Search for Civility - Challenge of a Calm Response
I've written two other diaries about my search for civility and the surprising position it has brought me to consider. I strongly believe that trying to shout louder than healthcare reform opponents, overpower them with raw political strength is a foolish plan that is doubtful to succeed. Even if we win this battle of wills, we'll do much greater harm to ourselves and our country. We should strive for civility. We should work to build a country where we can live side by side with others, without malice or ill will.
In this diary I discuss the successes and failures I've had in my efforts to talk with friends, family, and co-workers about healthcare reform. I want to highlight the impossibility of constructing a useful discourse with heated interaction despite the challenge of a calm response.
Also, I'd like to thank Clem Yeobright for a link to this Kaiser Family Foundation .pdf comparing and contrasting the different reform bills in play. Most of my current understanding of healthcare reform is based on that document.
In previous diaries I've called for more leadership from our elected officials and the heads of our communities. I've written to my representatives in Congress about my disappointment, but I've received no replies. It's made me wonder about who the real leaders are and how socially distant I am from them, but I'll set this issue aside for the rest of this diary.
I've had a number of discussions and interactions over healthcare reform since I wrote my last diary. I want to focus in on responses I gave that now seem especially weak or especially strong. A number of my weak responses came from my inability to calmly react with measured tone and force. My effective responses were not my wittiest or wonkiest quips, they were effective because they helped me convey a desire to build an open-minded dialogue. A discussion should not be fencing with swords, it should be a meeting of minds, a courtship of lovers. Seek embrace, not victory.
One exchange I had with a co-worker I'm not particularly proud of. To briefly introduce him, he's from upstate Wisconsin and concerned with securing the Mexican border. He doesn't support healthcare reform. Having just read the KFF summary I mentioned above, I felt well armed with details to explain away any concerns he might level against the reform plans being debated.
He complained about all the poor people who get emergency room care and then walk away unable to pay their hospital bill. I pointed out that substantial savings could be found on this issue by helping expand preventative care. Fundamentally, he didn't want to be forced to pay for the health expenses of others, especially as a result of their poor choices. I suggested that we need consider bending that ideology in order to save some money. I quoted standard statistics about US health expenditures compared to other countries. I was friendly, sharp, and clear...I'm pretty sure he was unmoved.
Looking at it now, I don't think he was ready to be convinced. As soon as I heard him go against reform, I automatically set myself up to oppose him. He put up his defenses. I should have had more self-control. I should have more carefully listened to his concerns to let him know that I wanted to discuss this with him. I didn't just want an opportunity to spout my talking points.
This Pat Oliphant political cartoon makes fun of Birthers and the like who will find ways to deny the strongest evidence in order maintain their view. I argue that this bullheaded opposition isn't intrinsic, rather I believe it's based on the players involved. No statistics or pleas were going to persuade my co-worker in that situation because we weren't close enough yet. It's not that he cannot be convinced, he just needs someone closer to try and convince him. If that is a general truth, then we shouldn't be polishing our debating skills, we should be trying to better understand and grow closer to non-supporters.
If I didn't do a particularly good job there, I believe that some of my comment responses from my last diary, Search for Civility - Against Public Option, were much more effective. Some of the questions I asked elicited substantial and well-considered responses. I believe the most effective ones showed that I was open-minded.
In the above questions I tried to lay out a path for my opposition, a standard of contradiction. That path, or standard, can be constructed in a reasonable or an unreasonable manner. The more specific you make your questions, the more reachable success will seem for anyone that might oppose you. The discussion should then be more inviting. The difference between a reasonable standard, an unreasonable standard, and an impossible standard is difficult to enunciate, but usually pretty easy to see when you encounter it.
To wrap things up I have a few suggestions for anyone else who thinks a search for civility makes sense. If you feel yourself getting fired up and passionate, try to rein yourself in. When things are heated you're more likely to think of what you want to hear than what your opponent needs to hear. Don't get sarcastic and snippy, that betrays a closed mind. When talking with someone, if your minds are closed, you aren't having a discussion, you're just measuring your dicks.
Cross-posted at DailyKos.
In this diary I discuss the successes and failures I've had in my efforts to talk with friends, family, and co-workers about healthcare reform. I want to highlight the impossibility of constructing a useful discourse with heated interaction despite the challenge of a calm response.
Also, I'd like to thank Clem Yeobright for a link to this Kaiser Family Foundation .pdf comparing and contrasting the different reform bills in play. Most of my current understanding of healthcare reform is based on that document.
In previous diaries I've called for more leadership from our elected officials and the heads of our communities. I've written to my representatives in Congress about my disappointment, but I've received no replies. It's made me wonder about who the real leaders are and how socially distant I am from them, but I'll set this issue aside for the rest of this diary.
I've had a number of discussions and interactions over healthcare reform since I wrote my last diary. I want to focus in on responses I gave that now seem especially weak or especially strong. A number of my weak responses came from my inability to calmly react with measured tone and force. My effective responses were not my wittiest or wonkiest quips, they were effective because they helped me convey a desire to build an open-minded dialogue. A discussion should not be fencing with swords, it should be a meeting of minds, a courtship of lovers. Seek embrace, not victory.
One exchange I had with a co-worker I'm not particularly proud of. To briefly introduce him, he's from upstate Wisconsin and concerned with securing the Mexican border. He doesn't support healthcare reform. Having just read the KFF summary I mentioned above, I felt well armed with details to explain away any concerns he might level against the reform plans being debated.
He complained about all the poor people who get emergency room care and then walk away unable to pay their hospital bill. I pointed out that substantial savings could be found on this issue by helping expand preventative care. Fundamentally, he didn't want to be forced to pay for the health expenses of others, especially as a result of their poor choices. I suggested that we need consider bending that ideology in order to save some money. I quoted standard statistics about US health expenditures compared to other countries. I was friendly, sharp, and clear...I'm pretty sure he was unmoved.
Looking at it now, I don't think he was ready to be convinced. As soon as I heard him go against reform, I automatically set myself up to oppose him. He put up his defenses. I should have had more self-control. I should have more carefully listened to his concerns to let him know that I wanted to discuss this with him. I didn't just want an opportunity to spout my talking points.
This Pat Oliphant political cartoon makes fun of Birthers and the like who will find ways to deny the strongest evidence in order maintain their view. I argue that this bullheaded opposition isn't intrinsic, rather I believe it's based on the players involved. No statistics or pleas were going to persuade my co-worker in that situation because we weren't close enough yet. It's not that he cannot be convinced, he just needs someone closer to try and convince him. If that is a general truth, then we shouldn't be polishing our debating skills, we should be trying to better understand and grow closer to non-supporters.
If I didn't do a particularly good job there, I believe that some of my comment responses from my last diary, Search for Civility - Against Public Option, were much more effective. Some of the questions I asked elicited substantial and well-considered responses. I believe the most effective ones showed that I was open-minded.
Do we misunderstand the proposed public option?
Are our concerns about the future and private insurance unrealistic?
I want to hear more about the third one.Third, the thing that she is afraid of is not going to happen under any bill under consideration right now.
If you can tell me more about that, it might completely assuage our concerns...we could go home happy. Do the bills have measures that prevent larger employers from dropping private coverage? What if it turns out that the companies with employees on the public option are more fiscally competitive than employers that provide private insurance? If that were the case, over time, the companies providing private coverage would need to adapt or go out of business, right?
In the above questions I tried to lay out a path for my opposition, a standard of contradiction. That path, or standard, can be constructed in a reasonable or an unreasonable manner. The more specific you make your questions, the more reachable success will seem for anyone that might oppose you. The discussion should then be more inviting. The difference between a reasonable standard, an unreasonable standard, and an impossible standard is difficult to enunciate, but usually pretty easy to see when you encounter it.
To wrap things up I have a few suggestions for anyone else who thinks a search for civility makes sense. If you feel yourself getting fired up and passionate, try to rein yourself in. When things are heated you're more likely to think of what you want to hear than what your opponent needs to hear. Don't get sarcastic and snippy, that betrays a closed mind. When talking with someone, if your minds are closed, you aren't having a discussion, you're just measuring your dicks.
Cross-posted at DailyKos.
posted by Jacob Gerber at
12:41 AM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
Actually, you won't convince him. There are a couple of things at work here, and logic isn't one of them.
You and I are very analytical. We have to understand issues to come to a decision. Most people aren't like that; they make decisions intuitively. They don't know why, but they know what is right.
The second factor here is that he isn't really arguing an issue, he is defending his "tribe". We are born with an instinct to fear and dominate those outside of our tribe. For most of human history, while ten miles was a long way, we could communicate as far as we could shout, and the deadliest weapon was a club, this was a functional survival trait. Now, with the ability to travel at near the speed of sound, to communicate world-wide in seconds, and to easily kill our enemies by the hundred, it is probably more of a liability than an asset. But we still have it.
When your colleague fulminates against immigrants, he is defending and asserting his membership in a tribe that he defines himself as a member of. You do the same for your tribe if you look down on him for his failure to appreciate your logic.
So why aren't we all constantly at each other's throats? Rather than some people unlearning their fear of those outside of their tribe(s), I think that we can learn that we are actually part of a larger tribe. Those who are adamantly opposed to health care reform do so because they identify with a tribe that defines itself at least partly by that opposition. That will change if they learn to identify with a tribe that supports health care reform.
I think that the administration realizes this. Lately, they seem to be making a greater effort to get the message out that most of us are at risk in the present health care "system". At this point we are getting out of analysis and in to sales; not my tribe.
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