The Yes campaign is failing. If nothing changes soon, then October 14 will see constitutional reform fail, setting back recognition and reconciliation by years, if not decades.

And no amount of impassioned speeches by politicians, mass rallies by the Yes faithful, uplifting advertisements or – dare I say – editorial columns are likely to shift the needle towards Yes.

This is because voters who are currently unsure or leaning towards No have tuned out the “official” platforms. Their trust in mainstream media outlets has collapsed to single digit figures. It’s not even that they’ve switched to social media. It turns out that the only ones who have their ear are friends, family and colleagues. In this age of mass cynicism and social media schisms, it’s good old-fashioned relationships that still matter.

So, if you believe in the Voice, as I do, if you believe it represents an opportunity for Australia to take meaningful steps towards reconciliation with First Nations peoples, and if you believe it could be a stepping stone to a more unified Australia that each of us can be proud of, then your time to act is now.

But how? The key is to leverage the power of relationships and dive into conversations with your friends and relatives, especially people over the age of 55, who are currently the most likely to vote No. That’s your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, or if you’re in that age group yourself, your childhood friends or neighbours.

If the prospect of starting a “political” conversation with family members fills you with dread, that’s understandable. These conversations often succumb to pitfalls that only increase animosity and polarisation. But get them right and they can be transformational. If you’re brave enough to strike up a conversation over the dinner table, here’s how to do so constructively. In fact, these tips can help you have better conversations regardless of how you intend to vote.

First: show respect. It’s all too easy (and, in some circles, encouraged) to believe that those who disagree with us must be either stupid or malicious. Sometimes they are. But signalling disrespect is a surefire way to kill any possibility of persuasion. Even the faintest whiff of disrespect triggers defensiveness, and when that happens, constructive conversation is over.

One way to show respect is to hold your tongue and listen – really listen. Often, people get belligerent because they don’t feel heard. That means two of the biggest tools in your arsenal are your ears. Just listening carefully, asking a few questions and repeating back a summary of what they have said can be transformative. It makes them feel heard and it gives you a fighting chance of understanding where they’re coming from.

Do this before you’ve shared your views. Our natural tendency when we hear someone say something we don’t agree with is to immediately open our mouths and tell them that we think differently. But this sets you at loggerheads from the outset. Instead, hold back. Hear them out and show you’re interested into getting to the bottom of the matter. That way it’s not a tug of war between the two of you but one where you’re on the same side pulling against ignorance.

While listening, you’re likely to hear them offer reasons to support their view. Some will be authentic, but many will be post-hoc rationalisations of deeper unstated motivations. You can spot a post-hoc rationalisation because when you show that it’s false, it doesn’t change their mind. That means it was never the real motivation for their beliefs, just a distraction.

The trick is not to challenge or fact check post-hoc rationalisations head-on but to change the way they perceive the issue in the first place. Once you’ve generated enough goodwill, offer an alternative perspective on the issue. You don’t need to encourage, let alone demand, they adopt your perspective, just offer it as your reason for voting the way you intend to.

You’re nearly done. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve done just about all anyone can do in a single conversation. Thank them and move on to something else. Let them mull over your perspective, and perhaps in the next conversation you might be able to go deeper. Minds rarely change in a single sitting.

Of course, there will be times when the conversation goes off the rails. Maybe your discipline cracks and you scoff at one of their remarks. Perhaps they refuse to engage in good faith. Maybe they just want to troll you to get a reaction. If any of these happen, back out. Focus instead on reinforcing the relationship based on other shared values – family, sport, food, whatever it is that brings you together – so perhaps in the next conversation they won’t feel the need to get defensive, or offensive.

Good conversations, particularly persuasive ones, take work. But it is possible to avoid the worst pitfalls and have a constructive discussion. If even a few unsure voters are swayed, it could shift the tide of the referendum. And given the Voice is about being heard, it’s rather fitting each of our voices could help make the difference.

An edited version of this article appears in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Image: AAP Image/Jono Searle

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Ethical dilemmas are, by their nature, uncomfortable or difficult to tackle, but they can also teach us a lot about our own values and principles and prepare us for an ethically complex world.

You’re about to take a major exam that will determine whether you get accepted into a potentially life-changing course. But you hear that there’s a leaked copy of the exam paper doing the rounds, and other students are studying it carefully. There are only a precious few spots available in your desired course, and if you don’t also sneak a peek at the leaked exam paper, you are likely to miss out. Should you cheat by looking at the leaked exam paper, given you know other students are doing the same? 

How about if you found out that the company you work for was partnering with an overseas contractor known for running sweatshops and flouting labour laws, meanwhile your company’s branding is all about how ethical and sustainable it is. Would you speak out to management, or on social media, even if doing so might cost you your job and income? 

If these scenarios give you pause, you’re not alone. Each represents a different kind of ethical dilemma we might come across, and by their nature they can be highly unsettling and difficult – if not impossible – to resolve in a way that satisfies everyone involved.  

But what makes something an ethical dilemma? It’s important to note that an ethical dilemma is not a simple question of doing the ‘right’ thing or the ‘wrong’ thing, like whether you should lie to cover up for something bad that you did.

A genuine ethical dilemma arises when there is a clash between two values (i.e., what you think is good) or principles (i.e., the rules you follow). Or it can be a choice between two bad outcomes, like knowing that whatever you do, someone will get hurt.

That’s what makes them so uncomfortable; we feel like whatever choice we make will involve some kind of compromise.

All in the mind

One way to prepare yourself to face real-world ethical dilemmas is to strengthen your moral muscle by practicing on hypothetical scenarios – a staple of philosophy classes. 

Consider this: you’re the captain of a sinking ship, and the lifeboat only has room for five passengers. Yet there are seven people aboard the ship, including yourself. Whom do you choose to board the lifeboat? The pregnant woman? The ageing brain surgeon? The fit young fisherman? The teenage twins? The reformed criminal who is now a priest? Yourself? 

Or how about this: you’ve just started your shift as the only surgeon in a small but high-tech hospital. As you walk into your ward, you’re presented with five dying patients. You know nothing else about their personal details except that each is suffering from a different organ failure. Without assistance, all will die within 24 hours. However, at that moment, a healthy patient is wheeled in for an unrelated minor procedure. You also know nothing about their personal circumstances, but you do know they have five perfectly healthy organs. Were you to allow that patient to die (as they will without treatment) you know you could save the lives of the other five dying patients. Would you allow one to die to save five? 

Each of these scenarios is carefully constructed to put pressure on your ethical intuitions and force you to make difficult decisions.

Tackling a hypothetical dilemma gives you an opportunity to reflect on your own values and principles, and search for good reasons to justify your choices.

Even if the hypothetical situation is absurdly unreal, you can still learn a lot about yourself and your ethical stance by considering how you would act in these cases.  

Your first impulse might be to try and change the circumstances to eliminate or minimise the dilemma. We might speculate that we could squeeze another person on the lifeboat, or that the organ transplants may not succeed, and that might make our decisions easier. This is entirely natural – and sensible – especially because dilemmas in the real world are rarely as clear cut. But dodging the dilemma misses the point of the exercise. 

You might decide that a consequentialist approach is the best one for the lifeboat scenario, causing you to pick the people who might end up leading the richest lives or having the most positive impact on others. But you might decide that a deontological approach is most appropriate for the surgeon’s dilemma, arguing that it’s inherently wrong to withhold treatment from an ‘innocent’ patient, even if it ends up saving lives.  

It’s important to remember that hypothetical dilemmas like this are designed so that there’s likely no simple answer that will satisfy everybody. Even reasonable people can disagree about what course of action to take. That’s fine. The important bit is not really the answer you come to but the reasons you give to support it. That’s what ethics is all about: finding good reasons to act the way we do. 

Most of us are likely to go through life without ever having to put people in lifeboats or contemplate the death of one to save five, but by testing ourselves with these dilemmas we can build our ethical muscles and be more ready to face other dilemmas that world could throw at us at any time. 

If you’re struggling with a real-life ethical dilemma, it can be tough finding the best path forward. Ethi-call is a free independent helpline offering decision-making support from trained ethics counsellors. Book a call today.