Our constructed selves are mostly held together by a desire to assert identities intended to cast a shadow. We want to be a presence; someone who is more cause than effect.
With its nearly infinite varieties, communication is usually about nuance. Few challenges or strategies are foolproof or easily applied. Even ‘best practices’ are usually contingent. But this is not true if we seek an answer to at least one straightforward question. When the query is ‘what is the most common deficiency most people show in their interactions with others?’ a firm response can given in two words: effective listening. This is mostly because the mantra of our age is to first take care of ourselves. This may usually be good for our overall mental health, but it can be no surprise that our interactions reveal a common desire to bring most conversations back to ourselves.
This is an age where celebrity demands our attention; we routinely honor people who make their mark through whatever forms of validation we admire. Our media is populated with these figures. And as more and more research is confirming, social media often function the same way, offering constructed displays of enviable lives. It follows that our own efforts at self-repair are motivated by the desire to offer versions of ourselves that will cast a shadow. We want to be presence; someone who is more cause than effect; the one who is the source of attention rather than the one who attends.
Cameras were once used to capture the images of others. Now they are often turned around to create ‘selfies’ that we can pass along the digital food chain.
And so communication between equals can easily devolve into exchanges that can best be understood as ‘taking turns.’ The preoccupation of self that defines our age plays out in the simple desire to be at the center of typical exchange, preferencing our judgments and conclusions over interest in giving others space to lay out what are often extended narratives.
The impulse to be heard rather than tohear is unevenly spread across the culture. It seems strongest in adults, which is perhaps why so many young adults are impatient with offers of advice from older family members. The circles of influence for the young are smaller and tighter, leaving less of an appetite for giving time to parents who are ready to assert their authority and credibility. We’ve even turned this pattern into a Hollywood trope: films about the lives of teens rarely allow parents or teachers to be the pivotal influencers they hope to be. Think of Greta Gerwig’s recent film Ladybird (2017). Mom and daughter are mostly on different planets. Screenplays like Ladybird typically write older figures as foils more than resources.
It’s not that we don’t listen to anyone anymore. Functionally, most of us spend large parts of every day in front of a screen that is asking for attention to spoken or written messages. But this is ‘listening’ at its lowest gradient. Peripheral attention to a figure in a video is qualitatively a long way from the more active listening that is often needed to produce a conversation that can be enlightening or even transformative. Our excessive attention to packaged media requires only a passive kind of reception, setting us up to be frail listeners when circumstances demand so much more.
One would think that moderns educated on the complexities of the world would shun snap judgments and favor more considered conclusions. But such hopeful flattery is probably unearned.
Tweets and other instant forms of response are doing their part to school us to accept norms that put judgment ahead of inquiry. Our taste for quick rejoinders means that judgment has already made the final turn before reasoned inquiry has left the gate.
Our public rhetoric is now consistently reactive. We look for the simplest ways to express outrage and dismay, as any sampling of online comments remind us. Most of us expect to read snappy attitudes uttered with conviction and and usually some vitriol. A person who responds to a question or thoughtful assertion with a “not sure” is likely to be seen as a little slow.
Snap judgments about the world are mostly unearned gifts that we give ourselves. A sharp claim stakes out territory we can own. But anyone who takes time to notice will see that our popular and social media are filled with advocates who are in weeds over their heads. Certainties on topics about which we know very little are as common as black flies in Maine. And their lifespan is about as long.
Somehow our public rhetoric needs to pull back to give space to the considered conclusions where accuracy matters more than an immediate answer.
Thankfully, there is a language for processes of deliberation and truth-testing. When the stakes are high, we want knowledgeable people in charge of making considered judgments. For example, will the Boeing 737 MAX fly again soon? Presumably smart people employing solid engineering practices will be make that call. We should expect that more will happen than the President’s suggestion that we simply give the plane a new name. Likewise, as a nation we should eventually determine if the same leader has engaged in the crime of obstruction of justice. My quick judgment is a firm “yes.” But I’m willing to defer to legal experts who better understand criminal and legal benchmarks. Somehow our public rhetoric needs to pull back to give space to considered conclusions where accuracy matters.
A Lexicon of Truth Testing
We can construct a kind of hierarchy of decision-making mechanisms that ought to be in our minds when we seek answers to a nagging problems. Near the top I would place the discovery process in legal proceedings. In advance of a trial, each side in criminal and civil cases has the opportunity and time to gather the facts and a full narrative. Both sides can interview credible witnesses, subpoena documents and seek outside expertise. A discovery process that is thorough, for example, is apt to use DNA evidence that can be help determine if a suspect could have committed an assault.
Serious investigative journalism has a similar process, often requiring two independent confirmations of an event before it can be reported. The hearsay of one source is not enough. Good examples of this process are found in the classic journalism sagas Spotlight (2015) and All the President’s Men (1976). Spotlight seems especially accurate in telling the story of the Boston Globe’s research of coverups of child abuse committed by priests and church leaders in the Boston area.
Drug makers seeking to introduce a new medicine will typically need to show the efficacy of a treatment by doing some double-blind studies: tests of the proposed treatment administered to two comparable groups of patients, one getting a placebo, and the other receiving the treatment. In a double-blind study neither the patients nor clinicians administering the “meds” know whether they are handling the real stuff. Will the experimental group get better? It’s usually a fair form of the experimental method to see if the new drug can outperform improvements triggered by the placebo effect in the ‘control’ group.
Among social scientists there is a great deal of fudging that turns correlational studies into unjustified conclusions that suggest causation. Human research follows the general protocols of the hard sciences, even though human subjects are not easily isolated for study. For example, fast food restaurants in an area aren’t always the cause of high levels of obesity among the residents in a nearby neighborhood. Some studies have asserted this claim with only an assumption of causation.
In many other realms we are usually open to a future leader who is doing a “listening tour” rather than a rally; or other figures who are prepared to make “reasonable inferences” or see significance in analogous situations. All are explicitly making room for logics that reserve space for more open-minded tests of a claim’s validity.
Near the bottom of the list we are left with a vast majority of public comments representing patterns of “motivated reasoning” or “confirmation bias.” These are common mental processes that allow acceptance of evidence or ideas only if they confirm what the perceiver already believes.
One would think that moderns educated on the complexities of the world would shun snap judgments and favor more considered conclusions. But such hopeful flattery is probably unearned. 