Before Violence Comes Dehumanization: Paths to Understanding’s Framework for Restoring Civic Belonging

Paths to Understanding frames political violence as emerging from eroded trust and dehumanization long before physical conflict, driven by narratives that portray what people love as threatened by other groups. To counter this “shrinking belonging,” the organization brings people together through shared human identities—not partisan labels—using programs like the Potluck Project and Let’s Go Together to rebuild trust, reduce fear, and strengthen both “belonging” and “civic muscle.” Their framework highlights how individuals often defend group belonging rather than ideas, especially when political identity has cost them relationships, which can intensify polarization. This approach aligns with NCDD’s mission by showing how intentional dialogue and relationship-building can interrupt dehumanization, address root causes of political conflict, and expand the sense of a shared “we.”

---

---

Paths to Understanding is offering a framework for understanding and interrupting political violence through relationship-building, recognizing that violence does not begin with weapons but with how communities see one another across political divides. The organization's work, which will be shared with Arizona leaders working to reduce political violence, centers on the observation that human survival depends not on strength but on cooperation through social contracts—shared expectations of treating one another with basic dignity, restraining harm, and finding ways to live together rooted in relationships of trust. When trust erodes, the social contract weakens, leading to dangerous escalation cycles where people begin to see whole groups not as people but as problems—a process of dehumanization that typically starts not with hate but when what people love (family, safety, future) is framed as being under threat from another group. The framework emphasizes that most people today don't actually know individuals from "the other side," instead hearing about them through media, political messaging, and social media shaped by fear, creating conditions where good people drift toward justifying dismissive or demeaning behavior not because they are bad but because they don't want to lose their people and the belonging their groups provide.

The Paths to Understanding approach addresses what the organization calls "shrinking belonging" by expanding it, bringing people together not first as "red" or "blue" but as human beings with other identities: people of faith, neighbors, parents, community members who want their communities to be safe and to thrive. When people meet face-to-face sharing food, telling stories, and sometimes serving together, fear decreases, curiosity increases, complexity returns, and people begin to experience belonging not dependent on seeing another group as a threat—what the organization calls "belonging," defined as the capacity to live together across difference, which leads to "civic muscle," the capacity to make decisions and act together for common futures. The organization's programs including the Potluck Project and Let's Go Together create spaces where people can experience a bigger "we," recognizing that people don't just defend ideas but defend belonging, meaning efforts to reduce political violence cannot focus only on arguments or policies but must focus on relationships. This framework identifies moral tension created when gaps grow between what people say they believe and what they are allowing within their groups, with those who have lost relationships or created distance from friends or family because of political identity finding it even harder to step back, often doubling down instead—one of the ways dehumanization takes root.
​
The work responds to observations from community leaders that "something is changing in our country"—the tone is sharper, distrust is deeper, and more people are beginning to justify behavior that not long ago most would have rejected, with one leader stating simply "I'm seeing people justify worse and worse behavior." Paths to Understanding's framework offers a different kind of strength beyond defending one's group: the strength to stay rooted in values, stay connected to others, and stay open to relationship even in times of tension, building capacity to live together across difference. The organization emphasizes that human beings are wired to belong, and when groups begin to justify dismissing or demeaning others, most people don't immediately push back but hesitate, stay quiet, and adjust—not because they are bad people but because they don't want to lose their people, creating conditions where over time people rely on their groups to reassure them they still belong even as moral tensions grow. By creating intentional spaces for face-to-face relationship-building across political divides, Paths to Understanding works to loosen the pressure to dehumanize and grow the possibility of shared futures, addressing the root causes of political violence through expanded belonging rather than focusing solely on surface-level political disagreements.