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Thoughts on Communication
[This post is inspired by several interactions with various people over the past few months. If you think it is About You, you may be right, but only partially. (Unless you're me. Me, me, me, it's all about me!)]
Sometimes one person says something which is misunderstood by someone else. Often, in such cases, bad feelings result. I've been musing on this a lot lately. Is it useful to assign blame in such cases? What can be done to minimize them? Or at least to minimize the damage that happens when they occur?
Some things that I believe:
I. People should state what they mean as clearly as they can manage.
Ia. People should not say false things.
Ib, People should not say deliberately hurtful things.
II. People are responsible for their own reactions.
Point II is subtle, and worth going into more detail about. My mom (after years of therapy) used to occasionally say that a given thing made her uncomfortable, but that she "owned" that feeling. That is, she acknowledged that the feeling originated within herself, and that the exterior stimulus was not to blame for her reaction to it.
Some people may think that this attitude is unfair. "Isn't this just blaming the victim?" I don't think so. English is inherently ambiguous. Despite the best efforts at clarity (I), sometimes there will be failures. As long as what was said was neither false (Ia), nor deliberately hurtful (Ib), I think that any negative reaction on the part of the listener rightfully belongs to the listener themselves. Or to put things another way, to whom *would* you cede authority over your own emotions? And under what circumstances? It seems to me distinctly unhealthy to assign responsibility for one's own emotional state to anyone but oneself.
It has been stated, by people whose opinions I generally respect, that there is a further principle that should be followed: "Ic. People should not cause offence." But, to me, this is fundamentally incompatible with Principle II. Which is not to say that there is not a fuzzy middle ground. While I cannot *control*, or be completely *responsible for* a listener's reactions, I can, with a greater or lesser expectation of success, *predict* those reactions. Indeed, Principle Ib is fundamentally based on such predictions. I cannot *know* what will be hurtful, but it is incumbent upon me to make my best guess.
So, how much responsibility *do* I have to guess my listeners' mental state(s)? As a reductio ad absurdum, I clearly cannot fully and correctly model their mental state at all times -- even were such a thing possible in theory, doing so for even one person would leave me no room to think thoughts of my own. So clearly I must use simple approximations as my mental models of other people.
In practice, the detail of these mental models varies widely. Here's a list of some mental models I have, in increasing order of detail and complexity.
A random human being.
A typical citizen of Japan.
A typical citizen of England.
A typical citizen of the USA.
A distant family member.
A typical Bostonian.
A typical Carolingian.
A casual friend.
A co-worker of several years.
A close friend.
An ex-girlfriend.
A close family member.
A really close friend I have been close to for decades.
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kestrell.
My mental model ofkestrell happens to be at least one, if not two orders of magnitude more complex than the next most detailed. I've known her almost a decade now, and for most of that time I've been deeply invested in making her happy. For purely selfish motives -- her happiness makes me happy in turn! Hence, it's very important to me to predict her reactions to the best of my ability. And that ability is notably deficient; I still occasionally offend her without meaning to. The frequency is dropping as I improve, but perfetion seems likely to be unattainable.
So if I unwittingly give offense to you, it is only because I don't understand you well enough. Of course, some people may take that as further cause for offence: "What?!? You think me unimportant enough that you haven't studied all my nuances in depth and memorized them!" To which I can only shrug sheepishly and reply, "Yeah, fair cop." You're welcome to try and convince me that understanding you *should* matter more to me -- but at the moment, it clearly doesn't, and I'm OK with that.
Sometimes one person says something which is misunderstood by someone else. Often, in such cases, bad feelings result. I've been musing on this a lot lately. Is it useful to assign blame in such cases? What can be done to minimize them? Or at least to minimize the damage that happens when they occur?
Some things that I believe:
I. People should state what they mean as clearly as they can manage.
Ia. People should not say false things.
Ib, People should not say deliberately hurtful things.
II. People are responsible for their own reactions.
Point II is subtle, and worth going into more detail about. My mom (after years of therapy) used to occasionally say that a given thing made her uncomfortable, but that she "owned" that feeling. That is, she acknowledged that the feeling originated within herself, and that the exterior stimulus was not to blame for her reaction to it.
Some people may think that this attitude is unfair. "Isn't this just blaming the victim?" I don't think so. English is inherently ambiguous. Despite the best efforts at clarity (I), sometimes there will be failures. As long as what was said was neither false (Ia), nor deliberately hurtful (Ib), I think that any negative reaction on the part of the listener rightfully belongs to the listener themselves. Or to put things another way, to whom *would* you cede authority over your own emotions? And under what circumstances? It seems to me distinctly unhealthy to assign responsibility for one's own emotional state to anyone but oneself.
It has been stated, by people whose opinions I generally respect, that there is a further principle that should be followed: "Ic. People should not cause offence." But, to me, this is fundamentally incompatible with Principle II. Which is not to say that there is not a fuzzy middle ground. While I cannot *control*, or be completely *responsible for* a listener's reactions, I can, with a greater or lesser expectation of success, *predict* those reactions. Indeed, Principle Ib is fundamentally based on such predictions. I cannot *know* what will be hurtful, but it is incumbent upon me to make my best guess.
So, how much responsibility *do* I have to guess my listeners' mental state(s)? As a reductio ad absurdum, I clearly cannot fully and correctly model their mental state at all times -- even were such a thing possible in theory, doing so for even one person would leave me no room to think thoughts of my own. So clearly I must use simple approximations as my mental models of other people.
In practice, the detail of these mental models varies widely. Here's a list of some mental models I have, in increasing order of detail and complexity.
A random human being.
A typical citizen of Japan.
A typical citizen of England.
A typical citizen of the USA.
A distant family member.
A typical Bostonian.
A typical Carolingian.
A casual friend.
A co-worker of several years.
A close friend.
An ex-girlfriend.
A close family member.
A really close friend I have been close to for decades.
kestrell.My mental model of
kestrell happens to be at least one, if not two orders of magnitude more complex than the next most detailed. I've known her almost a decade now, and for most of that time I've been deeply invested in making her happy. For purely selfish motives -- her happiness makes me happy in turn! Hence, it's very important to me to predict her reactions to the best of my ability. And that ability is notably deficient; I still occasionally offend her without meaning to. The frequency is dropping as I improve, but perfetion seems likely to be unattainable.So if I unwittingly give offense to you, it is only because I don't understand you well enough. Of course, some people may take that as further cause for offence: "What?!? You think me unimportant enough that you haven't studied all my nuances in depth and memorized them!" To which I can only shrug sheepishly and reply, "Yeah, fair cop." You're welcome to try and convince me that understanding you *should* matter more to me -- but at the moment, it clearly doesn't, and I'm OK with that.