This blog post is about communication and how crucial it is for individual and societal growth. To clarify, I define and describe communication as an openness to receive opinions and information and to objectively and critically analyze those opinions and ideas with a willingness to go back and forth with others who we accept and respect as equals.
These days, it seems that being triggered and angered by states of affairs is somewhat of a norm. One might almost say it’s in style. So many gets swept away by their ideas and other people’s ideas and fail to recognize that an idea is just a thought. As all thoughts that arise in our minds, all need to be recognized critically, some need to be discarded and some need to be kept.
Communication is necessary for growth and education. The most important component of growth, other than the content (ideas and opinions) is communication. Without communication, individuals remain as islands separated from each other, and lose even the slightest possibility of collective action and large-scale communal growth. Communication is necessary for a collective understanding of notions and a societal communication and conversation about affairs.
But most importantly, communication is crucial to either examine and understand one’s position as true or false, or to converse with others to help them grow in order to have larger scale communal growth. If someone for instance, says something that seems or is offensive. If we stop communicating, or start attacking, because of that opinion, we will never be able to either make them recognize their mistake or we ourselves understand our mistake. Living in such bubbles, these voids, in which all we hear are echoes of our own thoughts disconnected from reality and others, can only be detrimental to our own growth as well as that of the society we live in.
An example is when someone says, some insensitive comment intended as a joke. In this case, if we know the person as a friend, we can often safely assume that their aim has not been to offend. Simply knowing this is already an important starting point. Because the intention could either be being playful, making a remark about some affairs, or simply a mistake. It is important to remember that the intention was not to harm. When individuals, cause harm without intending it, we need to treat them differently from those who intend the consequence of their actions. This means being fair and treating others with the fairness and respect we hope to receive as well.
Now, if a friend makes a joke that is offensive and harms us. The first question to ourselves should be: “Am I actually harmed?”. Because often we feel harmed, not because we are, but because we perceive ourselves to be. Some of this is individual, but much of it can be the result of the society in which we live. We are immersed in a sea of signals telling us that message X is offensive (X can be almost any issue the group we identify with chooses). Thus, when we hear message X, we automatically assume offence and we naturally assume harm. But, if upon objective, critical and honest analysis we realize that we are not perceiving harm, but are indeed actually harmed from the joke, we must then start a conversation.
We must begin by asking our friend, without judgment, why they made the joke and depending on the response, we move from there. Very often, they’d say “it was simply a joke”. This is the moment to inform them that you feel harmed by the joke, but acknowledge that their goal and aim was not to do harm. Most people, when they realize that their action had an unintended consequence of harm, they will apologize and try to avoid harming others the next time.
If and when our friend says that they do not think that the joke was offensive, that is the moment for which you have been gathering information and educating yourself to be able to help improve situations and make life better for those in need. In those moments, and only in those moments, when you are open and objective and the other is also the same, you can truly communicate. As long as both of you are open and honest and critical, one or both of you will likely get to a point of either accepting limitations of knowledge and deciding to further inform themselves on the topics, before making any conclusion. If right after hearing the joke, one gets defensive or attacks the other, no conversation occurs, each remain in their own isolated space and neither one benefits from a critical examination of their ideas and opinions.
Why communicate if they don’t understand?
What is the point of communication with those who simply do not understand, or comprehend beliefs that we deem as fundamental and basic? The response is that individuals not only have different methods of processing information and interpreting them, but also approach initial observations with different perspectives. Some perspectives are unique to them as individuals and some are affected by and contributed to by the society they have lived.
Simply put, communication is crucial. It is easy and comfortable to fall in an endless cycle of following individuals or pages to get informed and have your beliefs reaffirmed and reconfirmed subjectively by those you choose to label as credible and objective no matter what. Like this, we slowly but surely will get to the wrong conclusion that our opinions and ideas are not opinions and ideas but facts. We will never have the most reasonable and balanced understanding of things unless we have subjected our ideas and opinions to critical, honest and objective assessment, which is almost impossible unless done with those who approach those topics from different perspectives and disagree, at least somewhat, with our interpretations.
We must see the nuance and remember that things are not black or white, but all different shades of grey. Unless we accept that even those who believe things that we disagree with fully are individuals who have either reasoned their way to understanding those or have convinced themselves that there is some good for them in holding such beliefs, we won’t be able to approach them as individuals to communicate with.
Orange Stoic 