Most People Want the Same Thing: Common Ground
David B. Ostler shows how recognizing that most people want the same things — health, relationships, a nourishing society — transforms conflict into connection, and how to find common ground even across your deepest differences.
David B. Ostler and Nell Rose Hill
7/7/20266 min read
What if the person you're arguing with about politics, religion, or worldview actually wants the exact same thing you do?
That's the quiet revolution at the heart of a recent conversation on the All Peacemakers Needed video series. Host Nell Rose Hill sat down with David B. Ostler, a retired business executive with thirty years in healthcare, author of Healing Our Divides, and someone who has lived — really lived — in Japan, India, Africa, London, New Zealand, and various corners of the United States.
This is not a conversation about policy. It's about seeing the person across the dinner table. It's about why you should give up some social media platforms entirely. It's about jigsaw puzzles as a gathering place and Dr. Seuss as a peacemaker. It's about a man who asked for a "playbook" to avoid contention and spent years figuring out how to actually do it — so he could share it with people like you.
Watch the full video interview below, then read on for the highlights.
The Gathering Place
Dave describes himself as "unremarkable" — a father, a husband, a grandfather to seven grandchildren. His hobbies sound modest at first: jigsaw puzzles. He and his wife and son spent over a year assembling a 44,000-piece puzzle together.
But then he says something that reframes the whole thing: "They're kind of a gathering place. You do a little puzzle, but it's mainly talking and connecting."
There it is. The puzzle isn't the point. The connection is.
This is how Dave approaches the world. He's lived across continents, experienced wildly different cultures and worldviews, and what he's noticed is this: people everywhere, despite their differences, are trying to do the same thing. They're trying to build lives of meaning. They're trying to connect with people they love. They're trying to find joy in circumstances, and they're doing it successfully — even in places that seem foreign to Western experience.
"It's kind of humbling," he said, "to see how diverse people's experiences are and how they find meaning and joy and happiness in circumstances so foreign to what you and I experience living in the United States."
And that humbling recognition is where peacemaking begins.
Everyone Wants the Same Things
Regardless of where he's lived, most people want the same things. Health. Prosperity. Food on the table. Relationships that deeply matter. A society that nourishes rather than diminishes them.
"No one kind of wants to go someplace and live in conflict," he said. "No one wants to go someplace and argue with people."
We do have differences. But here's what Dave has learned: most people — maybe 99% of the people we encounter — are genuinely coming from a place of sincerity. They want goodness in their lives and in the lives of others.
"It's sometimes hard to remember that," he admitted, "when we're in the middle of talking about something that we deeply hold and where there's a difference."
That's the challenge. When the issue feels deeply personal, when it touches our core values or beliefs, it's easy to forget that the person across from us isn't fundamentally different. They're just coming at it from a different place, with different experiences, different information, different lived context.
Humanize, Don't Label
Here's where Dave offers a simple but radical reframe.
Instead of calling someone by a political label or a religious label or an ideological label, call them by a human one.
"If we can reflect upon that and look at someone, and instead of calling them this label or that label, we look at them and we call them a parent or a spouse or a child or a caregiver or a protector of the community — then we humanize them."
When you do that, something shifts. Those differences that seemed so apparent on the surface — so insurmountable — they start to fade away.
Because you're no longer talking to a position. You're talking to a person.
Dave knows this from his own life. He has family members with very different political beliefs, different worldviews. And every time he enters a conversation with them, he has to do the same work. He has to remind himself: This is a child of God. This is a person with legitimate concerns about the issues that matter to them.
Not someone who's ill-informed. Not an enemy. Not a bad guy. A person.
"That allows me to have a more legitimate conversation with them, a more caring conversation," he said. And perhaps most importantly, a conversation that isn't designed to point out all the ways they're wrong.
The Tools We Need
Dave's book Healing Our Divides was born from a very personal place. He felt the polarization in the country — political, religious, social. And he felt it affecting relationships he cared about. But he didn't have tools to navigate those differences.
So he raised his hand at a church meeting and asked the question directly: "I want to avoid contention. How do I do that? Give me the playbook."
There was no simple answer that day. So Dave spent time learning. He read. He reflected. He developed frameworks and tools. And then he wrote them down, so others wouldn't have to spend years searching for what he found.
The tools in his book include things like cognitive empathy — the ability to understand someone else's perspective, even if you don't share it. Tools for recognizing your own biases and how they shape what you see and believe. Tools for finding common ground even when the differences seem vast.
But here's what Dave emphasizes: you don't need to read a book to start. You don't need to be an expert. You just need to be willing to try.
The Social Media Question
Dave is still on social media. But he's made a deliberate choice about where he participates.
"There's a couple of platforms I won't participate in because their whole business model is to create contention," he said plainly.
Not dialogue. Contention. The incentive structure is built to make people angry, to make them go viral with insults, to "own" the other person. And if that's the foundation of a platform's business model, Dave simply doesn't want to feed it with his clicks and his likes.
"It's not dialog, it's contention," he said. "To own the other person. To go viral with an insult."
This is a quiet but significant choice. It says: I have agency over where I spend my attention. I can choose platforms that are built for connection instead of platforms that are built for conflict.
Evolve Your Own Beliefs
Dave makes one more point that's easy to miss but crucial to understand.
When you're in a conversation trying to exchange perspectives, trying to find common ground, you have to be open to changing your own mind.
"None of our beliefs are 100% accurate," he said. "Even me, with the expertise I have in one narrow area, I'm still learning in that area."
This is profound humility. It's saying: I might be wrong. The information I have is incomplete. My life experience has limitations. And when I encounter someone with a different perspective, I should be open to the possibility that they have something to teach me.
"When we're in a setting where we're trying to change someone's mind, we do have to be open that some of our prior beliefs need to evolve," he said. "To incorporate information, to overcome some of the limitations that our own life experiences caused us to miss perceive some sort of reality."
That willingness to be wrong — that's what makes real dialogue possible.
Tips for Becoming a Better Peacemaker
See people as people, not positions. Call them by human roles instead of labels: parent, spouse, child, caregiver, protector of your community. That one linguistic shift humanizes them and changes the entire conversation.
Remember that most people want goodness. They want health, prosperity, relationships, a nourishing society. Just like you. Different circumstances, different information, same underlying hopes.
Find the jigsaw puzzle. Literally or figuratively, create space for talking and connecting that isn't about winning. Where you do a little work together and mostly talk and relate. That's where connection happens.
Make conscious choices about your media. You don't have to participate in every platform. If a platform's business model is built on contention and outrage, you have permission to stay off it. Choose spaces built for dialogue instead.
Go small. You don't have to change the world at a national platform. Your family. Your neighbors. Your friends with different worldviews. That's where you have real influence and where peacemaking actually transforms lives.
Be open to learning. Go into conversations willing to discover that your beliefs might need to evolve. That the person with a different perspective might teach you something true. That none of us has the complete picture.
Ask for the playbook. Dave raised his hand and asked for concrete tools. It's okay to say: I want to do this better. I don't know how. Help me.
Want to go deeper? Read Healing Our Divides by David B. Osler. It's a practical guide to the specific tools mentioned here — cognitive empathy, recognizing bias, finding common ground, and more.
And then do what Dave did: apply them close to home. With the people and relationships that matter most. Because that's where the work of peace actually happens.
Because All PEACEMAKERS ARE NEEDED.
The All Peacemakers Needed video series features conversations between everyday people exploring the practice of peacemaking. New episodes are released regularly.
