Table Talk

It has recently become very easy to jump on the bandwagon of lament, crying, “The world is so divided!” While the lament may be true, getting stuck in lament is not helpful. As a follow-up to my last contribution to this column, “A Different Conversation,” today I’d like to go beyond lamenting.

To begin, let’s name a big problem we tend to participate in: dehumanization. We dehumanize one another so often, we don’t even realize we’re doing it. When we so easily use words like “hate” to describe our feelings for someone, we have already made them less than human in our hearts. When we do this,...