Friction and discomfort
As I get older, I understand more and more that issues which I once thought were black and white, the things that I thought were either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are so often more complex. Yet, I still yearn for the moral ease of ‘chivalry’ and ‘noble cause’ that I read about in the fantasy stories. To be on the unquestioningly ‘righteous side of the good’, working to ‘banish the evildoers’, that is my childhood fantasy… and unfortunately is the fantasy that many have not grown out of.
This is not how things are in the real world. So many of the crisis and causes we care about are not ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’ issues. There are many, many complexities and interdependencies to so many of the issues we now face. Ours is a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and it is of little surprise that many yearn for a simpler take on life. One that is that only exists in the fantasy world of ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’.
Check for yourself. Read the ‘news’, and you will see people vilifying, de-humanising and making monsters out of those factions that disagree with one position, while at the same time, canonising, or making saints out of the people who champion their own position.
Why?! Messages written in this binary way are written with the express purpose of polarising an audience. They create an environment where an uncritical audience can misconstrue ‘disagreement’ with ‘personal attack’ and make the audience more compliant with the ‘status quo’ of the ones promoting the story.
This is a very dangerous and contagious thing. Psychologically, it enables those that see ‘us vs them’ the ability to feel ‘the victim’. Why would that be something people do? They do this because as a ‘victim’ they do not have to take responsibility for contributing to the negative elements of the situation. This does not mean that the negative event was their fault - only that the mindset of ‘victimhood’ limits our sense of agency in what we know is an unfair world. And I understand that. I’ve found myself trapped in this too, where I lamented the outside causes to my own discomfort, all the while knowing that only through opening to different points of view can sustainable solutions be discovered.
So what do we do?
First, openly listen to those who you disagree with. Openly listen… with the express intention of understanding how and why they feel the way they feel.
Be careful, however, as our unconscious mind will try to hijack this into ‘listening to find a way to promote your own ideas’ or ‘listening to defend', rather than listening to understand the ‘other’.
By understanding why the ‘other’ feels like they do, we can see commonalities between their view and ours, and from this point, we can better work to connect, and either adjust our ideologies, or at the very least, better adjust our position to see our ideas succeed.
The systems that promote status quo will, understandably, work to reduce friction that arises. And if you are a real servant to the sustainable solutions, you need to learn how to advocate for disagreement. How to embrace conflicting ideas and discover the commonalities. Yet doing so, even with that intent, can come at a cost.
One of my heroes talks about this, and how you can makes the decision to ‘speak truth to power’ in his book Confronting authority: Reflections of an ardent protester. The hero? He was the first ever African American tenured Harvard Law Professor, Derek Bell.
I first found out about him, when in my 20’s at the University of Wyoming, I found his book “Ethical ambition: Living a life of meaning and worth”, and as an idealistic young man, I felt this was exactly the advice I needed… Little did I know about the challenges and trials and efforts that would be required of one, if they were to actively create that elusive ‘life of meaning and worth’.
If you also feel that you want to work to understand - rather than only to be understood - then why not contact me today? There are so many micro-skills one can learn to make them more effective in this, and so many inspiring people that can give us hope that positive change, even in the face of overwhelming odds, can indeed occur!
