How do we disagree better?

It’s US election day today: 5^th November 2025. At the time of writing, I don’t know whether Trump or Harris will win – whether the American people will choose division, hate and conspiracy. I truly hope not. I’m sure most people reading this will be hoping similarly. (Side note: if you don’t hope for a Harris win, I’d love to have a conversation – I don’t think I’ve ever personally spoken to a Trump supporter before). 

In not-unrelated news: I think it is time to leave the website formerly known as Twitter. I realised today that I have been an active participant for 15 years – far longer than any other relationship I’ve had – and the end has been approaching for a while. Yes, since Elon Musk bought it and changed its name to X, but the death knell sounded a while before that. The concept of ‘truth’ is eroding. The word hardly means anything anymore. The way information is shared on that platform is troubling, and I can feel my blood pressure rising every time I open the app. Yes, it’s time to leave.

Now, the content I see is almost exclusively from people I don’t follow and is either clickbait (‘Strictly pro slams partner for ‘outrageous’ comments’) or articles about vaccines or puberty blockers with an added ‘what they’re not telling you’ side eye. It has become a stark daily reminder that what we might refer to as ‘the news’ is no longer necessarily true. And that division, conflict and arguments sell. It is no coincidence that the most controversial stuff is boosted to the top of our feeds. The algorithm knows that to earn its salt it needs to feed us the content that will make us feel the most upset.

It’s hard to disagree. I hate it. It does something to our nervous system. After an argument I feel myself shaking, my stomach churning, my mind unable to settle. Even if in the heat of the argument I believe nothing to be more important than getting my point across and imploring my adversary to agree with me, after the fact I feel less sure. That having the argument has resulted only in both parties feeling ill at ease, sad, and still resolutely on opposite sides of the divide, suggests it might not have been worth it. And probably… often… it isn’t. I wonder though: how do we disagree well? Because the fact of our disagreeing sometimes feels like the only thing we have in common. 

The concept of truth is under threat. I listened to an interview with the historian Simon Sharma this week on the erosion of truth (it was fascinating) and, though it's often useful to hear from people thinking and feeling similarly, I’m finding it painful to fill my mind with our warped reality. I’m not sure it’s good for my mental health. I thought Naomi Klein’s book Doppelgänger was a masterpiece. What we should mean when we say ‘an important book’. But it also left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. There’s a big part of me that never wants to talk about or read about the culture wars again, and there’s another part of me that reads compelling arguments and wants to immediately share them with the people I believe (and I realise this sounds profoundly patronising) will benefit from them the most. I want to gather those I know who disagree with my lefty ideology and say ‘see? didn’t I tell you? here is someone far cleverer than I explaining why you’re wrong’.

In recent years there have been a few specific subjects that have infiltrated all of our lives, living rooms, dinner tables, and I bet we’ve all had uncomfortable conversations about them. Brexit. That was a big one. Slanging matches on Facebook and emails from family members before birthday lunches to say: ‘let’s not talk about Brexit today’. Taxes. Gay marriage in the church. Gender. Women-only spaces. The pandemic. Were lockdowns a good idea? (Yes). Was the vaccine rushed out and dangerous? (firstly yes, for good reason, and secondly no, no one’s trying to kill you).  

I was brought up as a Christian and some of my family still have quite conservative Christian views. Or, at least, they attend conservative churches that express views I disagree with. I love and respect them and I know them to be genuinely kind people, so we try to disagree in a way that is productive (we definitely do not always succeed).

I also have people in my life who are politically conservative—again, fun to argue with after a few glasses of wine! I haven’t found their perspectives to be without merit. The older I get the more happy I am to have my mind changed. I have had good, calm conversations that leave all parties feeling heard and respected. But I’ve also had the opposite. 

Through my work I meet (and mostly like!) lots of people with different views to me. Politically, culturally, fundamentally. It should be fine. 

Again and again I ask myself: why does it matter that [X] thinks differently to me? Why does it make my stomach hurt and it hard to fall asleep at night? Maybe it’s because I have anxiety. Maybe the discomfort triggers something. On one level I think I’m right, yet on another level I think ‘everyone hates me and I’m wrong’. 

I work with books and I truly believe that art is fundamental to the pursuit of knowledge and nuance. A tweet about gender politics is never going to be useful, yet a book about it has the potential to be. As I said, there is a big part of me that wants to disengage entirely from these conversations but I also know that the only way to assuage some of the anxiety is to engage in a different way.

Something I’ve noticed about (some) people with strong opinions – that I find incredibly annoying – is that they will present their view as if everyone in the room is already in agreement. (I’ve probably done it). It’s a power move. They don’t leave space for you to disagree easily and so you, often, don’t. Their opinion is left in the air like fact. It’s similar, in a way, to the kind of shady ‘news’ outlets that look on the face of it, like a normal news website with seemingly innocuous articles, but inspected more closely are in fact smokescreens for something darker and, crucially, not true. 

Central to why I find that kind of presentation so annoying and troubling is that it is not entering into the subject with grace or respect. 

I went to see the comedian Nish Kumar this week. It was excellent – a politically-charged set with a lot of shouting and obscenity. Though his style of comedy won’t be for everyone I came away from the evening both entertained and challenged. Yes, he says ‘c**t’ a lot, but there’s real heart to his material. He’s anxious and a bit manic and he talks about Rishi Sunak being a horrible representative for British South Asians, about racism in politics (and culture writ large), watching the mistakes of the past (the Iraq War) being made again (genocide in Gaza), that meeting violence with violence makes none of us safer. He’s doing what he can to have these conversations, even though he was targeted so severely by death threats from far-right supporters a few years ago he developed PTSD. 

I always come back to compassion. So many of the people I look up to and respect who talk about division and the culture wars put compassion and understanding at the centre. Naomi Klein writes in Doppleganger that the pandemic created the perfect melting pot for conspiracy and hatred to rage. While anyone who thought differently to the ‘mainstream’ was shouted down or silenced, they were forced into the periphery. And the shady periphery welcomed them. 

Nish Kumar finished his set with a hopeful note, needed after an hour and a half of hilarious but miserable reminders of how fucked we are. His mother told him, he tells us, that she has found people to be mostly good. And we must simply keep trying. That by attending comedy shows and reading books and having conversations we commune with people who care about what happens to our society.

It’s time to leave the website formerly known as Twitter. That would be a positive first step in my attempt to become less bogged down and better rested. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten my password so keep being told that deactivating my account is not possible at this time. Probably a clever move from Musk to keep us trapped in his hateful bubble (shall I start that conspiracy theory?). 

I’ve got everything crossed for America. Whatever the outcome, I hope we can find a way to disagree better. To find better platforms for those disagreements. It might help us all sleep a little better.