Note: These are the notes I used for a speech I delivered in October 2024, at a political rally. Here’s a link to the podcast version.

Introduction

Good afternoon. My name is Ankur Shah and I am a conflict mediator. I mediate conflicts at work and at school and in relationships.

Today I want to share what these conflicts have taught me about winning.

I want to talk about how we — every person who is here, who is showing up for democracy — can truly win going forward.

In order to do that,

1. I’m going to define what I mean by winning and losing
2. Next I’ll get to the roadblock that, in my mind, is getting in our way.
3. And then I’ll show you how to destroy it with a pearl of wisdom

Including some concrete guidelines based on 2200 years of human experience.

Part I: Winning and Losing

Winning outcomes generally require either luck or a winning strategy, or both.

Since I don’t know anything about luck, besides having received a lot of it over the years, I’m going to focus on strategy.

A winning strategy.

A winning strategy not just for you or me, but for our nation.

By winning strategy, I dont just mean winning the presidential election on nov 7 2024, or all the other elections that will happen that day, I mean something much bigger than that.

Because just winning the elections this november is not a winning strategy for our nation. 

Let me explain what I mean by that.

I see two major possibilities for the presidential election next month.

Either there is a clear, uncontested winner or there is not. 

If there is a clear, uncontested winner, which is what we’re culturally used to in our country, there is usually a smooth and peaceful transition of power.

That’s the happy case.

But even in the happy case, a huge amount of people in this country will feel

• Unrepresented
• Distrustful
• Unconfident
• Cynical, and
• Excluded

when they look at their government. 

Probably between 30% to 50% of politically aware people are going to feel that way, depending on who wins in this scenario.

That’s not winning as a nation.

If there’s not a clear and uncontested winner, this picture looks much worse.

In addition to feeling

• Unrepresented
• Distrustful
• Unconfident
• Cynical, and
• Excluded

The majority of people in this country will feel

• Tense
• Scared for their safety and their children’s safety
• Anxious about their future

And a small minority of conflict entrepreneurs will be absolutely elated.

Which is definitely not winning as a nation. 

Either of these outcomes goes down a loss in my book. 

And that’s because We’re at the limit of where voting can take us. 

When the nation is deeply divided on almost every major issue

• the importance of supporting foreign wars to our own national security
• the role of immigration in our’s economy health
• the rights of police offers vs. the rights of people they suspect of criminal activity
• the role of regulation and public spending in a thriving economy
• the rights of embryos, fetuses, children, mothers, and prisoners
• our ethical obligations to future generations of humans
• our ethical obligations to other species

And only 51% of voters feel represented, we have a major problem. 

Or, in the case of the 2016 election — when 46% of voters were represented

Or, in the case of the 1992 election — when 43% of voters were represented

I mention all this to sketch out the case that things are not just going to get better on their own.

That the polarization, discomfort, and enmity we’re all experiencing is not an anomaly.

This is not a temporary confusion or setback

We live in the most diverse nation state that has ever existed and we need to make it a community.

Hundreds of millions of people who have never met, don’t look anything like each other (according to them), have totally different religious beliefs and practices, speak different languages, and have no idea what each other’s lives are like.

The first  European nation-states, 200-300 years ago, were largely monocultural. Same religion. Same economic situation. Same language families.

For better or worse, that’s not our project here. 

As an Indian-American who grew up atheist in rural America, I actually have some weird sympathy with the global right-wing movement to make the imperial powers White again. 

Making national-level decisions would be way easier if we all

• spoke the same language
• had the same cultural background
• ate the same food
• had children at the same time
• had the same level of education
• practiced the same religion
• worked in the same factory, and
• got paid the same

But that was never the project of this country. From the moment the diverse group of European misfits and refugees touched down here and invaded this continent, they were moving in the opposite direction.

They were moving towards a diverse, chaotic future that would be very difficult to govern. 

And, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived. 

Part II: The Roadblock

And now you’re like, wait, where’s the message of hope? 

Where’s the winning strategy? 

It’s coming.

But first, I’m going to distill the key roadblock we need to deal with.

To win as a nation, every person who feels invested in this country’s future needs to feel that our perspective was heard. That our perspective matters. That our knowledge and passion has been included in the process. 

The good news is that I don’t need you to agree with me to feel heard.

I just need you to understand what I want and why I want it.

But feeling heard is fundamentally incompatible with the way most of our conversations are set up, which is about a very narrow definition of winning,.

Think back to the debate. Did anybody say:

• I heard you advocate for XXXXXX
• because you really value YYYYYYY, and
• you think that’s the best way of achieving it.
• However, I believe….

No! It as all:

• Im right. Youre wrong.
• Im louder. 
• I have more facts.
• Your sources are lame.

And what’s fundamentally going on, below the argument, in these interactions, is a pushing away.

A separation.

An othering.

You’re the enemy.

I’m not like you.

We’re different.

That’s the block. 

What’s wonderful is that we know how to get over that block.

We’ve had that block before.

500 years ago, when modern racism was invented, we were Othering by race and religion and ethnicity.

100 years ago we were othering based on gender. 

20 years ago we were othering based on sexual preference.

Most of us — in this crowd — are past that now.

Congratulations. That’s huge progress. And many of you have worked hard on getting over those blocks.

And there’s one more little step to go. 

One more little difference to get comfortable with.

Opinions. 

How is it possible That you and I can both be good, honorable, caring people with values.

And yet we totally disagree.

About immigration. Or black lives matter. Or Gaza. Or Ukraine.

It’s not possible.

Therefore I’m good, you’re bad.

In fact you’re an idiot.

Or you’re insane.

We are not the same. And that is the challenge — for this crowd — preventing us from a national sense of inclusion and participation. 

From winning as a nation.

To review,

1. First we defined what winning means. More than just a bunch of elections. It’s about a cohesive relationship as a nation

2. Then we talked about what losing looks like, and I tried to show that no matter who wins, we are all actually losing.

3. We just identified this roadblock, which is the tension between remembering our shared humanity when somebody has an opposite — and often threatening — belief.

4. And now we’ll get to the solution.

Part III: The Gift

So, now I’m gonna tell you the trick.

The Trick is to see the conflict as a gift.

If I can see that conversation as the gift that has the potential to make us more whole, I can win.

And I mean internally, between the two of us, and as a society.

All three levels.

This person, this white nationalist, this protester, this uncle at thanksgiving, this person in the wrong-colored hat, is presenting me with a gift. 

And the challenge, of course, is to find the gift.   

It’s a challenge of getting beyond our own physiological triggers.

It’s a challenge of getting beyond our own judgments.

It’s an intellectual challenge to hold the Paradox of being completely opposed to the opinion and not writing off the opiner.

Lot of challenges, actually. 

Not just one. 

So there’s a lot I can say about this, and I’ve devoted whole training and courses to this challenge, but I promised you a pearl of insight and thats what I’m going to deliver.

Which is that whatever people say about any issue, they are really saying “I care”. 

That’s all you know. They care.

To know more, we need to

Stop talking about the issues and start talking underneath the issues.

What is important about that issue to the person in front of you?

What does it mean to them?

It’s not about immigration. It’s about them.

It’s not about Gaza. It’s about them.

They’re afraid of something,

they yearn for something,

they care about something,

they had some transformative or traumatic experience

They want something that is very personally about them.

And when you can get to that nugget of insight, you suddenly see:

Oh!

If I had had that string of experiences, I would probably agree with them

Then you have received the gift.

And you can no longer  Other, Judge, Diagnose, or Insult them.

You can’t do that anymore because they have become a part of you.

You have understood their experience and expanded your own Consciousness, your own personhood.

You have include them.

And that Is what true Victory Looks like.

It’s also very hard.

Very challenging.

There’s ways to make it less challenging and I’d love to follow up with any of you on how to do that. Later.

To close us close our time together, today. I want to share some 2200 year old wisdom to support you in confronting these challenge.

This comes from an ancient Indian, holy book called the Bhagavad Gita.

And these are the words of Krishna, who is one of the Gods, to a guy named Arjun, who was one of the princes.

And he’s telling him how to be a baller.

How to be a true incarnation of duty and righteousness and all the good things that people want to be.

And there’s a long list. 24 virtues. But the summary is really simple.

The first thing you need is courage. Fearlessness. You got to psyche yourself up to have the hard conversations, and to hold the energy. It’s easy to explode in anger or run away or drink or whatever. It’s hard to be in the moment and hold the energy. That takes courage.

The next thing you need — which are the next 22 the way Krishna tells it — is love. Compassion. Empathy. Agape in Greek. Ahimsa in Sanskrit. Basically, unconditional love. You have to get in touch with that superpower we all have of loving the essence of the being in front of you, the way Jesus and Gandhi talked about, instead of imprisoning them in their actions or beliefs. 

And the last thing you need is humility. The memory that I do not now have and I will never have The entire truth of The Human Experience. If you think your understanding is perfect, it will be very difficult to see that conflict as a gift.

Because seeing the conflict as a gift means acknowledging that our perspective is incomplete, and we need that conflict to be whole again.

There you go. Ancient wisdom.

Courage

Unconditional Love

and Humility.

Those three virtues will will help you see every conflict, every interaction, every conversation NOT as an annoyance or an identity-threatening moment, But as a gift.

And that, my friends, is our winning strategy as a nation.

Thank you.