News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
In an arena where people increasingly retreat defensively into their own corner of the ring, real engagement among people of differing cultural and political perspectives is harder and harder to come by.
Lane Jacobson, the owner of Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, is trying to change that, at least here in the local community.
This fall, Paulina Springs Books is launching the Bridging The Gap Book Club.
The club, Jacobson said, “basically just aims to start the conversation — bridge the gap — between the ever-polarizing left and right.”
The approximately 10 to 14 participants will be selected to reflect views and outlooks of people all along the political spectrum.
“We’re going to have a survey where people will self-identify a lot of things about themselves,” Jacobson explained.
Books will be selected by Jacobson and a professional moderator to represent differing points of view on a variety of challenging political and cultural subjects.
“It will very specifically not shy away from the difficult discussions,” Jacobson said.
The sessions will encourage vigorous but collegial discussions.
“Of course further discussion is encouraged,” Jacobson said. “Go grab a beer at the saloon afterward…”
In fact, that is a desirable outcome — getting to a point where people can get past sound bites and memes and slogans and really talk with each other about often complicated issues. Jacobson notes that delving into books encourages greater depth of understanding and discourse.
“You’re not getting shown those complexities in a three-minute thing on whatever cable news you’re watching,” he said.
“This is not meant to change anybody’s mind,” the bookseller noted, but rather to “illuminate things that people might miss when they’re in their echo chambers.”
The first book on the curriculum is a means of laying the groundwork for what Jacobson hopes will be an ongoing Sisters cultural institution. It is titled “Think Again: How to Reason and Argue.” The publisher notes that author Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “says there is such a thing as a ‘good’ argument: Reasonable arguments can create more mutual understanding and respect, and even if neither party is convinced by the other, compromise is still possible.”
“As much as they hoot and holler about stuff, I think people really do want these discussions, and when you have it in an environment where they don’t feel like they’re walking into a trap, they’ll engage with it,” Jacobson said.
The survey will be available this week either on the paulinaspringsbooks.com web site or by emailing Jacobson at [email protected] The selected members will be notified by Monday, August 19, and the first session will be scheduled for mid-September.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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