Don’t confuse listening to with agreeing with. Also don’t confuse listening with “figuring out how to fix it.”
That’s why I described it as “dispassionate” listening.
I’ve done it, and I will say that it is emotionally hard work. It’s hard not so much because you have to turn off the clamor inside you that screams rebuttals and interruptions, but because in order to listen effectively you have to hear the fear, grief, and pain that is behind the irrational, selfish, and ugly speech. That is what, invariably, people who feel unheard want to be heard about. They usually don’t know it though.
I’m sure there is value in what you’re saying. I’m just not sure that’s one of my core strengths. I listen. But there is only so much b.s. that I can hear and not put my hand up.
So piggybacking off of Velocity’s post, what is the point of all this emotional labor? It doesn’t seem likely to lead to a change in their beliefs or their fundamental mistrust of Democratic ideals. Indeed, our ideals are firmly at odds. What’s the value in understanding a position you will never support?
I’m not trying to be combative here. I’m struggling with how to approach this myself.
That’s the problem with connecting with people – you don’t know what the outcome will be, and if you approach it with the idea that you need a specific outcome, it won’t work.
Honestly, when I used to do this sort of thing, outcomes were often completely surprising. A few people sounded sane and reasonable at first but the deeper they went, the stranger they got. The majority, though, I found that I could locate a point of empathy where we could meet each other, and doing that opened a path to a new level of relaxation and trust.
There are a lot more things that the left and right agree on than disagree on, at least the things we want and need for ourselves and our families and friends. Secure meaningful work, affordable housing, good health care, friendly communities … finding points of connection and agreement make it a lot more likely that we can feel some respect and understanding for the other side, even if we still have no notion of condoning some beliefs. That goes both ways.
So…since it’s often complained that liberals send reporters out to Trump flyover country to check out what Trumpers are thinking, but never vice versa:
Suppose conservative America sends out journalists into the big blue cities “to find out what those liberals are thinking”, and you (all liberal Dopers here) are the ones they contact: What would you tell them?
Same thing we’ve been saying for years now. That healthcare isn’t just for the blue states or democratic party members. That freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. That separation of church and state is not just some quaint idea. That gay rights are human rights. That if black lives don’t matter, then not all lives matter. That corporations have a social responsibility to the country, not just a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders. That a woman’s right to choose includes both options. That we all come from somewhere but we all end up here. That a rising tide lifts all boats.
well, when the media refer to “flyover country” and Hillary referred to them as “deplorables” , I could relate to that. Also with conflating Southern accent with ignorance when Carter was Rhodes scholar, and Clinton could discuss deep policy matters without notes
I would tell them that I accept some responsibility for the common weal of my community, however large or small that gets defined, because it is in my own best interest to do so. Not that I have to beggar myself and hand all my worldly possessions to other people, but that I cannot be satisfied with “I got mine, Jack, and screw everyone else.” That’s not the world I want to live in.
I would tell them that I have had a pretty lucky life, and that I understand that lots of other people haven’t, and that this realization makes me want to share some of my good fortune. I would say that there are too many people who have had lucky lives who think they earned everything they got, and that anyone could do the same regardless of their starting point.
When people on the left talk about social justice, these are the things that I think of (although I’m not sure that’s what they think about). Life isn’t fair, that’s true. The least we can do is recognize where the unfairnesses are. That seems to me like a good starting place for a real conversation.
If you understand someone’s position it’s a bit easier to tailor your arguments where it will have the most impact. It’s difficult (sometimes people don’t really understand their own position on something), time consuming, and it can be emotionally draining. But it’s true that there are some people you’re never, never ever going to get through to. And it should go without saying, but you’re never obligated to engage in emotionally draining activity in order to change someone’s mind.
I used to be staunchly pro-death penalty but now I’m mildly anti-death penalty. I say mildly because I’m perfectly fine not only with the idea of executing someone but it usually doesn’t elicit a feeling of tragedy on my part when the state does execute a prisoner. For many, many years, most of the anti-DP proponents I engaged with simply banged on and on about how state sanctioned executions were morally wrong and tantamount to murder. But that argument was never going to work on me.
What worked on me was the real fear of executing an innocent person, the unfairness in sentencing along racial lines, the increased monetary cost of the death penalty, and the psychological impact to guards and support personnel who work with or around prisoners on death row.
This is the problem. If someone angrily and loudly insists the sky is purple, that’s one thing. If they decide that we should make policy changes based on the sky being purple, that’s something else entirely.
So, from this description, you, in this case, were reaching out and seeking to create a common base of information, and not condescending. Good. Keep up that good work.
OTOH someone seeing an answer open with “that’s what therapy is for” may react uncomfortably…
Indeed. But that’s in part what we get when we have just an amorphous brownian rage without (or with too many) structures or leaders or plans with specific steps. Of course we should all shout in the streets for “Justice Now!” But there’s got to be someone with whom those who could do something about it can sit and say “OK, specifically, what things A, B, and C can we get done ‘now’, what can get done starting soon, what’s gonna take a good while?” all the while the people continue to keep up the “Justice Now!” pressure so nobody slacks off on the work.
“Know yourself AND your adversary.” And that means knowing what IS in their minds, not our own caricature of what must be in their minds. We don’t have to LIKE what we find there, mind you. As QuickSilver experienced, very often you will find the product of a GIGO process. But that conversation and outreach also exposes someone to the notion of someone from the other side NOT deciding a priori that they are innately evil and unworthy of being heard. ( One of the best tricks of the Right has been the setting up of an ecosystem of pseudo-intellectualized apologetics to make it look like they are the ones who “have arguments” while we just want them to STFU. “So-and-so SCHOOLS Liberal snowflake with FACTS and LOGIC” Ugh. )
I think this all makes sense for people needing to work together and for personal relationships.
Where it breaks down is in the political process where the politicians seems to think there is no need for any cooperation, and in fact, it is their job to be divisive.