how. Sort of calculating and rational, he engaged, uh mm-hmm. In debate. Mm-hmm. So the, the questions that he would engage with were, I would say, often deliberately provocative.
He would always sort of [00:14:00] almost choose, I think, the most provocative questions and contentious questions. Yeah. And, you know, as a, as a professor, I, I know why. It’s because that’s what gets people. Hot under the collar. That’s what makes for good television, if you will. You know, I see this in my own political discussion and debate class that the biggest mistake I make is picking topics that are too boring and not contentious enough, and don’t divide the students then.
Then there’s no constructive debate. So Charlie Kirk obviously went in the opposite direction, and he also staked out a clear position, right? I don’t take a position on any of these political topics I have up for discussion in my class, but Charlie Kirk would choose, choose the most contentious topic, and stake out a very clear position.
Normally, uh, on the very far right, but then his manner of discussing the topics was very cool and rational in a way that I thought did actually model good rational debate. But of course, under these, um, under these other conditions of it being a very contentious topic and him taking a very radical position.[00:15:00]
I, I don’t think that that should be really the, the question. I think that there’s enough space for people to make, uh, contentious arguments on contentious topics on campus. The problem is that, uh, this. This led to, to violence. And that’s the really scary thing, right? That he did this hundreds and hundreds of times across many, many campuses.
And now we know that, that it was actually very dangerous. And so the way the universities can respond, I think, like I said, is that they’re gonna have to be more careful about security. Mm-hmm. But on a, on a mass level, I don’t think there’s any way you can restrict. The sort of the contentiousness or the types of topics that students are discussing because, you know, just to give a, you know, the most obvious example, you’ve got the Charlie Kirk affiliated, um, or Charlie Kirk led Turning Point USA groups across all, many, many US campuses.
And they’re gonna be having these sorts of discussions around these topics anyway, right? So it’s, I don’t think that the universities can really control, um, [00:16:00] those sorts of things except for maybe at the very, very margin. Um, and so I think that really it’s gonna have to be more of a focus on safety, first of all, which is kind of a scary thing to have to say, but unfortunately I think the Kirk shooting shows that that’s true.
But secondly, trying to cultivate this culture that yes, contentious political debates happen on campus. Yes, people are gonna say and think and argue about topics then. Might seem crazy and take stances. That might seem radical or crazy. But see, that’s okay. That’s part of what’s what’s always going on on university campuses, and it is not always gonna lead to violence.
It’s not necessarily gonna harm anyone for people to be espousing views that people disagree with, and that’s just part of university life. I think we have to somehow come back to a place where, where that’s just baked into the character of the place.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, ’cause the topic’s a topic. He didn’t invent the topic.
The topic existed. And you’re gonna have person [00:17:00] A with one view and person B with another view. Um. He was just there to help facilitate and obviously he did take a position on the, on the conservative end of the spectrum. But for you, when you say that, you know, you engage your students in healthy debate within the classroom and you don’t take a position one way or the other, what strategies can universities use to foster respectful debate?
How do you do it in your classroom when you, you know, may. Present a provocative subject and then sort of put it in the hands of your students to then hash it out.
Henry Thomson: Yeah. Again, this is something that happens every day in my class. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, and I have a class that is explicitly based around debating contentious topics.
Uh, like I said, mostly my problem in that class is I actually, uh, underestimate how contentious, sorry, overestimate how contentious the topics are and underestimate how, um. [00:18:00] You know, I guess to use a maybe slightly glib term, how cruel my students are with these topics, meaning that that’s probably reading debates online that are 10 times more contentious than what’s happening in class.
And so they, they mostly are really pretty unmoved when I raise a topic that I think might be even really contentious, they are not that troubled. Hmm. Um, but even in my classes where it’s not on the syllabus that they’re supposed to debate, I still, you know, ask them. Provocative questions, you know about, for example, uh, when I talk about Marxism as a, as a theory, right?
I ask them whether they agree with Marx’s predictions that there will be a violent overthrow of capitalism, and whether they think that that would be a good thing. And, and we can talk about that. And we do talk about that. And it’s, it’s just part of the class. I think, like I said, that. That this is where the universities have to somehow move back to.
And I actually think that at many universities, this is already the case, that these kinds of contentious discussions that [00:19:00] are honestly part of the intellectual life of the university, that they’re just, they’re just baked into the life of the university. And it’s just what happens and it’s what students expect.
Leyla Gulen: Mm-hmm. And do you come across students that ever feel silenced or reluctant to engage in political discussions for fear of backlash?
Henry Thomson: You know, it’s really hard to say in any systematic way w what students are experiencing. You know, we don’t. To the best of my knowledge. I don’t think there’s any sort of survey of this at a SU that can tell you Representatively sometimes.
Sure. Anecdotally, students will come up to me and tell me, you know, in my political debate class that the reason they like it so much is they feel that they don’t. Have the, uh, ability to debate these sorts of topics and to state their opinion in other classes. But of course, that’s a pretty skewed sample of the, of the student population.
They’re the ones that have chosen to come to my class in order to have those debates. Yeah, so I, I personally think that. [00:20:00] It’s generally pretty good and that most students feel that they can have these discussions because I also hear from my students that they’re having similar discussions in, in other classes, many of them.
But, but I do think that, like I said, it depends on context. So it could vary by major, it could, uh, vary by specific instructor, or it could even, I think more importantly, probably vary by, by university, right? Where you have. Where you have small universities that have incoming cohorts of only a few hundred students.
Uh, you know, maybe only 500 students or so, or even less in the entire incoming cohort. There’s just way more potential for a group think and for people to worry about the social consequences of saying something that other people don’t agree with. Whereas you’ve got an incoming cohort of, uh, many thousands like Arizona State.
I don’t think that students feel. As isolated if, if they, and there’s no reason for them to think that they can’t find people to agree with. You know, there’s, there’s enough people for everyone to agree with on a campus that’s huge as Arizona [00:21:00] State. So I think it’s really context specific.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Are there lessons from comparative politics about managing contentious public discourse that maybe could be applied to college campuses?
Henry Thomson: That’s a really, really good question. I don’t actually, uh, study. Uh, comparative education policy or comparative, uh, universities or anything like that. Although I’ve often, I’ve often thought about it. Mm-hmm. I think that, um, I think that. There are obviously these, these scary cases where civil society and civil discourse is broken down to the point that you have endemic violence and the collapse of democracy, like in, um, Weimar Germany or in, in revolutionary Spain, right, where you have like a, a civil war essentially.
In both of those cases. I think we are so far removed from something like that in the United States. I don’t really like to think about it. Um, but there are some scary lessons from those types of [00:22:00] cases as well about the, um, about the takeover of the university. For example, when Germany, when the Nazi party started to impose more and more influence over the universities, that liberal professors and the, uh, especially the Jewish professors and gay professors and others, they, they were.
Shut out. And they had to, they had to leave. And many of them came to the U United States, which actually was the best thing that ever happened to the American University system. But you had similar things, uh, in East Germany when the communist regime imposed its rule, right? They came after the intellectuals, they politicized the universities, they made party membership a key criteria for, for becoming a professor, et cetera.
And sure, we should, we should learn about those things. Worry about those things, those extreme cases. But personally, I think we’re just so far removed from any sort of a, um, a situation like those. Thank God that, that I think we shouldn’t be completely relaxed and sanguine about the state of our universities and free speech and, and civil political debate, but we’re [00:23:00] certainly really far away removed from these catastrophic cases that.
People, people are talking about sometimes I think, uh, in, in an incorrect way.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And, and where should colleges draw the line between protecting free speech and preventing speech that could incite harassment or violence? I mean, it’s, it’s kind of a fine line. It’s kind of not, but you know, the moment a college campus tries to muzzle, you know, what?
Could be argued as free speech, then they’re gonna be damned if they do, damned if they don’t. So, so where should colleges sort of draw that line in both protecting and preventing? Uh, you
Henry Thomson: know, I think it’s a really hard question and that’s, uh, that’s one of the reasons why these university presidents get paid so much is because they have to draw the line.
And sometimes they have to do it in real time. Like when we had the, uh. The protests over the Israel, uh, Hamas War here on campus at Arizona State, the university administration decided that the [00:24:00] line was, that the encampment on the lawn in front of Old Maine, that it couldn’t remain after dark because it was gonna be unsafe, right?
So I think that that wasn’t actually such a bad. Place to draw the line at at at safety of students, um, and the broader community of people who are there. I think also an another place to draw the line is obviously the broader, just functioning of the university, right? So at a SU and the student code of conduct that.
All students have to sign. You can’t disrupt the main business of the university, which is at the end of the day teaching and research. So if students are occupying libraries, occupying classrooms, those sorts of things, obviously, uh, that can’t be allowed to continue so that the business of the university can, can go on.
Right. So for me, I think you have to draw the line. Around those sorts of basic things, right? Basic security, uh, of individuals and of university property, and the basic [00:25:00] operation of the university, right? You can have a protest on a lawn somewhere. It’s not necessarily stopping the rest of the university community from going about its business, but if you are shutting down the library as a.
My fellow students did when I studied at the Free University of Berlin. They occupied the library to protest the, uh, G seven meeting. I’m aging myself ’cause I think that was in like 2007. But, uh, you know, um, these things happen and, and I think that’s where the university, uh, has to draw the line. But of course, in real time.
University presidents and administrators come under pressure from different sides and from the media and from politicians, and they, I think they really struggle to, to know exactly where that line is. And, um, it’s not as simple. It’s not as simple as it might seem. But then again, uh, Layla, like I said, they get paid a lot more than me to make those sorts of decisions.
I just, I just have to teach my class that’s, uh, okay. Yeah. No way near as hard.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, it’s not an easy position to find oneself in that is for sure. Well, I have one last question for you. Um, how can students be encouraged to [00:26:00] engage with opposing viewpoints without feeling that they are compromising their own values without feeling threatened?
You know, I’m talking about discussions outside of the classroom. How can they be better debaters in life while maintaining respect for one another?
Henry Thomson: Good question. Um, I would say, you know, as a social scientist, the way to interrogate these ideas is to ask what are the underlying assumptions, right? So if the, I, if the idea you’re talking about the theory, you know, whether it’s.
Revolutionary Marxism or some sort of fundamentalist libertarianism or whatever, it’s normally got some sort of internal logic to it, right? A follows B, but the question is always, what are the fundamental assumptions of this argument? So when, when young people are talking to people who they disagree with.
The better thing is not to say, oh, I disagree with this person. I don’t like this person, or I don’t like the conclusions that they’re coming to, or whatever. That’s neither here nor there. At the end of the [00:27:00] day, ask yourself, what are the fundamental assumptions that these people are reasoning from, right?
So if you’re talking to some sort of revolutionary communist that you don’t agree with, the fundamental assumption that that person is working from is basically that capitalism, our entire socioeconomic system is exploitative and that no good can come from it and it has to be overthrown. I think that’s a good place.
To, to think about where they’re coming from and you can talk with them about those assumptions. Ask them why they believe that. Maybe you’ll convince them that it’s not, that they’re not correct in their assumptions. Something like that. So instead of thinking about the conclusions that people are reaching and why you disagree with them.
Ask yourself, what are the fundamental assumptions that these people are reasoning from? Why do they get to the conclusion that they do? And why don’t I agree? And you can always talk about those assumptions without getting personal, without even needing to talk policy or final conclusions. You can talk about fundamental assumptions, I think always in a civil.
Civil way, and then you can both understand who you’re talking to and where they’re coming from. [00:28:00] But also you can interrogate your own assumptions too, which is always really important and good to understand why you believe what you do.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah, and I think the challenge then becomes, uh, getting a random cross section of people that start from that very exact mindset before they actually engage.
Henry Thomson: Exactly. That’s right. Lela. When we talk about, that’s a very good point. When we start talking about cancel culture and students feeling silenced, I think a big part of that is that what we are talking about is a group of people who are arguing from fundamental assumptions that they think they all agree on at the very least, and they don’t even discuss.
And so always asking about those fundamental assumptions, why they believe what they do is a really important step for, for, for reaching across that divide because it’s when we don’t question our own assumptions and we’re not aware of the fundamental assumptions behind our views, that’s when we start to get into conflict with one another.
That’s not productive.
Leyla Gulen: And, and to also not have a hair trigger temper where, uh, you know, your [00:29:00] first knee jerk reaction is to, you know, start low blowing and, you know, yes, have a, it’s not as easy,
Henry Thomson: it’s not as easy as it sounds, Layla, to, uh, take a deep breath and ask, what are these, what are these person’s fundamental assumptions?
No, it’s not as easy as it sounds then, and, and there’s no, uh, there’s no, um, rewards on social media, uh, for. Asking about someone’s fundamental assumptions instead of just, uh, you know, throwing, hurling some vitriol at them. There’s That’s right. You probably get more likes for the vitriol than for the questioning of the fundamental assumptions.
Leyla Gulen: That is an unfortunate truth. Well, Henry Thompson, thank you so much for this conversation. Um, truly inspiring. And I think, you know, if everybody could listen to it, we can all come away with some really. Important wisdom that we can apply and, and maybe have a sea change within our own culture to start that healthy cycle of debate that I feel our civilization once knew it’s hibernating [00:30:00] right now, but I think it’s possible that we can find it again.
Henry Thomson: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Layla.
Leyla Gulen: Indeed.
