The Picanha Steak, War, and Dialogue as Resistance

One Saturday afternoon, we were hosting a barbecue at home for a very dear couple of friends. Longtime friends. She, one of my wife's best friends; he, passionate about music, design, and a good beach tennis partner.

Between beers, as often happens, the conversation turned to the week's hot news. At some point, I mentioned what's been happening in the United States: immigration policies, the violent actions of ICE, and now Donald Trump's war. To my surprise, my friend reacted forcefully. He not only defended Trump as an American and global leader, but also thought he was on the right track. Seriously? I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

From there began the now classic and irritating battle of data.

He presented numbers, examples, statistics, sources. I responded with mine. For every argument I brought up, he said I was unaware of the most important part of the story. For every piece of information he presented, I countered with others that he, curiously, was unaware of.

Within minutes we were no longer discussing ideas. We were discussing sources.

He cited the ones he considered reliable. I cited mine. He laughed at mine. I laughed at his.

Parallel worlds.

The conversation heated up. My wife and his wife, visibly embarrassed, began to feel uncomfortable with the situation that had become so common: two friends discussing politics louder and louder, more and more heated.

At some point they seemed to have given up on us and, of course, began trying to change the subject and talk about something else: "What's the brand of this picanha again?", "Did you see Pluribus?"

This is the familiar script. To preserve the friendship, someone gives in. The conversation is interrupted. The subject is buried. We move on as if nothing had happened.

But that day I was tired of this outcome.

Tired of giving up on people. Tired of accepting that certain fundamental issues simply can no longer be discussed.

Tired of seeing friendships reduced to superficial affinities.

So I decided to persist, but in a different way. Let's talk about principles and values?

Let's forget the data and sources, since it's difficult to trust anyone.

Not just his data, but mine too. I made a point of putting myself in the same position. Two individuals exposed to information systems that have clear economic interests in keeping us polarized.

Ultimately, it's a business model. Digital platforms make money from engagement. Engagement grows with conflict. The more time we spend participating in the battlefield generated by "bait posts," reacting and getting indignant, the more valuable the advertising space these platforms sell becomes. Sell to whom? To the brands! And they don't seem to care about being the protagonists of this whole madness! But that might be a topic for another article.

Selected information, statistical snippets, isolated episodes, out-of-context videos. All of this feeds a digital hypnosis machine that slowly leads us to increasingly rigid and polarized positions. A myopia that yields (a lot of) profit, where factual truth seems increasingly unattainable and abstract.

We were both, at the same time, participants and victims of this system.

We became suckers in the process.

And it's only going to get worse!

Perhaps a way to develop some kind of immunity, and continue the conversation, is to focus on what matters most, on what has more depth, on what comes from our upbringing, on what defines our character: true values. Perhaps this is a form of conscious resistance to this perverse business model.

A kind of symbolic (controversial?) vaccine against the permanent manipulation that shapes our certainties.

In truth, we are much more alike than that conversation made it seem. We are of good character. We like many of the same things. We have similar origins. We want to live in a just and safe society, and we dream of that for our children. And we've been friends for at least 15 years!

From then on, the conversation began to change.

I think, for the first time that afternoon, we were truly having a conversation.

The most curious thing is that our wives, who were watching from afar, took a while to notice the change. Because our exchanges remained intense, they still thought we were arguing and kept insisting we stop. But at that moment, we were both deeply interested in continuing.

Because something rare had happened.

Instead of ending the conversation to preserve the friendship, we had found a way to continue talking precisely to preserve it.

This experience made me realize more clearly a problem that today permeates all scales of social life. It ranges from diplomatic tensions between countries to conversations within the home. The challenge of speaking with those who are different has become one of the great impasses of our time.

We are unlearning how to dialogue.

To avoid conflict, we avoid fundamental issues. Politics, worldview, the future, collective values. They disappear from dinner tables, bar conversations, and even public spaces for debate.

The price of this is high. When we stop exchanging ideas with those who think differently, we reduce the space for learning and also the space for innovation. New ideas rarely arise from encounters between equals. They emerge when different perspectives come into contact.

For centuries, human knowledge has advanced through this process. Dialectics stems precisely from the tension between different positions.

Thesis and antithesis do not exist to cancel each other out, but to make possible the emergence of a broader synthesis.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is to realize that nature points in exactly the same direction. As I mentioned in another article, biologist Lynn Margulis showed that the great evolutionary leaps arose from the encounter between different organisms. Instead of a tree that divides into isolated branches, evolution is more like a web, where different forms of life meet and begin to coexist.

The brilliance of the new appears when differences find space to cooperate. Coral reefs are one of the most elegant examples of this principle. They exist because a microscopic alga and a marine animal have established a deep symbiotic relationship. The zooxanthellae live within the coral tissue and produce energy from sunlight. The coral provides shelter and nutrients. Neither organism alone would be capable of creating the complex structure we know as a reef.

Biological innovation is born from the encounter of the different.

Perhaps possible solutions to the systemic problems we have gotten ourselves into as a species depend on the same principle.

To the extent that we block those who think differently, we reduce our own capacity to evolve. We limit the emergence of new solutions precisely when the world faces increasingly complex problems.

Perhaps that is why that Saturday conversation was so remarkable. Not because we reached a political agreement—which didn't happen. We continue to have very different views on many issues. But we discovered that a possible portal exists when the conversation moves beyond the superficial dispute of data and shifts to the realm of values.

Values ​​are deeper than information. They are less manipulable because they are more connected to direct human experience. They are territories that transcend generations. Even when parents and children radically disagree on politics, they usually share fundamental principles about dignity, justice, care, and responsibility.

Values ​​are still, to a large extent, a human territory.

Perhaps that's where the conversation can survive.

Have you thought about someone special worth inviting to lunch?