https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1B86zQWrxR/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Who profits from all this bickering?

I’ve often sat exasperated, contemplating how hopeless our current state of communication is, because of how little discussion is really going on at any given time, even among friends. And, if communication is at such a low state of quality, surely this bodes ominously for our democracy; our country; our home.

I lamented to my brother about this, and he advised me to unplug for a bit. Unplugging is my default reaction when things get tough like this (and I suspect he knows it), so I resist it actively. It helps to have someone who knows me and cares about me to give me permission.

And so, here I am, writing about it. LLOL.

Shortly after this exchange with my brother, I got a clip in my feed (again, NOT unplugging!) from a man named Chase Hughes. a “prominent expert in human behavior, influence, and interrogation, known for developing advanced training programs and authoring bestselling books on behavior profiling.” He comes at communication from a very different perspective than I do, but what he said made me sit up and take notice.

Mr. Huges said, “The real enemy isn’t Democrats or Republicans—it’s entrenched power (billionaires, political lifers, media conglomerates)…. Division is deliberately engineered because united citizens threaten their control.” And then he went on to urge, “I will not let propaganda tell me who to hate. I will never cheer for blood. I will choose sanity, unity, and humanity over division.”

I’ve always believed it wasn’t the “other guy” (you choose) that is the enemy. But Hughes’ insight seemed to crystallize it for me. Who profits from all this bickering? People in power. People who make money and gain influence by leveraging the argument.

So who profits/benefits from real conversation? Who benefits from conversation in which people are actually learning from each other, and understanding each other?

Well, only those people, I suppose.

I find myself in a rather pervasive state of sadness. Maybe it’s because, at age 64, I’m looking at what I’ve done with my life and what I feel like I still need to do, and find myself wanting.

But I don’t think that accounts for my despair. I don’t think I’m ambitious enough for that.

I think a great deal of my sense of malaise is because I see so much conflict in the world. And I’m not talking about wars. Or even politics, although politics factors in.

What I’m talking about is the recurring phenomenon of people not being able to communicate with each other. Oh, they can rant. Even argue (or so they think). But for people to sit down with each other (or even exchange emails) and try to understand each other well enough to change someone’s mind (especially their own)… that seems to be a rare thing indeed.

Recently, a friend of mine wrote to me about moral decline. He is a devout Christian and proud conservative. I am rather devoutly non-religious (sometimes even anti-religious), and admittedly liberal.

I only say “admittedly” because I am actively and devotedly centrist, but I’m also trying to be honest with myself. I have many liberal friends who consider me rather conservative. But I can’t say I have any conservative friends who would call me conservative. So I guess I’m at least somewhat liberal.

My friend wrote to me about how the past 60 years of American history has seen a moral decline that is primarily a derivative of a number major liberal themes being introduced and mainstreamed into our culture in America. “From freelove in the 60s (out of wedlock births, abortion, and STDs), to no fault divorce in the 70s (single parent households, latch-key kids, blended Families), to rampant (out of the closet) homosexuality in the 80s (Assault on the sexaul order of life, AIDS, pedophilia and adolescentphilia), to glorifying Gangsta culture and promiscuity in the 90s (Baby Mommas, celebration of criminal behavior, objectification of women as Bitches and Hos), to  “libertarian” views of legalizing weed in the 2000s (Gateway drug, Overdoses, more Mental Health psychosises), to ghey marriage in the 2010s (Family structure eroded and redefined, tacit endorsement of homosexualioty by goveremnt, infringed religioius liberty – “make me my cake Fascist”), to the mental insanity of today’s transgender movement (Gential mutilation, men in women’s spaces, men in women’s sports).”

There’s a lot to unpack in that statement. Given that my friend approaches everything in his life from a Biblical perspective (I think he would agree), it’s difficult for me to even find a starting point of commonality.

There is truth in much of what he says, although some digging reveals that he’s oversimplifying and generalizing in some cases. There are flip-sides to many of those statements that mostly grow out of the basic premise of “if the world was so much better then, why did it change?”

Single-parent households come with a lot of problems. But are unhappy marriages any better? Maybe not, or no fault divorce may not have gone viral.

Yes, objectification of women is a bad thing. But was it any better in the 50’s or was it just different. I can’t even watch Sean Connery James Bond film anymore — it turns my stomach.

I don’t know why my friend thinks liberals condone pedophilia or adolescentphilia (a word which I hadn’t even heard before). Probably because he lumps it in with “free love” (before my time), and homosexuality. I don’t see the connection. To me, I don’t understand why it’s any of his business what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. I think most of the problem that conservatives have with “rampant” (is it?) homosexuality is the “out of the closet” part. Makes them uncomfortable.

Anyway, I could go on. None of that is my point.

My point is that even this friend of mine (whom I’ve known for… decades, I think) and I have a difficult time understanding one another. It takes every bit of restraint I can muster sometimes to try and stick to the UnderstandingOnPurpose … “protocol”, I guess you’d call it:

1. You might be wrong. I need to keep reminding myself that being wrong feels exactly like being right.
2. Disagreement requires understanding. just as much as agreement does.
3. Understanding requires collaboration. Until the other guy says, “Yes, that’s what I mean,” you don’t know what they mean.
4. Collaboration requires trust. Best to relate to each other as humans first. Adversaries next.

My friend tells me that I have fallen victim to the “Fallacy of the Fence Sitter” when I assert that each end of the political or ideological spectrum is equally at fault; that the “real” truth (i.e., the one that is right in my own eyes) lies somewhere in the middle.

I haven’t said this out loud before, because I don’t WANT to believe it. But the truth is that I’ve always known that the middle isn’t necessarily any more correct than either end of the spectrum.

But that doesn’t mean it’s any less correct.

I don’t care so much about any particular issue. I care deeply, passionately, that we can’t let our guards down long enough to look each other in the eyes and see ourselves in them.

My wife likes to rearrange the furniture every so often. She just gets bored with the same old look and feel after some period of time.

When the time comes for us (me) to move the furniture around, I usually ask silly questions like: “We decided together that this was the best placement of the furniture, right? That’s why we put it this way.”

Affirmative. And then: “Nothing that went into that decision has changed, right?” Correct.

I know. Silly questions. But I’m the man of the house, so I put my foot down.

And then we move the furniture.

...read more…

I’m stumbling my way through publishing my book on Substack, a piece at a time.

I started with an introduction:

https://understandingonpurpose.substack.com/p/introduction-to-understanding-on

Then a short article on Why We Think.

https://understandingonpurpose.substack.com/p/why-we-think

Please do check it out and subscribe if this kind of think resonates with you. It’s free. My posts will be roughly weekly.

People have been telling me that blogs are old-fashioned.

I’ve started a substack.

I’m writing there, instead.

Please check it out.

Here’s the latest post — The Case For Travel.

Leave it to John Cleese to sum it all up.

Sometimes I think comedians would clearly make the best politicians. Comedy shines a light on our own absurdity.

A recent flurry of activity on X got my attention (thank you, Jeff). From a response to a post about President Trump’s recent “bloodbath” statement…

This is a pervasive sentiment — and it’s a sentiment that works in both directions.

Truth: The Left ignored the economic statement that Trump was making (involving a tariff on China)

Truth: Using the word “bloodbath” in today’s world is, at best, careless (at worst, irresponsible).

Surely: Trump never intended to encourage real, literal violence.

Surely: The Left doesn’t like the China tariff on Chinese cars — simply didn’t want to listen, even if the statement has merit.

Surely: Trump is no dummy. He instinctively knew the word “bloodbath” would get attention. He is a master manipulator of the media, despite his complaints about it.

Surely: The Left seized the opportunity to fan flames and distract.

Truth: Who wins? The media.

I believe that there is almost always truth at the heart of both left and right — even amongst the lies. To get at a more holistic truth requires that we see truth in the other guy’s statements as well as ours, and see the lies in our own as well as the other guy’s.

I was at the gym this morning, where I overheard a guy make a comment to someone else: “He committed treason! I’m not a Democrat; I served my country.”

I don’t know who they were talking about. But the “I’m not a Democrat; I served my country” part stuck in my craw during my workout.

Clearly, this guy assumed that Democrats don’t serve in the military.

I suppose I could have confronted the guy (a very big, intimidating guy, I might add) about it. Perhaps I could have been charming enough to actually do that well. Perhaps I could have learned something. Perhaps we both could have learned something.

Or perhaps I just chickened out.

I actually think it was not an appropriate place to engage in a political conversation. That’s certainly not what I was there for.

Anyway… I looked up the statistics on military service and political party. From news.gallup.com, the upshot is this:

So, yes, veterans tend to be Republicans more than Democrats. But not by as much as the guy at the gym probably thought. Certainly it wasn’t nearly as clear-cut if you include independents (I’m assuming the guy was Republican).

Which brings me to the real point of this post.

Very often, in any kind of a heated debate or argument, I hear people say things like:

“How could they think X if they do Y?”

“How can they think that could work?”

“What are they thinking?”

Often, my response is: “That’s not a bad question to be asking.”

But, in reality, they’re not usually posed as actual questions. They’re statements, disguised as questions. What they really meant by the above ‘questions’ was:

“They don’t really think X, or they wouldn’t do Y.”

“That won’t work, and they’re stupid if they think it will.”

“They’re not thinking.”

But if we rephrased the ‘questions’ slightly, in such a way that they assume validity from the get-go, they might sound like this:

“How is it that some intelligent people think X if they do Y?”

“How is it that reasonable people can think that could work?”

“I wonder how they came to this conclusion?”

…and all of these could be followed up with an implicit “What am I missing?”

If the “questions” are actual questions — that assume validity — then there’s value in them. Otherwise, they’re just statements in the form of questions, meant to invalidate something someone else did or said. This never gets anywhere.

When my wife sent me this article from Neuroscience News, I immediately loved the title.

Humility is a rare commodity these days — or at least open, public humility. So much of the so-called “conversation” we hear and read these days is 90% posturin, denial, and deflection as opposed to listening and learning. Vulnerability is suicide in today’s sound-byte culture in which we look for the worst in others so that we can amplify it, while at the same time shrug off the worst in ourselves as anomaly.

You should have a high bar for what evidence you require to change your mind.

When I read this in the article, I bristled a little. I immediately recalled something I heard or read once that showed that, while naturally have a high bar for changing our mind, we actually have a rather ridiculously low threshold for forming those opinions in the first place.

Believing this is probably why I have become inherently averse to forming strong opinions, at least for long. I’m a consummate “fence-sitter,” looking to both sides for as long as possible before having to come down and make a decision on something, and then remaining willing to jump back up there frequently.

I get a lot of flack about my fence-sitting from people who know me. I joke that “you can see so much better from up here.”

Great article. Worth a read.