Deliberative Citizenship Initiative

Building Democracy One Conversation at a Time

Divin Dushimimana

The Explorer Mindset: Can It Be a Possibility?

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Divin Dushimimana ‘26 (DCI Fellow)

We’re in a world with many polarizing ideas. At some point it feels like it’s one idea against all other ideas and their owners do everything in their capacity to transmit their ideas. Without going too far from where our present location, let’s start with the US and the country’s political systems. We mostly have Republicans vs Democrats. These political ideologies differ in many ways, starting with their perspective on taxes to minimum wage to healthcare policy to the military and to many other things in the country. Statistics show that the number of Americans in each party with a negative view of the other party has doubled since 19941https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/. It’s as if members of one political party wants to convert people in the other party to their beliefs.

By zooming out, we can see that the western political and economic ideology of democracy and capitalism has been fighting head-to-head with the political and economic ideologies of socialism and communism for a long time. Having been present in a conversation between an American and a Chinese that encapsulated this conflict, it’s hard for me to envision a situation where an explorer-mindset as a deliberative disposition can be applicable in a normal conversation. In this conversation about capitalism and communism that I witnessed, it was about one person proving why one of the systems is better than the other.  Now that I think about it, neither were looking for a common ground in the debate, and I feel like this is how many conversations are in this world.

When looking back to my primary school memories, I reminisce about debates we used to have like fire vs water, food vs water, or even who is better between mother and father. As I remember, none of us in these conversations were ready to apply the explorer-mindset to understand where other people’s opinions originate. As we grow up, this character trait – a stubborn commitment to our currently held beliefs, right or wrong – gets ingrained in us and we become resistant to accepting and learning from other people’s perspectives. When I look back, I think polarization is a concept that we were taught since we were young and we grow up to apply it in our daily lives.

That’s why the explorer mindset is a concept I had never seen applied by anyone before reading and learning about the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative. My conversations were so debate-focused before joining DCI. Ever since I learned about this concept, I’ve been trying to put it into practice because I realized it’s a way to practice intellectual humility by understanding that there could be multiple truths to a certain topic. Conversations should shift from being focused on persuading another person of your perspective or opinion to finding common ground and actually learning why people think the way they think. This is because people’s backgrounds and experiences do really influence their opinions on certain topics.

However, with little exposure to this concept, it’s unlikely that people are going to put it into practice or that the number of people willing to practice intellectual humility will increase. Instead, we see the number of people without intellectual humility increase day by the day and this is a concerning trend. Unless DCI and other similar initiatives become accessible to more students, people, and institutions around the world, the explorer-mindset is unlikely to spread widely, despite our desperate need for it amidst today’s hyper-polarization. For this reason, I hope that more of us will join the DCI and participate in its activities, so we can all explore different perspectives together, in our search of solutions to our common problems.  

Deliberation in African Homes: Gamechanger

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mother and son

Divin Dushimimana ’26 (DCI Fellow)

I believe that one good conversation can shift the direction of change forever. When I look back, deliberation could have saved many Africans so much trouble in their family life. At least in my culture in Rwanda, the head of the family in many traditional households commands and everyone else follows – no discussion about it and the routine continues. Sometimes, it feels like you’re a computer being programmed on what to do.

At first, it seems like it’s working until it doesn’t. This parenting style and lack of deliberation in African homes has been the main result of teenage misconduct and rebellion. I have seen a lot of my friends forsake their homes because of lack of meaningful conversations and lack of parent’s understanding that their children are old enough to dictate how they want to live their lives. The idea is that your parents are right and you are wrong hence you should listen to whatever they tell you to do without any form of discussion or compromise on the issue.

Growing up in such an environment and doing debate in high school, the notion was the same. I had this idea that there is always this person who has the monopoly of knowledge. It was more of someone being right and another being wrong, nothing else. This process creates poor relationships between parents and children that consequently affect their ability to interact and engage on different topics like reproductive health or even mental health.

At some points, it will seem like it is a child against a parent and vice versa. I know examples of children who have indulged in certain things just to make their parents angry because the children felt like they aren’t being heard; they felt like they aren’t  being given an opportunity to discuss issues that are meaningful to them, they aren’t being given an opportunity to deliberate and find a common ground on certain things.

After participating in the ‘Parents & Teachers Forum’ this semester, I gained more understanding on how parents should play a vital role in what their children learn through deliberation. I realized that deliberation can create one conversation at a time in an African household. I think this can build meaningful communities and catalyze creative solutions. Indeed, I believe we would see cases of teenage pregnancies and youth suicide drop incrementally if deliberation is incorporated in the parenting style.

I believe this would build parents’ active listening skills towards their children, giving them an opportunity to understand where they are coming from and what challenges they are facing. Furthermore, children will feel loved and free to engage in such meaningful conversations with their parents, which I believe will create a safe space for growth. 

Furthermore, after being trained as a facilitator and actually facilitating three Deliberative Team meetings, I realized that people will not always agree on certain issues due to their different backgrounds or experiences with the issue at hand. However, if you free yourself from the idea of always winning or being right and open your ears to actively listening to someone else’s opinion, you’ll surely learn a lot. You’ll surely gain a certain mastery of letting go of your opinions when you’re introduced to new ideas.

In this world of growing tensions and challenging issues, no one holds a monopoly on effective solutions. The world would change for the better if people would refrain from thinking that they are always right but rather open their hearts to learning. I believe that through deliberation, we can make significant progress on all of the issues affecting our world.