Gary C. Woodward | The Perfect Response

No nation looks to our deliberative branch as a model for building consensus.

Congress is the best example of the price we can pay when the rewards of public performance are greater than those of private negotiation. Donald Trump and the so-called “Freedom Caucus” have tried out rhetorical in-your-face antics reminiscent of some of our darkest comics, but without the fun or wit.

No one looking for a model of governmental efficiency would take any comfort from a good look at the current House leadership debacle. Its twin failures to produce effective public policy and work with the President offer cautionary truths about how to fail to produce effective action. The House of Representatives is a broken institution with public approval ratings to match. No country looks to our deliberative branch as a model for building consensus. Bipartisanship occasionally breaks out and offers momentary hope. But it has become a major achievement to keep the government funded for a whole month. In the process, the Speaker of the House who finally negotiated a compromise promptly lost his job. In this body, the few conciliators in the governing party that remain seem mute and mostly ineffective. For their part, Democrats appear to be willing to let the chaos continue, hoping it will convert into electoral gains. As an idea, E pluribus unum no longer has much appeal.

While this branch of the of government was not designed to work with the efficiency of a parliament, congressional dysfunction now leaves so much on the table that leaves Americans less well-off and secure: everything from immigration reform to timely allocations of funds for infrastructure improvements. We know this institution is in deep trouble when many of its members are now willing to risk triggering a government default and imperiling the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency: usually for no more than pressing some dubious ideological point.

What is wrong? What best practices for communicating in organizations are routinely ignored? Briefly, some of the overwhelming problems on Capitol Hill have their origins in two ineffective communication patterns.

The first is that the body is obviously and hopelessly organized into factions—notably parties, special interest caucuses, and their media—making it likely that members will only work to defend their kind rather than the whole. Since most of the process of legislating is done away from the floors of the House and Senate, it falls to party leaders, whips, and members to work out in private and with their own caucuses what they will accept by way of a legislative agenda. Differences of opinion have fewer chances to be moderated in environments that would encourage conciliation. The founders feared this hyper partisanship for good reason. Indeed, Senate and House Leaders now move so cautiously in their narrow partisan lanes that it can be hard to tell if their images on a screen are stills photos or videos.

This problem is compounded by a tradition of individual offices set up as separate fiefdoms spread over four buildings on the east side of the Capitol. One wonders how different legislative life would be if the 435 voting members of the House worked in the conditions known to most of white-collar America: in the same ‘cubicle farm’ spread over one or two floors. As it is, support staffs and dispersed offices enable the kind of isolation of members that discourages more discussion across party lines. Revealingly, members note that most no longer share a meal in the U.S. Capitol’s various dining rooms: a small but revealing change from the past.

A second problem is the changing character of those seeking high public office. In the age of social media and 24-hour news there seems to be more interest in the expressive possibilities of serving in public office than doing the work of governing. The temptation to continually raise campaign funds can easily become all-consuming.

In the lore of Congress there has always been an expectation that the “show horses” would sometimes win out over the “work horses.” A retired Lyndon Johnson once complained to a CBS producer about the “pretty boys” created by the growth of television. The former Senate Majority leader’s point was that visual media gave rise to a new breed of members more interested in the theater of politics than finding ways to bridge differences. We are electing figures who have very little interest or skill in active deliberation.

Since it is a solid axiom that we more easily find comity in small groups, trying to forge leadership within large bodies like the 535 member Congress needs to be seen for the problem it frequently is: the organizational equivalent of trying to get even a few dozen college professors to form a single straight line. We seem to no longer find much joy in political unity.

Had we not been given so fitting a term, someone would have surely had to invent it.

It is virtually impossible to think of the effects of most forms of complex communication—from talk therapies to film—without addressing the capacities of key agents to acquire understandings that privilege compassion over judgment. As film critic Roger Ebert noted about movies, “films are empathy machines.” We want to connect, and so we are drawn in when we see ourselves in the behaviors of others. It is an axiom of screenwriting that viewers will need to align with at least one character within a story.

Despite its obvious place as an essential feature of the fluent communicator, the capacity for empathy is unevenly distributed across any population. Especially in these sour times, with many happy to describe their estrangement from others. But empathy remains a central capacity necessary for individuals engaged in true interactive communication.

Empathy is a bond created by recognition of oneself in someone else’s experience. Or, as Martin Hoffman ingeniously describes it, empathy is “an affective response more appropriate to someone else’s situation than to one’s own.” It simultaneously acknowledges the authenticity of another’s feelings and suggests the momentary creation of a more personal shared experience. It is a reminder that we are not alone, even when we feel estranged from other people. Empathy happens when we meet the challenge to imagine the inner lives of others.

President Obama after Hurrican Sandy White House Photo by Pete Souza — _{President Obama after Superstorm Sandy in 2012}

The word itself was not the invention of academic psychology, but grew from German aesthetic theory at the beginning of the 20th Century. Robert Vischer was looking for a way to express the idea of projecting oneself onto another object (Einfühlung). He wanted to find a vocabulary that would help in the analysis of the individual’s response to the visual arts. Had he not discovered so fitting a term, others would have surely had to invent it. It is virtually impossible to think of the effects of most forms of complex communication—from film to talk therapies—without addressing the capacities of key agents to acquire empathetic understanding.

To some extent we seem hardwired for simple forms of empathetic responses. In his Social Intelligence 2006, Psychologist Daniel Goldman describes an unlearned “primal empathy” that flows from simple contact with others. We and other primates are naturally inclined to “read” facial and physical expressions, converting them into tentative understandings about what others may be experiencing. The threshold of awareness can be measured at the margins, as when a primate or infant is able to recognize itself (as opposed to an unknown or threatening alien) on a reflective surface. This kind of “mirroring” begins a sequence of consciousness that includes thinking as if they were the other. “I know how you feel” may be a cliché for the ages, but it reasonably describes what we take to be relatively faithful inferences made in limitless ranges of situations. Knowledge of an individual and their world increases the likelihood that we will recognize some of their experiences as our own. In friends those bonds deepen and grow.

Most of us worry if we don’t find this impulse alive somewhere in the words or actions of a new acquaintance. We ‘read’ others for signs that they understand the challenges we express. The alternative is indifference or hostility: responses that school us into accepting feelings of estrangement.

Still, even with sincere effort, there is no guarantee. Familiarity can sometimes make empathy whither. Sometimes the more we know about another person, the less of a connection we feel. Biographers of famous people sometime report this effect. The advantage of a loyal pet is that it will rarely reveal a backstory that makes us question our willingness to project the best into their actions.

In clinical settings focusing on mental health, empathy still functions as a core value in client centered therapy. The idea of talk therapy without a supportive and accurate listener is almost unthinkable. If quick and critical judgment is the poison of too many troubled relationships, empathy and full consciousness of how each party is feeling is a necessary antidote. This therapy is predicated on the suspension of judgment long enough to understand another. Not surprisingly, the inability to be sympathetic is a recurring symptom in problematic mental processing, including paranoia, narcissism, and some forms of autism.

Because empathy is a subjective experience, it is easier to observe its basic impulse than to accurately map its affective meanings. We can strive for objective measures of it, but its sources are always bound in alignments and understandings unique to the individual. Thus, the great paradox of empathy is also the paradox of communication: we live in the isolation of a unique private consciousness, even while an innate quest for connection pulls us out of ourselves and toward others.

The Perfect Response

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN A DISTRACTED AGE

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