I confess to suffering from no little political self-righteousness myself. I am guilty of confirmation bias, i.e. selecting those facts that support my view and ignoring those that contradict it. I am inclined to put winning a political argument over sincerely trying to understand what the other guy is saying. And, yes, I mansplain. (Hey, I'm a blogger!)
I was delighted therefor to discover a set of self-correctives that I can use to keep my attitude in better balance. Aids to critical thinking, one might say. The set appear in a Linked In article entitled "Top Ten List on How to Inhabit the Radical Middle" by Maggie Hanna, geologist and "consulting innovator." In case anyone may find Maggie's list as useful a tonic for bias as I do, I'm including it in full below. I intend to refresh my mind with it from time to time when I find my tolerance slipping. I tripped over a few bits, such as the Dalai Lama's comment on truth, but for the most part ... well, read on.
Maggie defines the radical middle as seeking to find common ground rather than trying to convert the opposition. She explains, "Occupying that space opens up the possibility for people in a divided debate to not only sincerely speak with each other, but also to form partnerships. What if those partnerships could form, not in spite of each person’s passionately held convictions, but because of them."
1. Temporarily loosen one’s grip on one’s own point of view. When we recognize that our own point of view has evolved over time, then we recognize that it can never be absolute. How is your perspective different from when you were 16 years old? Pretty different I bet. What will your perspective be in 10 years’ time? Not sure yet, but it will be different. We can always come back to our basecamp after ranging out, and return to the specialness of our own hard-won moral compass.
2. Ask oneself a BETTER question. The quality of our questions determines the quality of our lives. Our brains are hardwired to immediately go to work on whatever question we pose to it. If you ask yourself a disempowering question like, “Why is this person such a dip-turd? Or caustically annoying, or dumb as a bag of hammers?” … your mind will tell you why, but it will not advance your understanding of that person, their position, nor yourself. Instead we might ask a better question like, “Is there something, a word, an image, or a metaphor, in what this person is saying that is meant for me?” or “How could the opposite of what I think actually be true?” Those are questions worth turning one’s mind towards.
3. Occupy both your head and your heart at the same time. Wisdom is the marriage of knowledge and emotion; the head and the heart. Knowledge can be defined as our ability to organize categories in one’s mind. It is significant, but it is not wisdom. Real wisdom requires both mind and emotion. If one runs only on emotion without clarity, it is not wisdom. If one only has perception without heartfulness, it is not wisdom. It is the heart that provides those flashes of lucidity, recognition of resonance, and the acuteness of knowing that is undeniable. It is when we overcome the artificial barriers that separate the mind and heart that we can be in both places at once, 100% in our mind and 100% attuned to the information being shared with us from the heart. It is not an “either/or” proposition. It is a “both/and” way of being.
4. Be here now. The present is the only moment there is. Instead of obsessing about the past which has already happened, or worrying about the future which isn’t here yet; have a real interaction… now. We have to be to very much here to hear what otherwise would be missed.
5. Use one’s intuition to sense behind what a person is saying. Everyone has intuition. Intuition is the norm and the natural. It is not something that happens to us… it is us. When someone speaks against our firmly held belief or position, our tendency is to react, attack, defend and convince that person otherwise. What if, instead, we got quiet for a moment, checked in with our intuition, and asked a clarifying question? What common need or concern underlies their position? Why is this point so important to this person?
6. Seek to find the commonalities between their position and your position. This requires a flexibility of mind. Even world religions are over 80% the same stuff as each other. Why focus on the 20% that is different? Rather focus on the similarities and not the differences. Find something you can genuinely agree on. For example, one might use the phrase, “I know exactly what you mean”. It affirms the other’s position and does not dilute one’s own. Such a phrase makes safe space for the other person to open up more, and unpack the deeper reasons and experiences that have formed their position, which enriches the conversation.
7. Leave some space to consider and reflect on what the other person has said. This is hard to do when part of us is feeling challenged, feisty, and uncomfortable. It is a practice. Leave a moment of space, instead of crafting one’s response while the other is still speaking, which means we are only listening with half an ear. Receiving another’s point of view doesn’t mean we must abandon our own.
8. See the wrong in the right, and the right in the wrong. We often divide the world into two parts, the part we like, and the part we don’t. There are many other sides to every story besides our own. In what way are the other person’s assertions right? In what ways are my assertions wrong? It is liberating to not identify with what you seem to be. What if we suspended our point of view for even a day and embraced the opposite view for a day to see what it is like to walk a mile in that person’s shoes? This requires a flexibility of mind, a level of respect, and a recognition that we are all human beings with a beating heart, born of a mother, and destined to die. We all need food, water, medicine. We all appreciate conviviality and shared interests, and we have each suffered ordeals that we cannot know in another. What if, as an infant, you were switched at the hospital into this person’s family and raised that way? You could be talking to yourself! The Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat was fond of saying: “To become what I might be, I have to see myself in another myself, who shows me who I truly am.”
9. Embrace Discernment over Judgement. Discernment is the evolving ability to recognize ever more nuanced distinctions between two things that are very close to each other. Whereas Judgement is about making someone’s position “good, right and true” or “bad, wrong and evil” depending on how it relates to one's own position. A rule from the Knighthood of Purity (…google it... it’s profound and cool) states, “My conscientious self, judge not another by your own law.” No one likes to feel judged. It shuts down the conversation really fast. It is also unhelpful to use one’s position like a big stick to beat someone up who disagrees … tempting sometimes…but never ultimately useful. The Dalai Lama said, “The truth is always kind. If it is not kind, it is not the truth. It is cruelty”.
10. Make it personal in a good way. When a person acts in a certain way that we don’t like, it is not personal unless we choose to make it personal. There are two ways to make it personal; an unavailing way or a profitable way. The first way is to react poorly as if attacked… we argue defend, attack back, become agitated, blow a gasket…. not useful. The second way is to really hear a person’s stories because there is abundant information in them which is ours to witness. We are being shown something. That person could become our “Angel in Jackboots” teaching us a hard lesson about ourselves and/or about human nature that we can be grateful for, if we allow the lesson. In the Hindu tradition, there are stories about Krishna stealing butter as a metaphor for gleaning wisdom from everyone’s stories. The way of wisdom is to learn from everyone else, and I do mean EVERYONE, as grist for the mill of our own evolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment