Tag: openness

Judging, cont.

We are not finished products until we draw our last breath. Perhaps not even then, but certainly up until then.

I think we often forget that.

As a younger person, I believed things I now find abhorrent. I advocated gay bashing to my teenage friends. I used slurs to refer to gays, Hispanics, and Asians. I repeated horribly insensitive jokes, and I was a central player in any number of misogynist pranks. Instead of asking directly for what I wanted, I tried to manipulate other people to achieve my ends indirectly.

In sum, I have behaved very badly in the past, and truth be told I sometimes take shortcuts even now.

So I have a hard time condemning anyone for expressing thoughts that I disagree with.

I don’t condone those thoughts. I don’t sanction them. But I know from my own experience that people, especially young people, have many miles to go in their lives’ journeys, and they can change their views.

Not only are we quick to judge people these days, we are unforgiving in those judgments, leaving no room for growth. We’re writing people off. Which seems super counterproductive to me. It’s wasteful – and I detest waste. And it doesn’t change hearts and minds, which is what we’ll need to do if we are to move the needle on important issues.

It’s your basic strong-arm approach, an I’m-going-to-force-you-to-do-what-I-want play. It’s easier than engaging in earnest discussion, dealing with the emotion of talking to people with fundamentally different perspectives and values – at least as they stand today. But I think we can do better.

And it starts with assuming the best of our fellow people. That common ground exists. That discussion can expose the assumptions we hold that explain our differences. That once those differences are exposed we can compare and assess them. And that when we do compare and assess them, that we can reasonably agree on a path forward.

We short-circuit that process by condemning people, refusing to engage with them, and we do even more damage by locking people into the mental and/or emotional space they occupy today, by not providing room to change their minds. It cements preconceptions, eliminates the opportunity for discussion, which destroys the chance to make even a little progress together.

Judging others helps exactly no situation. And I think that’s especially true now.

Judgment, cont.

Everyone is right.

Or said better, everyone is partially right. And maybe if we acknowledge that fact we can start to mend the rips in our social fabric.

Let’s take welfare, to pick one explosively illustrative topic.

Are there welfare cheats, people who could earn a living but refuse to? Yes.

Are there people who need temporary help to make ends meet? Yes.

Are there people who will be permanently dependent on our largess because they lack all capabilities to support themselves? Yes.

But in our current debate you don’t hear anyone who agrees with all three statements. We can’t seem to grant even a small concession to an opposing point of view. And why not? Fear that others will use that concession to invalidate our perspective?

Everyone is partially right. The real question is to what degree? Is our belief consistent with the bulk of data? Or is it on the tails of the distribution with the outliers?

I think we do more damage to our causes by refusing to acknowledge facts. The anecdote is a powerful persuasive tool that often resonates more than data – a subject for another time – but an anecdote probably shouldn’t be the basis for an opinion and assuredly not for policy. But it is one data point, and since I believe that we can find an occurrence of just about anything any of us can think of, it means everyone is right at least once on an issue.

It doesn’t hurt to acknowledge it. And I think it even helps, because (1) it gives us credibility, and (2) it might soften the rancor felt by those who might otherwise feel at best unheard and at worse attacked.

I’m conflict averse. I believe we are far more effective when we work in concert instead of fighting each other. And I believe there are many paths to a destination. So I feel very strongly that we should give each other our just due.

I worry about us. The polarization, the tribalization, the demonization. It’s all so poisonous. Hateful. Destructive. Surely we’re better than this.

Maybe it starts with acknowledging that each of us is partially right. I’m not evil or stupid because I believe something that has happened. So give me that credit before we start to discuss where our respective ideas fall on the issue’s true distribution.

By denying this truth, we alienate ourselves from our fellow citizens. Which makes it easier to judge them. And we rarely judge mildly.

Does any good come from judging? Only if we judge ourselves. Otherwise we run afoul of what Daniel Kahneman calls WYSIATI – What you see is all there is. And since we aren’t omniscient, we miss important factors, things that would change our conclusions or make us more sympathetic to those with different views. But once we judge, we rarely backpedal, so if we learn those factors post-judgment we tend to discount them, or rationalize them away, or twist them into something that supports our rendered judgment.

Instead, perhaps we should simply acknowledge to each other that we are all partially right.