Allowing for Bull

It is worth reading the book, “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. The name sounds terrible. I put off reading it for years because the title seemed repulsively insecure and insincere. I was wrong. There are very valuable principles clearly articulated. One of those key ideas is building on what people say. We want feedback. But we want feedback in a way that we actually believe that the person giving it wants us to move forward. We want to feel like they are being constructive. If you are constantly niggling at someone, and tearing them down, what you are not doing, is allowing a Bull Quota. A Bull Quota is when you suspend your disbelief. Allowing a buffer for things that can distract you from the important stuff. That quota can eventually be full, but not allowing it prevents deep listening. Like when you are watching a movie. If you are intent on critiquing each word and pointing out the holes, you won’t be able to enjoy the story. Are you looking for the truth in the story? Are you even looking for something that contributes? Because everything has gaps and holes, as we clumsily try to communicate from one grasp at reality to another. Don’t live in the holes.

Don't prematurely call Bull

 

Unconditional Positive Regard

Unconditional Positive Regard (HT Daniel and Rolene Strauss) is the idea of giving people the benefit of the doubt at all times. When coming up with solutions, I feel like we often give excessive weight to the loud minority of skebengas. We become so keen not be taken advantage of that we intentionally limit our positive impact to avoid being a sucker. How would things be different if our default was to trust each other? Still with some limits. I call this a Bull Quota. Like suspending disbelief when watching a movie. My wife and I recently watched “Alien” again. The people were idiots. Proper idiots. But parking that, it was a good film. We can’t be so scared of free-riders and fear-mongers that they define our world. Let’s start by trusting each other.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

Cutting Slack

One of my habitual sources of anxiety is the desire to “get it right”. I hate feeling like I have wronged someone – intentionally or not. In the workplace, this often led to me seeking permission by getting something right “in theory” first. The problem is theory and practice always turn out differently. Asking forgiveness (and cutting people some slack) is often far more effective than seeking permission. If we aren’t generous in our forgiveness, both to ourselves and others, it can be debilitating. A hesitancy can creep in where you feel the need to either ask first, or step back for the person (whose judgement you fear) to do it themselves. We all get things wrong. It is a fundamental part of learning, adjusting, adapting, accommodating, interpreting, and creatively dancing with what the world throws at us. The challenge is developing the skills of interpretative charity (assume people intend well) and the gift of the benefit of doubt (no one gets everything right – focus on the point people are making rather than the holes). The double challenge is being as kind to yourself as you try be to others.

Starting Point

The starting point for meaningful engagement is kindness and respect. This isn't the same thing as endorsing the views of the other person. Kindness is being friendly, generous and considerate. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt, and interpreting the things they say in the best possible way your worldview reasonably allows. That is hard when people wind you up. Respect doesn't mean endorsement either. Respect is a feeling of admiration for something in them - a quality, an ability, an achievement. Something that you see in them, that you value. That they have that you don't. If you can't see that in someone, then you probably don't know them well enough to have permission to attack.

Naturally none of this matters if you don't actually care about that person, or the community of which you are both a part. If your intent is just grandstanding your opinion and signalling that you belong to a different tribe to that person. If someone has a crazy view, and you care - it is probably because they are part of the community you care about. That means that crazy view belongs to you. You 'have' that crazy view. If your definition of self is in any way connected to that community.

The really substantial conversations happen when people feel safe. Not a safe space for ideas, but a safe space for vulnerability. Bad ideas should never be safe. We should however make space for everyone. Create space for all of us to air our ugly bits so they can die. Without killing everything we care about in the process.

Pyrrhic Victory

Weeding Contempt

Paul Eckman is a Psychologist who studies the link between emotions and facial expressions. He believes the single best predictor of whether a relationship will fail is contempt. Without even hearing what someone is saying, silent video clips of couples talking can help him predict whether that couple will stay together. I believe in weeding for contempt. Not just in intimate relationships. The second there is contempt between any two people, get rid of it. Fast. 

The two weed killers I employ are 'Benefit of the Doubt' and 'Interpretive Charity'. Doubt is natural and everything we say and do, has holes. Benefit of the Doubt allows for that, and looks for the good. Interpretive Charity means that when someone does something, and there are multiple interpretations, choose the best version. These tools don't make you a sucker. Doubt gets removed, and sometimes there are no positive interpretations. Then it is a good time for that relationship to die. Until then, keep weeding and let the good stuff grow.

Paul Ekman

Interpretive Charity

Sake

In a discussion, the principle of charity requires interpreting what you hear in its best, strongest way. It is related to Bull Quota & Benefit of Doubt. A Bull Quota requires parking the stuff you disagree with until you have really understood the story. Giving the Benefit of Doubt requires believing the best in people unless you have strong evidence otherwise.  Interpretative Charity maximises the possibility that you can find agreement. It assumes your intent is to find agreement, and isn't to break arguments down and 'win'. A skilled debater can win any argument, and create a loser. A thriving community is built by finding the strongest possible common ground we can. Intent matters. What you do matters.

The sake of argument

Going Dark

I want to trust people. My natural disposition is to give people the benefit of the doubt. I find if I assume the best intentions, then I can listen more closely to points they are making. If I get triggered by words, I normally try rein in my raging elephant, and after a few breaths assume they meant something different to what I think they meant. In an ideal world, I believe if you give people unconditional love the relationship will be stronger, because they won't have to fear you walking away. Unfortunately, the people closest to us are those who know how to hurt us most. Unconditional can be brutal. So occasionally, it is useful to 'Go Dark' and think of the worst case scenario. If you can gain comfort that you can survive that, that you can cope, then the darkness will not kill you. Then you can trust.

Bane

Space to Hear

To genuinely try hear the core issue someone is trying to convey, you have to make space. I call it a Bull Quota. Like suspending disbelief when watching a movie. We all sometimes derail our point by using words that mean something completely different to the listener. The words, sentences and goals we aim for are chunks of meaning. They simplify a life of experiences. Picked from the chaos we have lived. This is why honesty isn't about 'saying it as it is'. Honesty is time spent. It is the commitment to have the difficult conversations, and put in the effort to repair the relationship if it crashes because the unimportant gets in the way of important.

Picking words from Chaos

Actual Point

We have a sense of what we want to say, but typically work it out as we are saying it. In person, there is body language, and tone of voice to help tease out ideas. If you record a conversation, and transcribe it, it will often sound incoherent. Teasing out ideas requires space and time. We can't knock down each point. Normally the actual point is built tentatively with a bunch of other points - many of which may be unnecessary, or even things we disagree with. If we don't give each other a Bull Quota, and attack every point of an argument, we will never get to the actual point. Matt Haig, one of my favourite authors, believes writing is mostly editing. Get the actual point out in the first draft. Find it. Then remove words, criticise, and enhance the beauty.

Allow the space to finish

Suspending Disbelief

The suspension of disbelief allows us to enjoy the story. Stories are better with some leaps, gaps, and mysteries, that allow us to stretch truth to reveal truth. They stir emotions that may connect ideas we hadn't seen a path between. There is too much going on around the world to wrap our heads around. We are all ignorant. We just choose our bundles of ignorance differently. To build relationships, we need to allow a Bull Quota. Instead of searching for ways to tear down an argument, first try find out why that person thinks those beliefs are worth holding. The why may survive the barbs that kick off our righteous anger. 

Connecting Ideas

Overcoming Barbs (with Sindile)

I haven't met Sindile in person yet, but I engage with him regularly. A mutual friend, Rich, introduced me to Brett with a 'Trev meet Brett, Brett meet Trev' email. A few minutes later we were 'friends'. Sindile gets stuck into the comments section with Rich and Brett, and so after a few to and fros, we ended up connecting. This is where I hope Social Media ends up heading. The 'Chat rooms' of old didn't make it, partly because people get weird when they are anonymous. People still seem weird when we know who they are (Road Rage meets Mobile Rage), but I think we are learning to communicate in public. Old Media dictated what we spoke about. Now we get to choose. If Social Media is rubbish, it is our fault. If the content doesn't have substance, it is our fault. Moan or do something. In a better world, we can have 'friends' all over the world. When you go visit, you needn't be a tourist, you can already have connected with ideas. Then you can add the magic of a shared meal and 'friends' can become friends. Sindile and I had a chat...

Trev:

We've clashed once before. You ranted (justifiably) about an issue and I responded poorly. Poorly, not in the sense that a detached, rational, observer would respond differently. Poorly, in that I am not that. I am incredibly privileged. I also happen to like having ideas, and expressing them. I don't know how to reconcile the two. My current best guess is to shut up. Listen. Carry on talking, but know my place. The Utopian in me wishes I didn't have a place. The completely selfish, objective me, figures actually my place is one of the best to have.

Sindile:

I'm not necessarily sure the clash has to fundamentally or intrinsically have to be about privilege. I think it is something very deep within the human condition; the need to one up and lord something over another person, whether that is resources or knowledge or belonging to some secret special club. Whenever that is challenged the obvious human reaction is to hit out. I, for example, had the same reaction you did when challenged about a particular sphere in which I hold a privilege. For me, it is about my ability to fine tune my understanding of where people are coming from when they say stuff. Shutting up is not an option.

Trev:

My take home was to be more conscious of not 'making the issue about me'. I suspect whenever someone gets passionate about an issue, they don't just make one point. They make lots. I think we all tend to respond to 'barbs' when someone speaks. The barb might be a minor, nuanced, off-topic pet peeve we have. Normally something that turns the argument into something that matters to us. This can miss the point. If I agree with 95% of what you are saying, the nuance might not be worth mentioning.

Trying to have conversations without being caught on Barbed Wire

Sindile:

I agree, however I am not sure we must leave out the nuance. As the saying goes, 'the devil is in the details'. I believe in having as much clarity as possible (that may be my communications background talking). It seems to me that much of the most contentious issues have to do with the 5%. That said, social media isn't the best place for explaining nuance, simply because faux outrage is a thing. I think nuance is usually better left for friends and settings where people are actively discussing something.

Trev:

Yes, there is definitely flavour as well as devilry in the detail. Two strategies I have been trying on social media is to keep comments short (It is easier to get agreement point by point), and to take a Theatre Sport approach and look to build/tweak areas of agreement rather than jump straight to something that irks me. Person to person contact does have the advantage of some sort of trust. I think you can only really get to the juicy stuff when you have a buffer of good stuff you have built up. When you agree on the core. Then tweak.

Sindile:

I think we must also learn to say things in a way that invites people into a space of learning. The problem with much of what happens in the world methinks is not necessarily that people don't know stuff, but that they frame things incorrectly. As far as possible, whether in speech or on social media, we must be mindful of our audience and their prejudices etc. (what in Communications is called static, and what can fundamentally affect how a message from a sender is received). The art of persuasion (of guile) must never be lost on us.

Trev:

There is an art to conversation. Like the art of letter writing. Or dancing. Sometimes we focus so much on 'the thing' we want to talk about, that any opportunity to engage becomes an opportunity to bring our stuff to the table. So when listening, we aren't genuinely attempting to understand, we are waiting for a chance to bring our pet project to the discussion. Reading about consensus building, one of the regular reminders is to bring engagement back to the 'why'. If there isn't a common thread, we all wander off to our particular choice of poison.

Sindile:

Indeed. Something though I do think what blocks consensus is that one or both (all) parties succumb to that age old sin of pride. Sometimes people simply do not want to listen, sometimes people who are in privilege, whether it is white people or men or straight people, simply do not have any or enough self-interest in the status quo being challenged. I, for one, was intensely put off by the faeces smearing at UCT, but then I thought, these students (like those in Stellenbosch) had tried in vain to reason with those in power, with privilege simply refusing to listen, and so now I look on those actions a lot more sympathetically simply because they achieve their desired result. Should such an approach be a blueprint? No, but there are instances for drastic and demonstrative ways to get people's attention.

Rhodes Fell (source: IOL)

Trev:

Yes, it is hard to 'put aside the Faeces' and focus on the content. By the time it has got to that stage, you are probably going to struggle. There has to be a reason to come together. It is very hard to have a productive conversation when the quarrel is not a 'lover's quarrel'. Like watching stand-up comedy, the audience have to want to laugh. Lovers typically want to make up. If there isn't a core desire, the chance that people are going to listen is squat. Once you have got attention, the question is then to think what is the most productive next step. The challenge from a privileged position is not being the one to 'offer a solution'. Accepting that it is someone else's turn.

Sindile:
That is very true. Accepting that it is someone else's turn is very difficult when we've gotten accustomed to our privileged position. None of us like being wrong about something, especially about things as big as racism, or sexism, or homophobia, because it does hurt our pride is some sense to be wrong. To have our privilege and our tacit acceptance of our supremacy shown to be an illusion. Humility may be the most needed virtue in our time. Real Humility. Not that faux-snivelling nonsense humility you always see on Facebook and in daily life, but the genuine kind that leads to honesty, openness and a willingness to change graciously.

Angry Elephants

It is difficult to push on through reading a book where you don't agree with the ideas. It is not quite as difficult as having a conversation with someone with aggressively different views, but it is hard. When the clash of ideas is live, the thing I struggle with is body language. We are very good at telling if someone is on the same page as us. A nodding head. The way legs and arms are crossed. Whether the way they sit is mirroring us. Tone of voice. There isn't a checklist, but we know. And we like it when people agree.

If we are able to allow a 'Bull Quota' for all the things we completely disagree with, there is a chance that we can get to some interesting ideas that will improve our questions. It is easier for our rational side to hold ideas in mind that we disagree with. Someone 'believing' that 2 + 2 = 5 is not upsetting. Where it gets difficult is when the language someone uses pushes our buttons. When it does trigger an emotional reaction. How do you train your elephant to behave?

There is an art to putting across ideas without emotional triggers. Absent the triggers, writing and conversation becomes boring. So art, and life, is normally applied in adding triggers and passion rather than taking away. Most books seem to be written for people who already almost agree with the author. They are peppered with lines that would upset people outside the tribe. Unlike live conversations, when the triggers come up, you can just put the book down. People are much more complex than books. They don't come with summaries and reviews. With Amazon ratings. You may be thoroughly enjoying the 'first few chapters' and then come across some impassable bridge. What do you do? How do you carry on enjoying their company when your elephant gets restless or even angry?

Impassable Bridges

The Good Stuff

The first job I ever wanted as a little boy was to be a Minister. I grew up in the Methodist Church, but which church I would work in kind of depended on the girl I liked at the time. Westville has lots of different churches. It was explained to me that being a 'Minister in the Catholic Church' would be a complicated way of getting the girl. My crush/stalker behaviour shifted to the Anglican church a little later. The first girl was kind enough to give the second 'helpful hints and tips on how to get rid of Trevor'. I later ended up at the Baptist Church, and had fortunately learnt to play nice. My love letters to the crush at the time were mostly in my journal.

Things were also getting a little more serious on the philosophical side of things. I was a very serious teenager. I wanted to become a member of the church. Membership of the Baptist Church entailed getting baptised. I had been baptised as a baby. In the Methodist Church, you have infant baptism and later get confirmed. In the Baptist Church, you need to be baptised as an adult. The belief being that you need to be fully conscious of the commitment you are making. From my perspective it was the same thing. From people I cared abouts perspective, it was a big deal. Confirmation wasn't the same a Baptism. Being 'rebaptised' would be me saying my first baptism was meaningless. My social circle and community revolved around the Baptist Church, but I didn't want to upset those close to me. So I went back to the Methodist Church I had grown up in for confirmation classes. It always bugged me that these 'semantic' differences caused division between what I saw as the Christian community. For others these differences were not semantic, they were an important part of their belief.

When I later read 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel, it resonated deeply. Before the true adventure of an ocean journey starts, Pi flips and flops between various churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. To be fair, his motivations were more wholesome than mine considering my stalkerish tendencies. But to be fair to me, as a little boy - having a crush basically just meant I thought the girls were awesome. And they were. Even their rebuffs were kind. Pi went from place to place taking the best bits. Looking for a story that resonated.

We are all very bad at changing our minds. We can change them, and do all the time, but the process is very slow. All of us are hypocrites. We have issues that we feel passionately about and release our righteous anger, and we have moral blind spots where we don't even notice the damage we do. What gives me optimism is that when two ideas conflict, we struggle with that conflict. Slowly we change what we think to accommodate the belief that is more important to us. I think we tend to shift toward the good stuff. Not all the time, but more often than not. Alain De Botton has done a wonderful TED talk where he talks about how people who don't believe in religion, can start to engage in the good stuff of religion.

We have a tendency to focus on areas of disagreement in debates. This ends up casting more heat than light on most arguments. When last were you in a discussion where someone had their argument broken down, and so changed their mind? Normally we just look for a new argument. If the ideal is a consistent, good philosophy that allows us, our family, our community and the rest of the world to live deeply fulfilling lives perhaps we would do better to focus on the good stuff? We can allow a bull quota for the stuff we disagree on, and politely change the subject but stay engaged.

Over time, I think people iron out their issues. I think people are good. I think the best bits win.

Defend or Attack

At the heart of most systems I have seen working is the understanding that we don't know. We use a combination guesswork, imagination, storytelling, emotions, rigour, effort and humour to do the best we can do. Sometimes excessive effort is wasted on the defence or attack of ideas. Maria Popova reviews the book 'This Idea Must Die' which asks many of the world's leading thinkers which ideas are holding us back. John Brockman paints the idea that science progresses through a series of funerals of an older generation tied to old ideas and opposing progress. If it is true that most people stubbornly stick to their views, arguing becomes fairly pointless. Better to focus energy on people who listen and want to learn. 

A friend of mine said that when he realises that a discussion is not in fact a discussion, but a lecture, he just switches to Anthropological mode. There is a useful signal that this is happening because we tend to slip into a lecture or drama voice. Like a child repeating what a parent has said. Often in an embarrassing setting. So rather than getting frustrated, it becomes useful to see the experience as an opportunity to try and really understand how someone thinks and give up completely on whether or not what they are saying is true. Maria Popova says 'The stories we tell ourselves, whether they be false or true, are always real'.

If you allow someone their Bull Quota you can start to treat what you are hearing as art. Like watching a movie. You can suspend disbelief. You can simply appreciate a set of ideas for what they are initially. Since we already know that there are bundles of assumptions that we have that are wrong, we may find something that is useful in someone else's wrongness. They may be so spectacularly wrong that they come up with something brilliant that no reasonable person would have stumbled across. As writer Ian McEwan puts it 'Truth is not the only measure. There are ways of being wrong that help others to be right. Some are wrong, but brilliantly so. Some are wrong but contribute to method. Some are wrong but help found a discipline. Aristotle ranged over the whole of human knowledge and was wrong about much. But his invention of zoology alone was priceless. Would you cast him aside?'

I have been told that a good Anthropologist dives deeply into the world of those they are studying. They silence their own perspective so much that they feel like they become one of their subjects. The trick is to be able to extract yourself afterwards. To be able to attack the ideas vigorously, but only after you have given them their chance.

Stories Worth Hearing

We live a story. Stories take a few facts and weave them together to create something that makes sense. We can't wait until we understand things. We are still trying to figure things out, but have to carry on living, and so we tell ourselves and those around us stories. I am a big fan of the placebo effect. Sometimes things work because of the story we tell ourselves. You can take this in one of two ways. You can be incredibly skeptical about everything and try and strip out the 'story premium' that you pay for everything. You can focus on the facts. The thing is life will be less fun. The fact that it is the story that added value does not mean that value wasn't added. If you keep your wits about you, I think there is a better life to be lived by leaning into some stories and 'faking it'. Seth Godin is a master storyteller, and believes that we are all marketers. He is very open with his approach and writes a bite sized daily blog. 

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

His books are worth reading. The heart of his message is to be authentic and consistent, and to remember that most of what we believe, do, and buy is based on a story. The facts are important, but they are important as part of a story of consistency. They earn trust in a world where that is rare. They prevent holes from appearing. One litmus test he suggests in 'Permission Marketing' is whether your story would be missed if it didn't appear. A lot of marketing used to be about broadcasting. There were only a few TV channels and everyone watched them. Teachers, Artists, Business People, Religious Leaders etc. weren't fighting for attention. That has all changed. You can't just shout and expect people to listen. You have to understand them and help them create their story. Or they will just go somewhere else.

If we know that people are trying to tell us stories, and we don't want to be taken for a ride, what do we do? I think you need to allow a 'Bull Quota'. You need to suspend disbelief to enjoy people's stories. Listen to them and try to understand their world view. Don't take looking for the holes as a starting point. Find the the reason why those holes are worth having. It doesn't mean you have to take on the holes in your own story. When you watch a movie, you don't remember the whole thing. You take some of the flavour. You remember an anecdote or two and the way the movie made you feel. If you allow people some leeway, you can get to see how their story makes them feel. Once the movie ends, you can tear it to pieces and dissect it with all your sceptical superpowers to your heart's content. You get the best of both worlds. 

Silencing Your Perspective

You can never see something from someone else's perspective. You can never have the experiences and context that colour their world. Thomas Nagel wrote the essay 'What is it like to be a bat' (quoted below) where he explains the challenge. Practising empathy is like practising meditation. It is in the process of bringing thoughts back to a point of focus - whether your breath, a candle, a sound or a thought - that exercises your ability to calm the craziness in your head. While we can't actually empathise fully, we can try.

'Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the world around by a system of reflected high-frequency sounds; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in the attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far) it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.'

Thomas Nagel

 Giant Golden Crowned Flying Fox

Source: Wikipedia

There are clearly differences between the level of empathy you can have for a bat and for a person. Within that the bigger the overlap in experiences and the more context is shared, the closer you can come to giving it a real shot. There are however limits. A man trying to think 'like a woman' is thinking 'like a man trying to think like a woman'. An adult child trying to imagine the world of his parents and the reason for the choices they made has decades of a fast changing world which they will never completely understand. If they did, they still can't strip away the context they have. They can't unexperience their experience.

One of the biggest obstacles to happiness I have come across is simply a complete befuddlement as to why other people don't think the way we do on the big stuff. We try understand their experiences but just can't understand why they can't 'see the light'. Deep down I am a sceptical, suspicious, evidence based person who prefers rational, logical, consistent explanations for things. I am starting to feel that this is not enough. Once you have enough of a foundation, perhaps you have to have 'faith' in your own ability to lean into other peoples worlds. You have to be okay with letting go of your own experiences and your own context to catch a glimpse. Clearly you need to have a strong BS detector, but in order to get to the juice of what others have seen, you don't want your BS detector flashing red and distracting you before they have exceeded their bull quota. Friends can provide this lifeline. Particularly really good friends who have known you for years. They can allow you to wander off and wonder off (I get those two mixed up - this time I want to use both). They can point out if you start losing yourself too much. They can bring you back having caught a glimpse and deepened your empathy.

Empathy isn't just about seeing from others perspective - it is about practising silencing yours.

Bull Quota

Everyone should be allowed a quota of bull. When we watch movies, the suspension of disbelief allows us to enjoy the story. I suspect we would be happier if we extend the same to conversations with people whose stories are different from ours. In part this is because there are likely holes in our story too, and in part because life is just more fun that way. In Theatre Sport, it is only really funny if you go with the flow and build on what the last person has said. When you give someone the benefit of the doubt, you may find you get to the important bits of the story instead of fighting them on unimportant bits.

The truth is, they may not really have thought about the unimportant bits. We fill in the gaps. Life is too complicated for us to have thought through every situation with cold mathematical logic, applying double blind tests, and waiting for enough information to make up our minds. Buridan's Ass is the hypothetical story of a donkey (appropriately) who is both hungry and thirsty and placed exactly halfway between a pail of water and a stack of hay. Unable to decide whether it is more thirsty or more hungry, it ends up dying of both. 

Most of us aren't Asses. Using emotions and a little noise we move through life able to regularly make choices without considering everything. This is a good thing. If your story messes with other people's ability to live, you will run out of your Bull quota. That is a bad thing.

Political cartoon c. 1900, showing the United States Congress as Buridan's ass 

Source: Wikipedia