And in that promise, too, there is a rich colony of catalysts. There are at least ten conditions – the ‘components of a thinking environment’ I mentioned, conditions we are providing when we give attention and don’t speak. These ‘components’– attention, equality, ease, appreciation, feelings, encouragement, information, difference, incisive questions and place – we will explore in fresh detail later. The point here is that they actually generate thought. To decide to live them is to decide to cherish independent human thinking.

People want to think for themselves more than they want to think as someone else. Offering people ideas, only when they ask us, and only through the language of information and experience, keeps them thinking for themselves. And ironically that language increases the chances that our ideas will penetrate. The language of information and experience is not an interruption. The language of advice is.

We can create a thinking environment even in the dwellings of extreme disagreement. We can, quite simply and profoundly, promise not to interrupt. We can honour the three ingredients of that promise: to start giving attention, to stay interested in where the person will go next and to ‘share the stage’ equally.

Each person had five minutes.

There was fervour this time; people’s emotional connection to their views was deeply personal. And at a few points I sensed they were holding on for dear life to the promise not to interrupt. In those moments the promise seemed to be the only thing between them and disintegration of the person’s turn and the whole group’s integrity. For me these moments are reassuring, not alarming. The promise is rugged and soon reinstates the ingredients of attention and interest.

And because the promise in that way holds back the touchpaper of adrenaline and cortisol, the grounding of serotonin and oxytocin gradually increase, and those near-death moments subside. The speaker keeps thinking, and the others start again to understand, and even to learn.

From there people can risk factoring in to their view a few bits of the other’s view, knowing somewhere without words that their own identity is safe and sometimes even that their own identity can branch out a bit, consider this or that additional perspective, develop a new does-this-fit nuance. The fear of losing who we are at our core no longer calls the shots. Our freed minds do.

We also have seen the power of repeating a question. And we know about the importance of using the thinker’s own words if we refer to their thinking. People think in their own specific words, not just in their own language.