Where are our preferences and impressions formed, are our feelings ours, can we truly take another’s perspective, is there an alternative? What we really know and why to take the journey for answers.
Get on the scale
As we travel along our journey, our experiences, training, parents, friends, media, governments and thoughts come together to create a scale rating system. Most times, this scale is created passively as our mental systems manage and compile information in the background into a rulebook that then dictates our impressions of the world around us.
To evaluate something we compare it against our personal reference scale to tell us what sounds, looks, feels, smells and tastes and weigh it as good, bad and everything in between. But, these scales are built to appraise more than just our physical senses. We develop these for psychological and emotional experiences too. Interpersonal relationships, beliefs, values, likes and dislikes, actions made personally and by others, and a vast amount of other aspects that we place judgement upon. Essentially, these scales create our position on all matters that concern us (and many areas that don’t).
Getting emotional
A conflict is created when something challenges our current position. If someone acts out of accordance with our social rules, we feel uncomfortable. If our ideas are questioned or criticised we feel attacked and get angry. And, if we act in a way that breaks our own values, we feel guilty. But, when the situation aligns with the rulebook we are satisfied and if we act to surpass our personal levels, we feel happy and proud. All of our emotions skip and slide based on these judgement scales as they deliver our expectations for the way things ought to be, shouldn’t be, what is best or the worst. We become emotional slaves to an invisible list that we have been programmed to follow.
Another’s shoes
Once a position is held, it is very difficult to move to an unfamiliar one and this in part is why it is challenging to shift to another person’s perspective. It is uncomfortable and sometimes terrible to change perspective but even when a move is made, it is impossible to truly see through their eyes. Having only our experience, our scales, our held positions, we can never fully imagine those of somebody else. We can never completely understand, we can only guess. And because our seemingly objective guesses (born from limited information and a position calibrated from personal experience) match with what we already know, we feel that we have done well and drawn an accurate and relevant picture. Empathy is a skill that is used as an attempt to close the gaps in interpersonal positioning but due to varying experience and the resulting reference points, it is an imperfect tool that can never completely achieve parity between positions. There is always an error.
Closing the gap further?
Understanding. Not an understanding of their position, an understanding of ours. The acknowledgement that no matter how strongly we feel, our gut reactions, our personal experience, our norms and beliefs – have made us biased. Our own shoes affect our thinking on all things. We are attached to what we know much more strongly than to the unfamiliar and are obviously completely blind to what we do not know. To obtain understanding, we have to accept that we are imperfect in our judgement due to our priming and preferences and allow room for errors. In so doing, we leave space for growth because we have a deeper understanding of where we may be, where they could be and where other things possibly lay; and know that we may be wrong. We can build a more relevant map and understand that the blurred lines between locations are a known unknown, but do exist.
From an emotional standpoint, the understanding that our thoughts, actions and reactions cause feelings that may not be entirely accurate (and at times are significantly inaccurate), we are better able to disconnect, observe our position and interject a little active rationality to better understand the situation. Our decision making ability can improve not by the increase in information, but by the increase in awareness of potential judgement errors and therefore the risks involved.
Sail off the edge of the world
The sight of uncertainty raises questions of what is hiding in the fog and like an explorer looking to discover what lays beyond the horizon, we can journey into these areas and begin to clear the air. With a curious mind, and an open heart, challenges are met firstly by acceptance, secondly by questions and hopefully, as the right questions are asked, understanding. When it comes to communication between people, what is often hiding in the murk is a lot more similarity than difference but our positions and the trust in the accuracy of them, work to make unknown waters no-go zones. This lowers the chance of conversation, narrows dialogue between borders and therefore any real, honest and truthful understanding.
Grow together
The fog insulates us from having our position challenged and can help us feel a sense of security but, it isolates us from each other and can make us cold, inflexible and ignorant. When two parties both work to blow the fog from the distance between, they grow outwardly together, and inwardly deeper. An internal repositioning of narrow-minded knowing to open-eyed unknowing, sharing experience and challenging the reference scales opens the possibility for acceptance, understanding and change; and greatly increases its probability.
It takes one
If a question comes from a root to understand, accept and be open, a reply is more likely. The response or lack of one hints at a position which aids understanding and points to roads through barriers so that the conversation can continue. If the reply comes from a curious, like-mind, the conversation is one of effectiveness, development, adaptability and mutual growth. The benefits are large, the implications are huge.
Taraz Kanti-Paul
One voice to start a conversation, two to continue, many for peace. Fear dies with understanding.
Abitata 