There are two forms of discussion that I can identify when I see them, and while one tends to camouflage itself as the other in order to get its way, you can still tell the difference if you’re paying attention. The two types are these: discussion to gain information, and discussion for the purpose of proving dominance. The first is communication that is based on the idea that two people can exchange information, look at it together, and come to a new position together that, perhaps, neither of them had thought of before. The second — and this is by far the more common because it is far less rigorous and takes far less discipline and thought — is just to prove that you are right and the person you are talking to is an asshole.
Now that second mode is a tough one to get away from. If, for example, you feel you want to engage in a discussion of the first mode, but you try to do it with someone who is in the second mode, unless you know what’s going on, you will inevitably get sucked in. Absolutely guaranteed. It is also easy to slide off the path of the first mode into the mire of the second mode all on your own — and to take your companion with you. At this point, you will both roll around in the traditional mud wrestling competition that we all know from so many conversations, from the most intimate to the most widely publicized. Yep. There’s that mud wrestling. Oh, look. So and so’s on top. No, So and So’s on top. And so on.
It can be entertaining, actually, especially if you find yourself getting in a couple of good ones. But if you’re trying to figure something out, it’s really not very productive.
I thought a lot about this when I went to visit what we here in the over therapized West call “My Family of Origin.” (I love that — it sounds so quaint, like we live in a cave together or something.) Now I really had not noticed how much My Family of Origin (and of course I include myself in that) communicates in this second mode. I mean, in years past, I had sort of noticed in a vague sort of way. I had noticed I would get frustrated and abusive when, for example, confronted with certain members of My Family of Origin’s more cave-like points of view…say, about women’s rights, or Nicaragua’s Somoza, or Global Warming the Liberal Myth. And I had sort of noticed (very, very vaguely, based on the equation that you see the beam in your eye at an exactly 2 billion times lesser magnification than you see the mote in your loved one’s) that I…er…sometimes communicated in a way disguised as disinterested discourse, but that really, at the bottom, was a trumpeting of how very, very cool and just about always correct I really am. But I hadn’t made the leap to any kind of clarity about it. Probably because to move out of that mode, you have to give up the guilty pleasure of ALWAYS BEING THE ONE WHO’S RIGHT. I mean, even if the person you’re arguing with doesn’t agree with that point of view — and I don’t need to tell you that nobody is thinking anything, in that mode, except that THEY are the only one who’s right, and the other, no matter how loved, is, well, frankly, an idiot — it’s comforting to always be able to hold it yourself, up close, like a warming little blankie on a cold night.
Still, I thought it was about time to give up the blankie. Mainly because what I want now, more than security, more than self-esteem, more than anything else, is I want to get at what’s really there — insofar as I can. I want to Know. I don’t, anymore, want to Triumph.
I amused myself on this family holiday trip with trying to catch myself doing just that — seeking for Triumph –, and trying to stop myself at the gate. And — no surprise — this changed the whole dynamic of every conversation. I don’t have any idea if it changed it for the members of My Family of Origin. Probably not. Probably the idea communicated to anyone in my family whenever I speak is something along the lines of “Well, there goes Tod babbling again. It must be nice on the Moon, or wherever it is she lives. Anyway, the kids seem to like her.” But it did a lot for me. Because the one thing that came out of it loud and clear is that if you refuse, just absolutely refuse, to enter into the Conversation As Dominance mode, all sorts of landscapes open up that were closed to you before. Insights that would have gotten lost in the general melee down there wrestling in the mud.
(And it’s Insight that I’m in this for. I want to know why we’ve gotten ourselves in the mess we’re in. I want to know and that, frankly, is all I’ve got time for now. So every little nugget I can mine out of any old conversation gets hoarded, brought home, categorized, analyzed, mulled and then shared out in case someone else has got another piece to add to that particular bit of the puzzle…)
There were two insights I can think of that I came away with, one was a nice little nugget addition to my general train of thought about why things are as messed up as they are, and one…one was a kind of wider idea, quite Christmas-y, really, and nice.
The first I won’t bother you with, since to do that I would have to report one of those conversations that we all have with our parental units, which then make us feel smug because they didn’t see how they contradicted themselves, etc. etc. etc. (I’m bored writing about it). I managed to evade the smuggery, and my reward was that I had a little bit of enlightenment from something that was said in the conversation.
But the main thing I learned was that there is a third kind of conversation, one I had sort of noticed on the edges of things, but which I hadn’t actually identified. And that is the conversation that says, anxiously or comfortingly, that we are all in this together, no matter what our points of view. And that everyone, everyone needs to know this, or go to bed hungry and cold. And if we don’t want anyone to go to bed hungry and cold — metaphorically or otherwise –, we had better focus on those in front of us, and, above all, above all else, be kind. Be kind, oh be kind, before it’s too late.
But never, ever, ever confuse being kind with being stupid or being blind. Just because you’re kind to someone doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. Or even that you have to think they know anything about anything at all. Truth first. Loyalty second. And Love over all.
Merry Christmas and all the other Holidays too, from everyone at EAP.