Bestselling author tackles toxic discussions at two-day event in Ontario city
At a time when people are primed to react emotionally to disagreement, Irshad Manji is working to equip groups and individuals with tools to quiet their rage and defensiveness and engage in good faith, even when the conversation is hard.
“When we react, we actually wind up making things worse, and I’m not for a moment saying that there are no reasons to react. Of course there are,” Manji tells INSAUGA Canada.
“But if we actually want to, as people within our families, within our places of work, within our classrooms, within our congregations, anywhere that human beings gather, if we want to have influence in order to nudge the direction of what’s going on around us into something productive, we can actually do that by regulating ourselves and changing the dynamic of our surroundings.”
To help change the nature of conversation, Manji founded Moral Courage College, which, as she said in her keynote speech, is not really about being ‘moral’ in the traditional sense. “Moral,” she told the audience, comes from the Latin word “moralis,” which describes how one acts within a community.
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