While you’re out Spring Break-ing it up at Fort Lauderdale or your couch, you may encounter the dreaded political topics. People are heated. It doesn’t hurt to take with you some knowledge on social communication.
More than being heated, we’re being largely dissonant. It’s not effective communication to send a message of “love and tolerance” if you follow it with “kill yourself, useless slur.” We need to recognize our behaviors when they become this dissonant from what our message is.
People pick up more from the behaviors we exude than from the content of our messages, so if your behavior is vile, violent and hateful, don’t expect civility.
Uncomfortable as it may be, we’ve got to form our opinions thoroughly enough so that we don’t send conflicting messages. Being angry and unable to explain yourself is an even more frustrating experience.
We cannot put people down for what we believe their perspectives to be while claiming to be in the right if in that very process we practice those same behaviors. We certainly can’t go around misrepresenting others’ perspectives and then play the victim when our own ears are closed.
We need to clear the air, because clearly we’re not comfortable enough to take that breath when we need to.
Often, we start slipping into routines we formed from other instances when we were uncomfortable. This is before we take in enough information to receive or send a message. Any decent manipulator can set this into motion, often without our full understanding.
Someone who wants you to feel dissonant can send you down that road. To combat that, you need to do more than recognize it’s happening.
Even if you do catch on, your adrenaline’s already pumping, you’re already feeling the effects and it’s a victory for your opposition. They’ve succeeded in encouraging you to develop a negative, useful behavior for their goals.
Breaking that behavior requires you to critically examine uncomfortable personal tendencies. It also requires us to change them. The only way you’ll change a behavior is to put a new one itn its place.
This is a little about how I navigated this in my life.
A lot of dissonance occurs because of two simple things: we cannot know everything and we do not know everything. For me, it was really challenging to accept this. I worked years on learning how not to obsess over having enough information so I wouldn’t be ‘wrong’ about something or that I wouldn’t be unable to help someone.
Instead of immediately reacting to something or being quick to take a stance, try opening your ears a little more and use phrases like “this is the first time I’m hearing of this,” and “I’ll have to look into that, that sounds interesting.”
Even a simple, “Do you know where I could read that article at?” can be a great way to be receptive and converse in a friendly manner without feeling cornered or worse–saying something that could offend.
You have to remove that pressure off yourself to be ‘right’ when you’re just taking in information. Otherwise, when you get around to critical thought, you’re throwing a wrench in your own plans.
At the paper, we’re never afraid to converse about any topic. We put a lot of time and effort into everything we report on. We trade perspectives, make arguments, dispute claims and none of it is anything but civil. We even enjoy broadening our scope.
Our goal of genuinely understanding the content we’re taking in is definitely a key to our success. We’re not remotely interested in using any sort of subversion techniques or pedantics while we discuss these sensitive issues.
We also have hours upon hours of heavy research into what we discuss, with our sources on file. We have precision and actively use our communication skills to further our understandings.
There are people, groups even, that are actively trying to convince us not to love our neighbors. In my short life I’ve seen times when we were more together in our communities. We can’t get back to something like that if we don’t take what we know going forward.
Barton Kleen
Executive Editor