President Worthen, distinguished guests, parents, friends, and members of the Brigham Young University class of 2019: Congratulations on this important day, and thank you for this incredible honor. With this honorary degree, I am proud to say that I am finally a real<\/i> member of the BYU community.<\/p>\n
I have to confess that, up to this point, I have only ever impersonated<\/i> a member of the BYU community. I know that sounds bad, so let me explain. Several years ago I came to this beautiful place, to BYU, to deliver a lecture. My wonderful hosts sent me home with a ton of branded souvenirs: T-shirts, mugs\u2014you name it. You guys are great at product placement.<\/p>\n
One particularly nice gift that I got that day was a briefcase. It had BYU emblazoned across the front. Now, as it happened, I actually needed a new briefcase, but I kind of hesitated to use it because of the logo. It felt a little weird\u2014like false advertising. See, I am not a member of the faculty at BYU, nor am I a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am a Catholic.<\/p>\n
Somebody told me, by the way, that I am your favorite Catholic\u2014but I figure you say that to all the Catholics.<\/p>\n
When I expressed this hesitance, my wife, Esther, said, \u201cThat is ridiculous. Use the briefcase. It is beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I loaded it up and took it out on the road. I travel all the time. I am in airports constantly. And here is the thing. I noticed that people would look at my briefcase and then look up at me. They would have this weird look on their face, like, \u201cI have never seen an aging hipster Mormon before.\u201d (Excuse me, Latter-day Saint!) That gave me some amusement, but here is the funny part: I found that it was changing my behavior. I was acting with greater love and kindness than I ordinarily would. People would look at my briefcase, and I would want to help with their luggage. I would want to give up my place in line. That sort of thing. Why? Because I was unconsciously trying to live up to the high standards of kindness of your church and your university. At the very least, I was trying not to hurt your well-earned reputation.<\/p>\n
You know what else? I even stopped carrying cups of coffee. Look, I love coffee, but I didn\u2019t want people to think that a member of your church is a hypocrite! I had this paranoid fantasy of some guy telling his wife, \u201cI saw this Mormon guy in O\u2019Hare airport ordering a venti latte at Starbucks. I knew<\/i> they were hypocrites.\u201d I didn\u2019t want that.<\/p>\n
And you know what? That briefcase made me a happier person, a more loving person. I was like the person I wanted to be. Why? Because I was trying to be like you. So what is the lesson here? It is not<\/i> that your BYU briefcases have magic properties. It is that your greatest witness to the world as members of this community is the conduct of your lives. Our nation and world need this. They need you, more than ever today.<\/p>\n
If you pay attention to politics or television or social media, what do you see today? You see recrimination, reproach, insults, and sarcasm. You see leaders at the highest levels of our country who bully and berate those with whom they disagree. You see families torn apart over political disagreements. You see political foes who treat each other as enemies.<\/p>\n
People often characterize the current moment in America as being \u201cangry.\u201d If only this were true. Anger is an emotion that occurs when we want to change someone\u2019s behavior and believe that we can do it. According to the research on anger, while anger is often perceived as a negative emotion, it has social purpose. And it is not to drive others away. Rather, it is intended to remove problematic elements of a relationship and bring people back together. Believe it or not, there is no evidence that, in a marriage, anger is correlated with separation or divorce.<\/p>\n
For twenty-eight years I have been married to a Spaniard. The secret to the success of my decades of marriage is the lack of correlation between anger and divorce.<\/p>\n
The problem is not anger\u2014it is contempt.<\/i> In the words of the nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt \u201cis the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.\u201d1<\/sup> The destructive power of contempt is well-documented in the work of the famous social psychologist and relationship expert John M. Gottman, professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. Over the course of his work, Gottman has studied thousands of married couples. He has explained that the biggest warning signs for divorce are indicators of contempt. These include sarcasm, sneering, hostile humor, and\u2014worst of all\u2014eye-rolling.2<\/sup><\/p>\n I have teenage kids. I see lots of eye-rolling. But if you roll your eyes at somebody you love, woe be unto you. That is a little act that effectively says, \u201cYou are worthless,\u201d to the one person\u2014your spouse\u2014you should love more than any other. Do you want to see if a couple will end up in divorce court? Watch them discuss contentious topics and see if either partner rolls his or her eyes.<\/p>\n And just as contempt ruins a marriage, it can tear a country apart. America is developing a \u201cculture of contempt\u201d\u2014a habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided but as worthless.<\/p>\n This is causing incredible harm to our country. One in six Americans have stopped talking to close friends and family members over politics since the 2016 election. Millions are organizing their social lives and curating their news and information to avoid hearing viewpoints differing from their own. Ideological polarization is at higher levels than at any time since the American Civil War.<\/p>\n Listen to the words of Church president Russell M. Nelson: \u201cHatred among brothers and neighbors has now reduced sacred cities to sites of sorrow.\u201d3<\/sup> He said this in 2002. Today it is even truer, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n And this is harming more than our nation. Remember that America is a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. We are an example of democratic capitalism that has pulled two billion of our brothers and sisters out of starvation-level poverty over the past half-century alone. This is a nation that has attracted you or your ancestors with the promise of equal opportunity, religious freedom, and a good life for you and your family. When America is torn apart, we become incapable of living up to the plan\u2014the holy plan\u2014for our nation, which is to shine a light for the rest of the world.<\/p>\n So what do we need? Some say we need to agree more, but that is wrong. Disagreement is good, because competition is good. It makes us sharp and strong, whether in sports, in politics, in economics, or in the world of ideas. We don\u2019t need to disagree less; we need to disagree better. Other people say we need more civility. But that is wrong too, because civility is a hopelessly low standard for us as Americans. Imagine that I told you that my wife, Esther, and I are \u201ccivil to each other.\u201d You would say we need to get some counseling!<\/p>\n