Op Ed: Tools for troubled times: Cultivating civil disagreement

As the pace of change accelerates daily, I feel the need to reinvent myself: I have to adapt and equip myself for a new normal. The ground is giving way under things that I took for granted just a few years ago.

But I don’t feel lost. This is an opportunity for growth and renewal, a chance to evolve and discover new ways of being and doing. The challenges are many, but they spur me to push my limits.

Sure, there are times when the unending stream of dismaying news feels overwhelming. But there is always a glimmer of hope, often where we least expect it. Even in adversity, we can find reasons to celebrate things that are going well, scant as they may be.

However, indignation seems to be the order of the day. Everyone is mad about everything, all the time.

Targets abound orange cones, littered streets, snow that doesn’t melt as fast as it should, unhoused people who meet our gaze. It all fuels a popular—not to say populist—indignation born of an inability to engage in civil debate with people we disagree with.

What if we channelled that energy into more constructive conversations instead of just venting our frustrations? Instead of focusing only on what’s broken, why not come together and try to fix it? True strength may lie in turning our outrage into a force for positive change.

Reinventing how we talk and how we walk can help build a more respectful and compassionate world.

Civil disagreement

If we hope to stay sane in the years ahead, we must cultivate some essential skills.

Let me begin with what I’ll call civil disagreement, a concept that seems to be vanishing from our social landscape.

When I was younger, my father and I often had spirited debates about politics at the dinner table. But they always ended with a shared joke over dessert. It wasn’t just good manners but an acknowledgment that disagreement need not mean division. Civil disagreement is the art of saying, “I completely disagree with you, and here’s why,” without disrespecting the other person. It’s understanding that someone can be wrong without being a bad person.

Today, we are slipping into naive realism. This belief is that there is no distinction between the perception of reality and reality itself, so anyone who sees things differently must be ill-informed, irrational, or biased. It’s a comforting belief because it makes us feel virtuous but also dangerous.

Take a lighthearted example (unless you’re Italian, in which case it might seem like heresy): pineapple on pizza. There are true believers on both sides of this debate who talk as if their pizza topping preference were an objective truth rather than a matter of taste. Now, if you bring the same certainty to far more complex social and political issues, how is it possible to have a civil debate?

This brings me to something even more insidious: moral absolutism, which sees every issue in black and white as good versus evil, with no shades of grey. Social media algorithms exacerbate this tendency by feeding us ever more extreme views and emotionally charged content bereft of nuance. After all, our outrage drives their profits.

We’ve all endorsed this kind of thinking in one way or another. It’s easier to tell a child that lying is wrong than to explain the moral calculus adults must grapple with daily. But we must accept that while some moral truths are indeed absolute (it is wrong to deliberately harm the innocent, for instance), most real-world situations reside in a grey zone, demanding nuance and careful consideration.

The world isn’t divided into heroes and villains. Most people, even those we strongly disagree with, believe their actions are right. This doesn’t mean all viewpoints are equally valid or that we shouldn’t stand up for what we believe. But it does mean we should approach disagreements with humility and curiosity rather than unthinking condemnation.

This is the only way to avoid the pitfall of naive realism: recognizing that other people’s perspectives, though they may seem misguided, generally spring from their lived experiences and concerns.

Moral leadership

The classic ethical dilemma known as the “trolley problem” asks whether one should sacrifice one life to save many. 

In Sam Raimi’s 2002 film Spider-Man, the superhero confronts the trolley problem when he must decide whether to save his love interest, Mary Jane or a cable car full of children. This isn’t just a comic book thought experiment; it illustrates how, in real life, moral choices rarely come with neat labels distinguishing right from wrong.

The interesting thing about Spider-Man’s approach to the trolley problem is that he refuses to accept the premise that one life must be sacrificed to save another. Through ingenuity, determination, and personal sacrifice, he finds a way to save them all.

This is the essence of moral leadership in organizations and communities: rejecting false dichotomies, seeking outside-the-box solutions and being prepared to make personal sacrifices for the common good.

Here are a few ways to practice this kind of leadership:

• Question the premise: When presented with two options, ask, “Why these options? What assumptions are they based on?”
• Look for tweaks: Minor adjustments can open up space for better decisions.
• Consider multiple time horizons: What seems impossible in the immediate future might become feasible in the longer term.
• Build trust: Invest in relationships and credibility before you need them. This gives you more manoeuvring room when you have to make tough decisions.

This kind of leadership is desperately needed in our polarized world: leadership that acknowledges moral complexity without being paralyzed finds ways to push people and systems toward better outcomes, and doesn’t balk at difficult compromises.

Many of the certainties of the past have dimmed in recent years. The strategies we relied on—critical thinking, fact-checking, consulting a range of sources—are still important, but they no longer suffice to give us confidence. We also need emotional resources: the ability to stay calm when we encounter disagreement, the wisdom to know when to engage and when to step back, and the courage to admit when we are wrong.

As we navigate a sea of divisions, we each have countless opportunities to influence the currents in which we are awash. It can be something small, like suggesting a new meeting format that encourages the expression of diverse points of view. It can be something bigger, like helping to reshape an organization’s culture or decision-making processes.

Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the courage to confront difficult questions and the wisdom to seek solutions that go beyond simple binary choices. Just as Spider-Man found a way to save everyone, the best leadership can mean rejecting the limits others take for granted.

I should add a critical point about moral leadership and compromise, especially in these polarized times. When discussing the need for compromise, I’m not suggesting you compromise your core values or sell your soul to reach an agreement.

Imagine moral leadership as the captain of a ship in choppy waters. The captain’s core values dictate that he brings everyone safely to shore. But this may require trade-offs with other important considerations: speed versus safety, comfort versus efficiency, meeting a deadline versus minimizing risk. Making these compromises doesn’t mean abandoning the core mission of passenger safety; it means finding creative ways to honour that commitment while navigating the demands of the real world.

A compromise means acknowledging real-life pressures while staying true to your core values. It means figuring out how to live by your values, not whether to keep them. The goal is to find ways to apply divergent values simultaneously.

Living by our values in a divided world

Such moral leadership is exhausting. There’s no denying it. It’s far easier to retreat into moral absolutism or cynical relativism. However, the world urgently needs leaders to uphold their values while helping others overcome complex ethical challenges.

Polarization thrives on the specious proposition that moral compromise means betraying one’s values. In reality, the most effective moral leaders help people realize that defending their values requires not just righteousness but also wisdom, creativity and patience.

When you find yourself in a leadership role—in your career, community or family—remember that moral leadership means creating conditions where people of goodwill can work together on challenging problems while preserving their moral integrity.

Compromising to find practical solutions isn’t a sign of erratic values; it’s often the hardest and bravest way to truly live our values in the real world. So, let us set aside our personal certainties and work toward depolarization.

We know that “normal” is a social construct. Perhaps our energies would be well spent pushing back against all that is reductive in the new normal.