“I just wanted to be honest. I don’t want to get mixed up in this conflict. I want to remain neutral,” Geralt of Rivia tells his good friend Yarpen, a dwarf. “It’s impossible!” yells Yarpen in response. “It’s impossible to remain neutral, don’t you understand that? No, you don’t understand anything.”

Geralt, the monster-hunting protagonist in The Witcher fantasy series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, believes that it’s better to abstain from conflict than to participate in events without fully understanding their consequences. But Yarpen has chosen to take a side and fight against the rebel Scoia’tael forces, sees good and evil, just cause and oppression. Thus, he finds Geralt’s refusal to fight injustice unacceptable, indifferent, and cowardly: “Get out of my sight with your arrogant neutrality,” he tells Geralt.

Their heated exchange helps us to think of neutrality as an attitude one can adopt. This attitude consists of an initial approach to any given conflict, in which you abstain from choosing any one side. Whether this choice arises from careful consideration or indifference is something distinct from neutrality itself.

When it comes to interesting and responsible ways of being neutral, fiction, particularly the sci-fi and fantasy kind, can help us contemplate a wider, more exciting range of possibilities than reality.

The reason for this is quite simple: not everything that is possible is actual. But if we think we know what is possible based only on what is actual, we are closing ourselves off to an honest examination.

When we pick up a sci-fi or fantasy novel with this “let’s see” attitude, we are practicing the rather technical concept of “neutrality modification.” The term was coined by philosopher Edmund Husserl, who claimed that the exercise could open a realm of investigation into the very nature of our consciousness, experience, and perception. Say we’re observing an orange on a counter. Our experience amounts to a visual perception of an existing object. In perception, we commit to the existence of the perceived object. But if we operate a neutrality modification upon that act of perception, Husserl would say, we have as a result “a neutral orange”: an orange that neither exists nor ceases to exist. An orange that is indifferent to the question of existence.

By reading so-called fantastical literature with the attitude of neutrality modification, we allow ourselves to embark on an exploration of the possibility realm: If we are on Mars, we resist the thought that tells us, “That’s impossible!” If we are in Narnia, we ignore the idea, “There’s no such thing as magic!” By temporarily suspending our beliefs about what is real and accepting the world the author offers, we see how possible we find it. We see how possible it feels to us.

Judging what is possible is a hard exercise, one that might engage physicists and logicians. But we can all consider and analyze what could be when it comes to thinking about human nature, right and wrong, forms of political organization, or relating to one another. We can, in other words, speculate. Speculation might be the summit of the human being’s ability to reason abstractly. But it is also an activity that profits from what philosophers like to call intuition, “direct contact” with the thing we are thinking about. In the same way that a memory can give us back the feeling we once had, albeit not so intensely, the human faculty of fantasy allows us to have a certain experience of that which is not (yet?) actual.

The fantasy and science fiction genres, also known as “speculative fiction,” are authored by professional speculators who spend their lives asking “What if…?” Their kind of fiction builds a possible world full of intuitions. These stories trigger in us the feeling of something we have never really felt. They allow us to better grasp what we mean when we say some things might truly be different from how they actually are. They help us reconsider why we think that certain other things should be deemed impossible.

The worlds of fantasy and science fiction are filled with the exploration of possibilities. They invite us to experience the extent of such possibilities not just rationally but affectively, intuitively, presently.

If you feel like traveling into the realm of the possible, do so with a neutral attitude. Forget that the world in which you live exists and is just how it is. Being neutral is a conscious attempt at canceling prejudices, at not judging before we know enough to do so. It is an honest attempt at submerging ourselves in the fictional world and its whole range of sensations. Neutralize your prior beliefs and let the author and their ideas penetrate you. Dive into their worlds and their stories. Live through the characters and pay attention to how these inhabitants of other (perhaps) possible worlds, think, feel, and act.

It does not matter if the possible will one day become actual. It does not matter if you think you know better. Be neutral. Be open to what is offered and allow yourself to live in a different, possible world. Be neutral, and you might be changed in ways you would not have thought possible.

The post Sci-Fi’s Lessons in Neutrality appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Last year was the hottest summer on record in the Northern Hemisphere. Earth’s ocean surfaces were warmer in the first month of 2024 than any previously recorded January. And by the end of this year, global climate-related deaths since 2000 could exceed 4 million people, according to one estimate.

The immediacy and the stakes of human-driven climate change have never been clearer. Yet journalists reporting on climate-driven disasters are still pulling punches in their coverage. They often don’t explicitly invoke climate change in their reporting, and even more rarely do they identify the primary culprit behind it: the human consumption of fossil fuels, egged on by oil and gas companies that have long known better.

Journalists cherish their performance of neutrality when reporting on controversial issues. But this commitment to appearing “balanced”—even when one side is relying on evidence and the other is making things up—has come at a profound cost. It’s led major news outlets to cover what should be the science story of our time through the lens of politics, resulting in a delayed, diminutive planetary response to the once slowly, and now rapidly, accelerating climate emergency.

Journalistic neutrality posits that it’s possible to approach a news story without filtering choices through some system of values: about what’s right and wrong, true and false, important and trivial, “normal” and deviant. But this long-held reporting norm is a fallacy. Contemporary media critics such as Jay Rosen and Lewis Raven Wallace have aptly argued that all communication originates in “a view from somewhere”: We are inevitably influenced by our experiences, our families, our peers, and our moral commitments, and it’s more productive to recognize and acknowledge these commitments than to delude ourselves or (as journalists often do) over-represent views we find harmful just to demonstrate impartiality.

Right-wing actors have weaponized the fear of being labeled “biased” to manipulate reporting by insisting on “both sides” treatment that offers equally credulous depictions of crystal-clear science and cynical “skeptics.” Reporters who are believed to have crossed a line into opinion or “advocacy” can lose prestige, or even their jobs, by not adequately acquiescing to an elusive and idealized standard of neutrality. This has led journalists to violate their own sense of morality or legitimize movements of which they are rightfully skeptical in their coverage. Veteran environmental journalist Amy Westervelt has spoken about this on her groundbreaking “Drilled” podcast: “I myself have had editors remove mentions of climate science from a story about worsening wildfires because they don’t want to ‘make the story political.’”

A late-20th century campaign exploiting this neutrality norm through well-promoted pseudo-science and supporting rhetoric from fossil fuel-friendly politicians prompted journalists to waste years tepidly “balancing” empirical truths about rising climate risks against bad-faith claims that climate change was a “hoax” or conspiracy. Max Boykoff, a leading scholar in exposing these patterns, found in one study of climate coverage from 1995 to 2004 that journalists’ failures to clearly portray the scientific consensus “have led to the appearance of amplified uncertainty and debate, also then permeating public and policy discourse.”

Journalists now face an ethical choice that affects the fate of life on Earth: Do they stick with the vaunted value of “neutrality” and keep balancing good-faith climate communication with bad-faith, debunked denialism? Or do they cover the climate emergency as an increasingly urgent fact and mitigate the muddle that has plagued our public discourse?

Inspiration for an alternative path can be found in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. This widely influential code, revised in 2014 by the century-old organization representing journalists in the U.S., offers four main principles: Seek Truth and Report It, Act Independently, Be Accountable and Transparent, and Minimize Harm.

In the context of climate change, the directive to minimize harm is the most overlooked. This tenet has guided journalists through many discrete cases where the safety, well-being, and privacy of individual news sources are at stake. Protecting a sexual assault victim’s identity, for instance, might mean being less transparent and delivering less truth than would naming that victim. In such cases, journalists generally err on the side of minimizing harm.

Yet because the mandate to minimize harm is narrowly interpreted to focus on individual sources and subjects, its highest potential is largely untapped. Journalists’ much broader obligation to minimize harm—by considering the safety and well-being of communities, societies, and the very planet that sustains life and journalistic work – has been almost entirely neglected.

Climate change is perhaps the most compelling case for applying a broader interpretation of the principle to minimize harm: favoring evidence over equivalence and making coverage choices that starkly clarify the stakes of continued inaction.

Scientists have recently warned that averting global catastrophe will require a radical restructuring of economic and social life on Earth — an astonishing statement that calls into question nearly every element of our daily lives. But while this warning was duly reported, it has barely interrupted the largely episodic nature of climate coverage in mainstream media, which continues to look from day to day as though we weren’t on the precipice of irrevocable disaster.

The historian Howard Zinn famously said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” As the train of humanity barrels toward a potentially unlivable world, anyone who’s not trying to slow it down might as well be driving it.

There’s only one way for journalists to minimize harm around climate change—and that’s to fight it.

The post Why Journalists Shouldn’t Be Neutral on Climate Change appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Skylar was born a girl, meaning they were assigned female at birth by their doctors. Today, Skylar identifies as male. Their preferred pronouns are he/him or they/them.

I raised Skylar as a girl. Up until a few years ago, they were, in my mind, unequivocally my daughter. Long hair and pretty dresses were their thing, but so were hunting for bugs, dreaming of dinosaurs, and digging in the dirt. I didn’t expect Skylar to play with dolls, or for them to be a princess on Halloween when they preferred Legos and Dracula costumes. Skylar’s preferences often swung toward what society might deem boyish things, but then again, they were a sucker for a skirt they could really twirl in.

Skylar didn’t come to me as a young child and proclaim that they were not a girl or that they felt like they were born into the wrong body. In fact, there were no conversations with Skylar regarding them not feeling in alignment with the sex and gender of their birth until puberty.

When Skylar did begin to express feelings of being transgender, it wasn’t easy for me. I felt incredible internal resistance, even loss. But I also knew that Skylar did feel safe enough to explore these feelings and to lean on me for guidance and support.

Now, Skylar is moving out, leaving California for Oregon. As they get ready to launch, it makes me question if my parenting, which looking back, might be labeled gender neutral, has prepared them for a world outside our family’s orbit—a world where gender roles are fraught with divisiveness.

The word neutral has many meanings: indifferent, impartial, disengaged. When you talk about neutrality in terms of parenting, it means something completely different. In the past few years, there has been a growing resurrection of the conversation around gender-neutral or gender-responsive parenting.

This kind of parenting was already a thing by the early ’70s, when I was a quintessential girl: shy and bookish, I hated sports, loved my dolls, and could spend a perfect summer afternoon watching soap operas with my grandma. My mom was an interesting mix of traditional and hippie who insisted on good manners and “ladylike” behavior, but who also wanted me and my sister to be original thinkers and stand on our own two feet.

When Skylar was growing up, Erin M. Eichinger writes that she always encouraged them to be “free” to be themselves: someone who loved to twirl in skirts and hunt for bugs.

Eichinger set out to raise Skylar (pictured) and her other three children with an awareness of gender identities that are “unique, fluid, and complex.”

Looking back, Eichinger writes that she wouldn’t change much about her parenting style, aside from being even more conscious and intentional around language and her attitudes surrounding gender roles.

When I was around 5, Mom gave me a copy of the children’s album Free to Be You and Me, which came out in 1972.

At the heart of the album was a message about gender-neutral parenting that encouraged kids and adults to see themselves in ways that broke loose from rigid notions of what it meant to be a boy or a girl. Boys can play with dolls. Girls can run fast.  And, it’s okay for all of us to cry.   Tapping into the Gloria Steinem-style feminism of the time, the album was a reaction to a hyper-gendered postwar America, where marketers painted everything in shades of pink or blue.

Free to Be You and Me provided a new vision of how things could be. I wore that record out, playing it on my white suitcase record player until I knew every song and story by heart.

About 25 years passed from the first time I listened to the album to when I became a mom myself. My approach to parenting my three step kids and Skylar, my first and only born, turned out to be fairly gender neutral. I taught my kids that boys and girls are a lot more alike than they are different. I encouraged them to be “free” to wear whatever they like; play however they like and be however they like.

I was winging it, with Free to Be You and Me as my compass.

Skylar hopes to be a parent themselves one day, and their thoughts on gender-neutral parenting are interesting: “I would keep things neutral when it comes to my child. I would use neutral pronouns, names, toys, and clothes.”

While Skylar realizes that total neutrality would be an impossibility, they would try, at least with those in the child’s inner circle, to maintain as neutral an environment as possible.

If this caused confusion, once the child had more contact with people outside their family group,  Skylar feels that it could be a launching point for communication. “It would be a way to talk to them about gender from a young age, like kids who are raised always knowing they are adopted. They may not understand the concept when they are little, but once they do, there is no fear around it.”

Many people seem to think gender neutrality is something completely new and foreign.

What I’ve come to believe is that we have a generation of young people who are giving us a new lexicon surrounding gender. They are not describing a new phenomenon; they are, as historian Laura Lovett has noted, “resuscitating an old movement, not creating a new one.”

As far as public discussions around gender go, we have made great strides, and yet with that, comes pushback. In 2024, there have been more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in 43 states. In Florida, the state board of medicine is acting to block any kind of gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18, even with parental consent. In California, Elon Musk announced he’d be moving his Space X headquarters out of the state. This, in response to a bill that bans teachers from forcibly outing transgender students to their families. Musk is the father of a transgender daughter from whom he is estranged, and he blames her California private school education for “making her trans.”

Gender roles are imprecise, constantly changing, and ever-evolving. Because of this nebulous quality, they are often confusing and even misleading. As a pushback to what they see as socially imposed rules, some parents today are taking the concept of neutrality in parenting even further, a strict concealment of their baby’s gender from all but a small circle of caretakers. In doing so, they aim to make the child’s formative years completely free of gender markers or stereotypes. Think gender-neutral names, clothing, and toys. Definitely no gender-reveal parties. At some point, the thinking goes, the child will naturally express their gender with no need for any outside influence.

This reminds me of the widely read short story about “Baby X,” a fictional child whose gender is revealed to only a select few. The piece was published in Ms. magazine in 1978, just a few years after Free to Be You and Me—and it pushed readers to question the impact gender roles have on children and society at large.

While my approach of raising children with an awareness of gender identities that are unique, fluid, and complex feels right, the idea of raising kids with total neutrality seems unnecessary to me. I wonder if the practice could be needlessly confusing, leading to misinterpretations and misunderstanding for the child and those who love them, not to mention the level of watchfulness required on the parent’s part.

If I had the chance to raise Skylar again, I am not sure I would change my parenting style. Maybe I would be more conscious around language or more intentional about my attitudes surrounding gender roles.

Here’s the tricky part about raising kids: If you do a good job, the reward is that they become one of your favorite people in the whole world. The other reward is that they learn to stand on their own two feet. And then, they leave you.

So, you help them leave. You break your own heart in service of their future and you wonder if you have prepared them for the world out there.

So, here I am, helping my child take their next step. As I look into the proverbial rearview mirror, to the kid Skylar was, and to the adult they are becoming, I can only hope I prepared them well. I hope too, that when they look into the mirror, they see what I see: a funny, loving, wicked smart, and compassionate person.

What else could a parent want for their child?

The post Parenting Beyond the Gender Binary appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

If you were born any time after 1960, the first (and perhaps only) country that will come to mind when you think of “neutrality” is Switzerland—that tiny alpine nation that has been following a policy of “perpetual neutrality” for 200 years.

However, if you were born in the 1800s, the most obvious country that you would think of would be the United States of America.

George Washington declared American neutrality in his 1796 “Farewell Address.” “After deliberate examination […] I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take—and was bound in duty and interest to take—a neutral position,” the first U.S. president declared. He gave many reasons for his thinking, including that “a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils,” including binding the U.S. to interests and the wars of other states.

After that statement, neutrality remained a pillar of U.S. foreign policy for 150 years. But Washington’s definition of neutrality was hardly the only one in play.

Neutrality is a fuzzy concept that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In foreign policy, the term is used in at least three different ways: as a concept of international law, as a policy of states, and as an analytical category to describe the approaches of states toward certain conflicts. Within that framework, the meaning of neutrality frequently changes.

The U.S. history of neutrality exemplifies this. Indeed, the U.S. neutrality of Washington and of the early 19th century would look like a strange animal to us today, and very different from Switzerland’s version.

For instance, American neutrality did not preclude the U.S. from using warfare to achieve its goals elsewhere. It fought the Indigenous nations of North America in a series of bloody wars,  swallowed up the equally neutral Kingdom of Hawaii in 1899, and went to war with Mexico and Spain when that was in its interest.

From the beginning, U.S. neutrality policy was only directed toward Europe, and specifically toward European conflicts that the country wasn’t interested in. That included the first few years of the First and Second World Wars (1914-17 and 1939-41). The Americans only got rid of this neutrality-toward-useless-overseas-conflicts approach after the Japanese bombed them out of it in Pearl Harbor. So far, they haven’t returned to it.

At its time, this form of “occasional neutrality” was the norm. In fact, the 19th century was the global heyday of U.S.-style neutrality, because the balance of power that emerged after the early-1800s Napoleonic Wars provided relative stability to the Great Powers. That stability inspired more neutrality. Of course, this period was not peaceful—several small wars took place and the ramped-up colonization of Africa, Asia, and Australia killed millions of people. But the fact that no single Great Power could dominate the eight to 10 others led to each one of them having an interest in remaining neutral sometimes.

Hence, there was a strong desire for all powers to hammer out the concrete rules of engagement between belligerents and neutrals. This led to the codification of the “law of neutrality” in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions. The conventions clearly stated the “do’s and don’ts” for neutrals and belligerents during war.

Today, the only states that still refer to these legalistic neutrality concepts are small, perpetually neutral states like Switzerland, Austria, or Ireland. They feel bound by neutrality law, which is why they refuse to export weapons to war zones (to Ukraine, for instance) or allow overflights to NATO countries that are engaged in military operations. Great Powers today, like the United States, China, or Russia, do not make use of this part of international law anymore.

The reason for that is well known. Since the Second World War, the U.S. has built what it now calls a “rules-based international system” that centers around alliance-building—from Israel to the NATO countries, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. U.S. allies either help in interventions abroad (in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc.) or allow the U.S. military to station personnel and assets on their soil and harbors, thereby enabling Washington to project unparalleled hard power with roughly 750 bases around the globe.

The allies, in return, receive guarantees of protection from Uncle Sam. No NATO country has ever been attacked by another state actor, nor has Japan seen any fighting since sticking to a grand bargain with the U.S. in the 1950s. In the Philippines and Taiwan, too, some believe that only their alliance with the U.S. deters China.

Instead, in the contemporary world neutrality is most often used to describe policies of states that, in one way or another, do not fall in line with other states toward a third-party conflict. Those states, however, don’t usually call themselves neutral, nor do they follow neutrality law; what they are neutral toward is often not even covered by the treaties of old.

Take, for example, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that formed during the Cold War. In response to the bipolar conflict between the two superpowers, recently de-colonized countries in Asia and Africa developed a loose coalition united by despising the idea of having to choose sides in an ideological conflict among former European colonizers. Countries like India, Indonesia, Ghana, or Egypt had no desire to pick a side between the Soviets and the West when they could remain on good terms with both sides and use trade with both to develop their economies and move away from dependence on former oppressors.

The NAM was and still is only a loose association of countries. Some, like the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, are even fixtures of the U.S. alliance system with military base agreements, showing that nonalignment and alliances can and do go together—international politics rarely is a binary affair. But since the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, the NAM as a neutral block has again become relevant, with members refusing to choose sides.

Similarly, the BRICS+ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and the 2024 additions of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) will likely also become a neutral block, because its members include friends and foes alike. China and India have open territorial disputes along their border, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are strongly opposed strategic rivals in West Asia. This all but ensures that the BRICS+ block won’t become a military alliance, but will remain institutionally tied to neutrality toward each other’s conflicts.

There is a propensity in the U.S. and Europe—especially in neoconservative circles—to view global security in a friend-foe schema, a Manichean black and white with the forces of good (democracies) on one side and evil (autocracies) on the other. But many nonaligned and neutral countries have a much more nuanced picture of international security.

There are moments when Western democracies and their allies make tremendous mistakes, like illegally invading Iraq and killing one million people, bombing Serbia and Libya, occupying parts of Syria in a stark breach of international law, or supporting the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians—not to mention the older mistakes of the Vietnam War or the overthrow of democratic regimes in Iran and Latin America. Such errors provide strong incentives to countries outside the immediate U.S. security regime to avoid hard alliances and opt for uncommitted, situational policies.

In short, there are many reasons why states decide to “go it alone” and not bind their fate to others. The international system’s dynamic and fluid amalgamation of interests and dependencies creates ever-changing compositions and conceptions of war, peace, and—indeed—neutrality.

The post When the U.S.A. Was Neutral appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Umpiring baseball games is the only job I’ve ever had where you’re expected to be absolutely perfect on day one and continuously get better each and every day after that.

That might sound like a paradox. But that pressure to be ever more perfect is tied up in the idea of the umpire as neutral. Both are equally unnatural and maybe even impossible to ask of humans. And yet both are vital on the field because they render the umpire invisible. Which is necessary because the game is about the players.

When I first started umpiring as a young adult Little League volunteer, being neutral seemed easy. I was neutral because I couldn’t have cared less who won or who lost. But I did care that kids had fun. To do that, I needed to keep the game moving quickly. And I had to teach the kids and volunteer coaches—nearly all of them parents—the rules of the game, so they could enjoy their time on the field.

About 10 years ago, I retired and got into umpiring full-time for high school and college. I also run leagues and train umpires. Sports have changed and so has umpiring—becoming specialized and professionalized, even at the amateur level. Umpires are no longer volunteer kids who come out of the stands to call balls and strikes. Even in youth baseball, most umpires today are paid. That raises the stakes and makes it even more important that umpires embody neutrality.

I teach the umpires I train, and I adhere to three prongs of neutrality.

The first prong of neutrality is invisibility. I don’t want people to notice me out there. I don’t want to be remembered for a bad call that costs someone the game. And I want the game to go by quickly and efficiently, so no one complains. I do have to hold people accountable and enforce the rules, but I want to do that in ways that are quiet and don’t attract much attention.

The second prong of neutrality is safety. Someone getting hurt is the worst possible outcome. So, I maintain a zero-tolerance policy for safety infractions—kids need to keep their helmets on, for example. Anything that creates a danger for players, coaches, spectators—I have to stop immediately.

Part of safety is avoiding conflict. Sometimes a small thing—like a pitch thrown over a batter’s head—will escalate into words or a fight or even a bench-clearing brawl, if you don’t act quickly to defuse it. I also try to intervene early on when I see players or coaches starting to lose composure or act out. I don’t want the outburst or confrontation to escalate to the point where I have to eject someone. Ejection always feels like a failure.

The third prong of neutrality involves taking care of your fellow umpires. These days, officials in any sport take so much abuse—from people yelling and screaming and carrying on in crazy ways—that they are tired of it. And unfortunately, we have some officials who respond to abuse with abuse or take pride in giving a team or coach who treated them poorly a hard time. But that’s a mistake—then you get anger and feuds and damage to reputations.

That’s why it’s important for other umpires to step in, talk to one another, and hold each other accountable. It’s also important for the people who assign umpires to games, at every level, to have the guts to red-line officials—to keep them from going back to referee teams with whom they’ve recently had problems. Also, it’s important to be aware of conflicts of interest—should you really umpire the game of your beloved alma mater?

When conflicts do arise, I rely on the thick skin I developed from my years in the fire service, where I encountered people at a terrible moment in their lives. I’ve also taught myself, and the umpires I train and work with, to “not hear beyond the fence line.” I don’t pay attention to things said off the field. I let coaches who are arguing have their moment to disagree, but that’s it. If things get heated, you call time out and say, “Let’s have a grown-up conversation about this.”

But you can have too much conversation. If I talk too much to one coach or player, people on the other team will say that I’m too friendly with the opponent.

I do try to counsel kids who get upset. I see a lot of kids going through difficulties these days.  But kids have to learn—and it’s a hard lesson to teach in this everyone-gets-a-trophy society—that the game is difficult and that things don’t always go your way. The best coaches talk about how hard and disappointing baseball can be, and explain that even successful hitters fail seven out of 10 times.

Baseball is a game of failure for everyone—except umpires.

The post A Baseball Umpire’s Guide to Neutrality appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“He just doesn’t listen to me!” “She never understands what I’m going through!”

There I sat, their psychotherapist, sandwiched between this couple who had been married at least 50 years. The husband, a Vietnam veteran with metastatic cancer, longstanding PTSD, and increased impairments from dementia. The wife, a full-time caregiver and retired school administrator, stressed out and facing her own increased cognitive challenges. This marriage, woven together by three children, many grandchildren, five military deployments, countless life celebrations and family funerals. Their love language: arguing.

Of course, they didn’t call it fighting—they saw their “discussions” as spirited debates. Seeing their faces brighten when they talked over each other almost felt like eavesdropping on covert foreplay. They vaguely reminded me of my own grandparents, except now I couldn’t sit back and watch bemusedly from the roomy backseat of Poppy’s Lincoln.

As their therapist, I had to engage, mediate, and navigate their needs. I had to assert therapeutic neutrality, balancing both parties’ perspectives while also managing my own viewpoints and biases.

“Neutral” conjures a sense of complete objectivity, impartial and dispassionate, that rarely exists in realistic realms of human experience. When I work with couples or families, instead of completely removing myself from the conflict, I focus on how to acknowledge, validate, and work with all perspectives in the room, even if some disagreements can never be fully resolved.

It doesn’t always come easily. When I trained in geriatrics, I had little coursework in family and couples therapy and no idea what working with families would be like. Referrals typically called for individual therapy, but patients often wanted loved ones in the room—or, in the presence of dementia, needed them there.

Complex dynamics led family members to try to curry favor with me, seeking validation that they were the “correct” party. Boundary setting became even more crucial. Who was my primary patient? Did they even want family therapy? I work in a medical system designed for veterans, which typically favors their needs, even with built-in caregiver supports. How do I ensure I’m addressing the needs of spouses or other family caregivers, while also staying true to the veteran patient?

Literature on “therapeutic neutrality” is sparse, but reading what’s out there offered me a helpful framework to start from. I was particularly drawn toward psychologists Charles Gelso and Katri Kanninen’s definition. They posit that effective therapeutic neutrality occurs when the therapist “takes an observer position in the relationship…refrains from taking sides in the patient’s inner struggles…[and] does not take sides in the patient’s relational struggles.”

One of the major challenges of any kind of therapy with multiple people is that it challenges therapeutic rapport: If I align with one person, I run the risk of pushing against another. Family therapists Mark Butler and colleagues offer a solution: maintaining a stance of dynamic neutrality, in which the “therapist invites and facilitates each person in gaining an empathic window on others’ experience and perspective and then holding their partner’s experience equally valid with their own and equally significant to relationship success.”

In my work with families and couples navigating complex medical issues, I had, without fully realizing it, already been employing this technique, taking extra time to observe all viewpoints and not jump to conclusions.

This is especially essential when I am a part of family meetings among patients, family, and medical providers in the hospital. Once, I found myself and three doctors jammed into every crevice of a small hospital room, hashing things out with a patient and two of his sisters. Nobody was happy. Not the patient, who was frustrated by a prolonged hospital stay and wanted to relocate to one of his sisters’ houses. Not his sisters, who wanted to move him to an assisted living facility. Not the medical and psychiatric teams, who wanted to send him to a skilled nursing facility for rehab and likely longer-term care, whether he wanted it or not.

They debated what should happen next. The patient couldn’t stay in the hospital indefinitely, for medical and financial reasons. But he also still needed a lot of help managing his pain and completing personal care such as toileting, bathing, and dressing.  Everyone in the room was frustrated and overwhelmed.

I sat and listened, and tried to balance the complex facts with each party’s opinions, feelings, and needs. Everyone wanted a solution—their solution—so badly, that no one, least of all the patient himself, was heard and respected. Rather than offering solutions, I mediated, trying to create time and space for each person to talk. We did not come up with an answer, but we made progress in listening.

The conclusion the group reached several days later—trying out a skilled nursing rehab location close to the patient’s home and family, with eventual plans to transfer home—wasn’t perfect, but the meeting reset the conversation to a place of greater equity and inclusivity.

Neutrality helped me balance the needs and limitations of a difficult reality. In a space of narrow choices, this one was best aligned with the care the patient wanted.

With the Vietnam vet and his wife, this notion of neutrality as observation helped me reconnect the couple with the things that brought them together in the first place. Rather than leaning into their disagreements and arriving at judgments about who was right, we took trips down Memory Lane. We discussed how they met in college, set up by friends, and how they have been arguing for decades. They talked about what they admired and found attractive about each other. They remembered their accomplishments, their goals, and their mutual commitment.

I don’t approach therapeutic neutrality with a cold, dispassionate lens. Instead, I try to find ways to use curiosity, exploration, and observations of points of connection to help couples, families, and medical teams work through conflict. Rather than focusing on how someone wants another person to change, I use prompts to help people rediscover what they value, and how the people around them bring them closer to it. I’ve learned that my job, as a neutral therapist, is to help patients and their loved ones strengthen their bonds.

The post How Does a Therapist Stay Neutral? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

My ability to be neutral as a political journalist depends on the intellectual honesty of the people—and the society—I cover.

But in an era when one side of the political spectrum is not always operating in good faith, and when people in my position are increasingly losing the trust of the audiences we serve, I don’t think neutrality should be the final goal. Instead, perhaps, we should think about neutrality more as a means to an end: uncovering the truth, without fear or favor, and presenting that truth to the public.

The dictionary defines being neutral as, “not aligned with or supporting any side or position in a controversy.” There are certainly aspects of my job where this is core to the work, such as in reporting, where being neutral means asking open-ended questions and dispassionately following facts, wherever they may lead.

Take criminal justice policy, one of the most challenging beats that I have ever covered. When I began reporting on the topic 15 years ago, California was grappling with prisons so crowded that, eventually, the U.S Supreme Court stepped in and ordered the state to reduce the populations.

This record incarceration was the result of a “tough on crime” movement that correlated safety with long prison sentences. But that correlation wasn’t borne out by the facts: People were receiving decades-long sentences for drug possession or property crimes, taking state funding away from schools and other core state services. California also had a very high recidivism rate, meaning most people who were released from prison would quickly return—but it often wasn’t for a new violent crime, rather for a simple violation of their parole rules.

I felt it was crucial to tell this story from all angles—and not just from the perspective of crime victims or law enforcement, who had dominated the discussion during the “tough on crime” era. I wanted to capture the points of view of the people who were incarcerated, and their families and communities who were impacted by their crimes and the punishment meted out. I tried to center my reporting not just on anecdotes but on data and research—even if that research did not comport with widely accepted assumptions and beliefs.

It was not always popular to do so, even with my editors, who were used to relying on conventional sources and well-worn narratives. Now, a decade or so into the reforms sparked by the prison overcrowding crisis—and as we face new challenges around property crimes and drug use—I am digging back into this issue to assess whether the reforms worked, or if they are to blame for the problems so evident in California.

I don’t yet know what I will find. But I do know that my job is to report it, no matter who likes or dislikes the findings.

Eventually, I’ll come to the point in my work when I have to leave neutrality behind and seek objectivity. Once I have answered the questions that I set out to ask, I have to make a call about what I found.

That doesn’t mean taking a side in the political sense. It means taking the side of the truth.

This can be a challenge in itself. It’s particularly hard when you are interviewing someone on live TV or radio, where you must push back against falsehoods in real time. Recently, we had U.S Senate candidate Eric Early, someone who believes that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, on my radio show.

This is not an intellectually honest argument to make, even if many Americans agree with it: The facts don’t bear out. So, when I am in the studio with Early in that moment, it’s not my job to stay “neutral” and simply listen. It’s my job to question, to push back—and, yes, call out the lies when they are uttered. It doesn’t have to be confrontational or uncivil, but it is key to doing my job responsibly.

This is where objectivity becomes key—the ability to set aside personal feelings or opinions and look at the facts, then make a judgment based on that information. Neutrality alone—the idea of not aligning yourself with one side—doesn’t cut it when you’re faced with someone who is lying, obfuscating, or being intellectually dishonest, even if they believe what they’re saying. But it’s also a mistake to see objectivity in this kind of situation as taking a side, other than the side of the truth.

Because the role of a journalist is to seek, uncover, and broadcast the truth. Without fear or favor. Without my own beliefs getting in the way. Even if, in this moment, it is harder than ever.

The post For Political Journalists, Neutrality Isn’t the Goal appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

For most of my life, people have offered joyful shouts when I have presented either of my passports, or answered the question of where I come from. They have positive associations with my two home countries, Switzerland and Sweden, even if they confused them for each other.

I was born and raised in Switzerland. I have spent most of my adult life in Sweden. So, when I’m pressed to pick between them, I simply answer, “Choose whatever you want.”

That makes some sense, because my countries have some things in common. They are two of Europe’s—and the world’s—oldest and most advanced democracies. For a long time, they also were both neutral countries—but they weren’t neutral in the same way.

Both adhered to the core tenet of neutrality: for at least two centuries, neither engaged in wars. “This commonality sometimes made [the two countries] forget our big differences,” said Jacob Westberg, a professor of war studies and military history at the Swedish Defense University in Stockholm.

But the last few years have changed things for these countries, and for neutrality itself.

This Zeitenwende, or tipping point, began with Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022. That same year, Westberg published “How Small States Manage to Stay out of Wars: Explaining Sweden’s 200 Years of Peace,” in which he described the success story of both Sweden and Switzerland (along with other small countries) as neutral states.

But in 2023, he published a new book called Security Strategies: From Neutrality Policy to the Application for NATO Membership (currently only available in Swedish) that charts Sweden’s path to renouncing neutrality and joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an organization aligned with U.S. interests.

Sweden was prompted to make the epochal shift of stepping away from neutrality by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s threats against Europe. On March 7 of this year Sweden became a NATO member.

That means that Sweden is no longer a neutral country. (I repeat, for those who confuse the two, Sweden is no longer a neutral country. President Joe Biden mistakenly announced that “Switzerland” wanted to join NATO.)

So, my two countries are parting ways. Neutrality no more, says Stockholm, teaming up with Washington, while Bern clings to its successful formula—for now.

But this divergence isn’t a surprise because of the different visions of neutrality that Switzerland and Sweden have long held. This divergence stems from three big differences—those of history, practice, and geography.

First: History. Switzerland and Sweden both ended their warmongering at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, where “neutrality” for the first time entered international law. But the countries had distinct rationales for laying down their arms.

For centuries, Swedish monarchs had tried to defend their kingdom by engaging in foreign wars against their neighbors. They finally abandoned this strategy after losing Finland and being defeated by Russia in 1809.

Switzerland, meanwhile, was never an imperial power. After it lost its final battle abroad just over the border in northern Italy in 1515, the states of the old Swiss confederation spent centuries engaged in searching for balance domestically.

This internal scrutiny ended at that same Congress of Vienna. That was when Tsar Alexander I of Russia proposed that Switzerland, which at that time was a federation of 22 states, become a neutral country. Together they later funded modern “Switzerland” with a central government, an army, and its own currency. It’s been that way ever since.

Second: Practice. Over the centuries, Switzerland and Sweden developed very different forms of military neutrality. In the Swiss case, according to former president and foreign minister Ignazio Cassis, neutrality was based on the Hague Principles, which include “no participation in wars; international cooperation but no membership in any military alliance; no provision of troops or weapons to warring parties and no granting of transition rights.”

This comprehensive approach to neutrality kept Switzerland not only out of military alliances but also outside international organizations. Switzerland only joined the United Nations in 2002, and only by referendum. Switzerland is still not a member of the European Union.

Where the Swiss approach is sometimes called “integral,” Sweden’s version of neutrality involves what’s termed the “differential approach.” Sweden might foreswear wars, but it had a very active foreign policy. Sweden was a founding member of the United Nations in 1946 and joined the European Union in 1994, after a vote of the people.

Third: Geography. Look at any map, and you’ll see few reasons to confuse my two home countries.

Switzerland occupies a tiny landlocked area of approximately 41,000 square kilometers in the heart of continental Europe. This is bigger than Maryland but smaller than West Virginia. It is encircled by friendly democracies, of which all but one—the micro-state of Liechtenstein—belongs to the European Union.

Sweden has more territory to defend, and less friendly neighbors—specifically, Russia. Located in the far north of Europe, the country expands over an area of more than 450,000 square kilometers, making it slightly larger than California. It shares a maritime border, the Baltic Sea, with Russia, which maintains large military bases in Baltiysk (in the exclave of Kaliningrad) and outside St. Petersburg. In addition, the main Swedish island of Gotland is surrounded by international waters that are used by Russian military vehicles.

All these factors have given the two countries different tipping points on neutrality.

After Russia’s full-scale attack against its neighbor Ukraine on February 22, 2022, then-Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson initially rejected calls for a change to its neutral position.

“If Sweden were to choose to send in an application to join NATO in the current situation, it would further destabilize this area of Europe and increase tensions,” she told me and other reporters on March 8, 2022.

But just a few weeks later, her declaration was replaced by the announcement—in a historic press briefing held together with then-Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin—that both Nordic countries would apply for full NATO membership at the same time.

(That the formerly neutral Finland was accepted much earlier to NATO than Sweden is a story for another time, also based on history, practice, and geography).

As Sweden applied to NATO, and as Switzerland continued on its neutrality track, I started feeling new tension between my countries. On television, Swedish commentator Edward af Sillén expressed profound annoyance at the Swiss decision to make the anti-war song “Watergun” its official 2023 entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.  Then in late 2023, the Swedish tourist board started a global campaign intended to make the world understand that Sweden is not Switzerland.  Of course, with Sweden having joined NATO in March, any confusion about which of my two home countries is which should be over. At least for the time being.

The post Why Sweden Stopped Pretending to Be Switzerland appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.