Personal Stories Diffuse Political Polarization
The Mantle Project is Nabil Laoudji's effort to combine compelling stories with the kind of deep dialogue that creates human connection. The project is named for the layer beneath the earth's crust and the goal is conversation that penetrates beneath the surface of conventional rhetoric. It is influenced by the observation of psychotherapist Carl Rogers who believed "what is most personal is most universal."
A Christian Science Monitor story by Allison Terry tells how Laoudji's last Mantle Project got members of the Tea Party and Occupy Boston to exchange their stories together on the same stage in front of an audience.
Christine Morabito, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, gladly accepted the invitation to tell her story, but soon realized the stump speech she prepared wasn't what Laoudji was seeking. He pressed her to look deeply into what had shaped her beliefs. She mentioned that she had attempted suicide in her early 20s. Laoudji pressed her to probe that. In the aftermath she felt completely dependent on other people, and she said she hated it. She began to work on personal responsibility. With that focus, the Tea Party mantra appealed to her. Another speaker, Tammy Weitzman, told of racing home in terror as a child in Tel Aviv after two men shot up a bus and her school was closed. She realized she had been taught to fear people who were not like herself.
When a political conversation began among people in the audience, Laoudji told the
Monitor, "We started from a very different place because we had already been open and listening and understanding each other."
He also describes a discussion between business students and Occupy participants, who recognized they probably harbored stereotypical views of each other. One protester speculated that America's reluctance to confront mortality makes us cling to habits and systems, and could have been a factor in bailing out troubled banks, rather than allowing them to fail so something new could emerge.
Putting stories and civil sensibilities together may not change views, Laoudji says, but finding common ground is more likely when people understand why others believe what they do and those with opposing views aren't demonized.
Laoudji's life experiences instilled a passion for reconciliation. He was born in Tunisia to a Muslim father and a Polish Roman Catholic mother who fought about religion. His parents divorced when he was six, and he moved to the U.S. with his mother and sister. He founded the Mantle Project a year ago after graduating from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also works with the MIT Community Innovators Lab and has conducted interviews with dissidents in Tunis, where the Arab Spring began.
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The Microbes that Flourish in Hospital Air
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Microbes are the most abundant organisms on earth. Some make us sick and others are necessary to keep us functioning. Scientists are beginning to realize it's important to know what's growing in the air of our hermetically sealed indoor environments. Ecologist Jessica Green, a pioneer in the study of microbes in the air, thinks of indoor air as a microbial garden that architects and biologists can tend together. Our guests have insights on how people from different disciplines can collaborate for a microbial environment that promotes better human health.
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Positive Deviance Joins Polio Eradication Campaign in Pakistan
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The task of eliminating polio from the whole world is reminiscent of the task of Sisyphus, who every day rolled a huge stone up a steep hill, only to have it roll back down. While many parts of the world are now free from polio infections, a few areas are finding it difficult to meet the goal of universal vaccination. The Positive Deviance Initiative has joined the World Health Organization and Global Polio Eradication Initiative (WHO/GPEI) Spearheading Partners WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International, CDC and the Gates Foundation in the vaccination campaign in Pakistan. Positive Deviance (PD) is an innovative approach designed for entrenched, complex problems that have proven difficult to solve. By engaging stakeholders in a process of data collection, dialogue and discovery, PD enables communities to leverage behavioral and social innovations that already exist.
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