Perpendicular Conversations: Why We Keep Missing Each Other

Have you ever left a conversation thinking:

• “I just don’t get how they can believe that.”

• “Are we even living in the same world?”

• “It’s like facts don’t matter to them.”

• “They’re completely brainwashed.”

• “How do you reason with someone who doesn’t want to hear reason?”

These aren’t just moments of disagreement. They’re symptoms of something deeper.

The Shape of Our Divide

Most people think we’re just disagreeing more these days. But that doesn’t explain the rage, the confusion, the exhaustion. What we’re experiencing isn’t louder debate—it’s a breakdown in mutual recognition.

We’re not having parallel conversations. We’re having perpendicular ones.

Two people can be talking about the same issue—abortion, gun rights, immigration, climate change—and not actually be debating the same thing. They’re standing at moral right angles to one another, each speaking from a completely different internal compass, guided by different values, fears, and priorities. They hear the same words but interpret them through vastly different lenses.

Take abortion. One person says, "This is about the right to choose what happens to your body." Another says, "This is about the moral obligation to protect innocent life." One is arguing for freedom, the other for protection. The words clash, but the deeper values aren’t even in the same frame.

High-Stakes Issues, Different Moral Starting Points

You see this same perpendicular pattern in other high-stakes topics:

Take gun rights. One person says, "We need sensible restrictions to keep communities safe." Another says, "We need to protect the right to defend ourselves." One is arguing for safety, the other for sovereignty. Again, two different moral starting points.

Or immigration. One person says, "We should welcome those seeking a better life." Another says, "We must uphold the integrity of our borders." One sees compassion and opportunity, the other sees order and responsibility.

Even climate change. One says, "We need to act now to protect future generations." Another says, "Don't dismantle people’s jobs and ways of life." One is thinking in generational terms, the other in local survival. They're not arguing about carbon levels—they're speaking from entirely different frames of reference.

Importantly, these moral frameworks aren’t arranged on a ladder. One isn’t more evolved or enlightened than the other—there’s a time for every season after all. But from within each framework, the other often feels not just unfamiliar, but threatening. What looks like care from one perspective can look like chaos from another. What looks like order to one can look like oppression to another. The trouble isn’t that people don’t care—it’s that they care about different things, in different ways, with different starting assumptions. That’s what makes these conversations so disorienting.

These aren’t disagreements over policy details. These are identity-level divergences. And when you talk past someone at the level of identity, it doesn’t feel like debate—it feels like denial.

That’s why facts don’t move people the way they used to. That’s why compromise often feels like betrayal. We’re not responding to logic. We’re defending who we believe we are, and what we think the world should be.

So How Do We Reconnect?

This is the part where most people throw up their hands—or walk away. But it’s also the moment to pause and ask: Have I done this too? Have I ever assumed someone was just being difficult, when really they were just coming from a different place?

We need a way to talk with each other that doesn’t erase our differences, but still helps us see and understand them.

There are tools available—like CliftonStrengths or VIA Character—that help name what matters to us, and just as importantly, help us see what matters to someone else. They surface the values beneath the conflict and provide a shared way to recognize what each person brings to the table.

Instead of labeling someone "closed-minded" or "soft," you begin to recognize that they’re prioritizing something different—like caution, loyalty, fairness, or care. Instead of assuming bad faith, you begin to notice a different set of values, a different moral frame, a different kind of good.

Listening Differently

In The Lost Art of Listening, Michael P. Nichols writes, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” When we stop trying to win arguments and start listening for what matters to someone—what they’re trying to protect, what they’re afraid of, what they value—we create space for that kind of recognition. It’s not about agreement. It’s about helping someone feel understood. that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” When we stop trying to win arguments and start listening for what matters to someone—what they’re trying to protect, what they’re afraid of, what they value—we create space for that kind of recognition. It’s not about agreement. It’s about helping someone feel understood.

You can’t shift a perpendicular conversation by speaking louder. You shift it by uncovering the values beneath the disagreement—by recognizing that the other person might not be wrong. They might just be orienting from a different set of values. They might just be starting from somewhere different.

And maybe that's the beginning—not of agreement, but of understanding. And in a world this divided, understanding might just be enough to start turning us back toward each other.