Tag: communication

Spielen Macht Frei (Play Sets You Free)

~ cafebedouin

“The Prussian model seeks to create a population for whom work, no matter how mind-numbing or back-breaking, is the only hope. That’s why they try to inspire us with the promise of a freedom that will never come. When we keep play alive in our own lives, in the lives of our children, even if it is just in the nooks and crannies, we are creating real hope for freedom. If you are reading this, you are probably one of those people keeping play alive. In this world, play is the one thing that can give us genuine hope. It is the only path to freedom. And that is why play is the greatest threat to the status quo.It’s play, not work, that will set us free.”

Teacher Tom, “Play Is The Greatest Threat To The Status Quo.””. teachertomsblog.blogspot.com. December 22, 2022

This morning, I was reading someone talk about how consistency is the key to great work. Before joining family and friends for Christmas Eve or Christmas, one should get a little work done. When I read it, it sounded convincing.

Shortly after, I read this piece from Teacher Tom. Its an interesting contrast. In our culture, value is a function of work. How do we contribute to society? And, our contribution is, for most, determined materially. In crass terms, it’s the hourly rate where we exchange our time for money. That’s our value.

But, it is useful to be reminded that there are other values. As one section describes it:

Yunkaporta points out that the word “work” does not even exist in many Indigenous languages. Indeed, the “work” his people did do prior to colonization was confined to a couple hours a day and was comprised of things many of us now do as a break from work like gardening, cooking, hunting, hiking, camping, tinkering, and fishing. They spent the rest of their time building relationships, making art, dancing, playing games (almost always cooperative), telling stories, and making music. Indeed, they spent their time doing the very things that our youngest children do when left alone to be whatever they want to be — not when they grow up, but right now. Play, not work, sets us free.”

-ibid.

Indigenous people, or even people not part of our post-capitalist society or that live on its margins, viewed value through the lens of being someone who was enjoyable to spend time around. What would our lives be like if this were the organizing principle of society?

On one level, this seems like it would make our focus on extrovertism even more pronounced. It would amp up the performance aspect of society. But, it also makes me think that extrovertism and introvertism might be a kind of filter failure, where our society and the people who were are acquainted with has grown so large that it passes a certain threshold where people stop trying to participate in that society.

If you lived in a society or 100 people or less, where people knew and cared for one another on some fundamental level. Wouldn’t this change our society, where we knew that there was this base layer of caring and knowing that serves as a kind of bedrock on which play rests? Doesn’t it require a certain level of negotiation to move to the kind of intimacy that play requires with complete strangers, particularly in a world where all but the smallest children have been wounded by others?

What would it take to live in a world where play was of primary value? I’ve suggested smaller group sizes. But, what can we do, right where we are, to make this a more important value?

Generational Communication Preferences

~ cafebedouin

Before mobile phones, there were landline phones. If it was someone far away, they would have to pay “long distance” charges in order to talk to you. If it were someone in the local area code, they could just come over. But, with a landline phone conversations tend to be short, and there is the understanding that you are interrupting someone at home.

The key thing is that texting is asynchronous communication. You can respond when convenient for you. With landlines, this was accomplished with an answering machine. But, a text message is obviously better than listening to recorded messages.

I think there is a generational move toward using mobile phones as a substitute for synchronous, face-to-face communication, When I walk around my city, I see postal workers, and a lot of younger women, having conversations with the friends, almost as if they were there with them, while out walking. This is probably a smart adaptation when you have a life that is largely based around social media and where people are part of online communities that are not situated closely in meatspace.

But, that said, “full-on surprise Facetime their friends” is a phrase that makes me very thankful I use an Android device. And, yes, I am aware Android users can still Facetime through their mobile browsers, just as I am aware there is no chance I’ll do such a thing.

Creating Safe Spaces for Emotions

~ cafebedouin

“This is my job. I’m not here to make things better, to end the crying, or to distract them from missing their mommies. I’m not even there to soothe them any more than I’m there to ‘good job’ them: that is not my job. Becoming soothed is their job. Cheering for their own accomplishments is their job. My job is to be with them when they’re crying and when they’re cheering, speaking truth, and creating space for them to feel exactly how they feel for as long as they need to feel it. It ‘works’ every time.”

—Teacher Tom, “The Thing That ‘Works’ Every Time.” teachertomsblog.blogspot.com. December 12, 2022.

This is probably the biggest mistake we make with one another. When confronted with strong emotion, many of us, especially men, try to ‘fix’ the problem rather than being present, making room for the feeling to be felt.

Feelings cannot be fixed. They can only be felt.

P.S. Also reminded of this little chestnut.

Filter Failure & Critical Ignoring

~ cafebedouin

“As important as the ability to think critically continues to be, we argue that it is insufficient to borrow the tools developed for offline environments and apply them to the digital world. When the world comes to people filtered through digital devices, there is no longer a need to decide what information to seek. Instead, the relentless stream of information has turned human attention into a scarce resource to be seized and exploited by advertisers and content providers. Investing effortful and conscious critical thinking in sources that should have been ignored in the first place means that one’s attention has already been expropriated (Caulfield, 2018). Digital literacy and critical thinking should therefore include a focus on the competence of critical ignoring: choosing what to ignore, learning how to resist low-quality and misleading but cognitively attractive information, and deciding where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities.”

-Anastasia Kozyreva, et al. “Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens.” Current Directions in Psychological Science. Volume 0. 10.1177/09637214221121570

One of the red flags of conversation is that you have to give “both sides” consideration. Or, the person you are talking with suggests that you need to do more research in the topic, particularly if it is along the lines of their argument.

Here’s a radical idea. Arguments have to earn their place at the table. All opinions are not equally valuable, and if you want consideration, you have to do the work and not tell the people you are trying to convince to do the work for you. If your perspective is anti-vaccination, Earth is flat, etc., don’t be surprised when you are ignored.

I don’t have to care about your pet issue, particularly when it is objectively wrong. Even if you are right, about your religion, politics or conspiracy theory de jure, you aren’t entitled to anyone’s attention. You earn attention by caring about people, not ideas.

Or, to make an analogy, you are not entitled to sex with someone, just because you are lonely. What is true of the body is also true of the mind. Congress is based on consensus.

Peaceful Practices: A Guide To Healthy Communication In Conflict

~ cafebedouin

“‘It takes practice and intention to communicate well in the midst of conflict,’ says Jes Stoltzfus Buller, MCC U.S. peace education coordinator and author of the curriculum. ‘If we can learn to embody healthy dialogue habitually in interpersonal interaction, it will ripple out and affect our communities and society.'”

-“Peaceful Practices: A guide to healthy communication in conflict.” Mennonite Central Committee.

The guide comprised of nine sessions is available for download. I think the key idea is that we should try to understand where the other person is coming from, be curious and actually listen to what they have to say. It’s amazing how feeling like you are being heard can change the conversation for everyone.

  • Session 1: Making peace a practice 
  • Session 2: Curiosity—Be curious, inviting diversity of ideas and opinions 
  • Session 3: Discovery—Focus on what matters 
  • Session 4: Engagement—Invite the best in yourself and others 
  • Session 5: Dialogue—Listen together for insights and deeper questions 
  • Session 6: Empathy—Seek to understand rather than persuade 
  • Session 7: Authenticity—Speak from the heart 
  • Session 8: Dignity—Consider power dynamics 
  • Session 9: Transformation—Welcome creativity 

Perhaps the holiday season is an opportunity to learn this kind of communication and practice it.

How to Write Poetry to Communicate With Aliens

~ cafebedouin

“If you were to attempt to communicate with an alien lifeform, what would you want to say? And, just as importantly, how would you say it? It’s a question that has inspired countless science fiction stories and fueled real debate between scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). 

Now, a digital artist and academic has produced his own answer with a collection of mind-bending poems written in an artificial language that was designed for alien communications…

…In this way, Signals can be viewed alternately as a puzzle, an art piece, or as a bonafide icebreaker for interstellar chats. As to whether he sees aliens as the ideal audience, Carter said he is ironically pessimistic about the odds that humans will establish contact with an extraterrestrial species, but added that our urge to search for them is valuable on its own merits. At the very least, our calls to these hypothetical beings can help us evaluate our fragile yet beautiful place in the cosmos.

“I do wonder, in his heart of hearts, whether [Freudenthal] really imagined [Lincos] being used, or whether it was more an intellectual exercise for a human audience, which in many respects, a lot of alien messages really are,” Carter said. “They are not for them, out there. They are for us. They are our attempts at expressing ourselves to the wider cosmos, because the chances of us sending a message out there and it being received and understood is so infinitesimally low as to be almost meaningless.”

-Becky Ferreira, “How to Write Poetry to Communicate With Aliens.” Vice.com. June 28, 2022.

Reminds me of a Zuihitsu phrase: “Every signal has a cost. No costs; no need to communicate it.” What does it cost us to create a poem in a language for aliens? And who are we really communicating with?

W.A.I.T.: Why Am I Talking?

~ cafebedouin ~ 2 Comments

“In the comments of my newsletter on interviewing and wanting to be a better listener, a reader told me about an acronym people in the coaching world use frequently: WAIT, which stands for “Why Am I Talking?”

There’s something about this acronym that is more helpful and hits much harder than my usual “Shut up and listen” mantra.

-Austin Kleon, “Why Am I Talking?” austinkleon.com. March 17, 2022

How To Have A Good Conversation

~ cafebedouin

“1. Set up the conversational premise so you, and the other person, have easy outs, if it is not a good match.

2. Don’t assume the conversation will last an hour.  Rapidly signal what kind of conversation you are good at, if anything going overboard in the preferred direction, again to establish whether the proper conversational match is in place.

3. If you notice something you want to say, say it.

4. Be worthy of a good conversation…

…I would stress the basic point that most conversations are bad, so your proper goal is to make them worse (so they can end) rather than better.”

—Tyler Cowan, “How to have a good conversation.” Marginal Revolution. September 23, 2018.

One theory, if you cut down on conversations you don’t want, you’ll have more you do want. Another theory, you’ll just have fewer conversations, but the overall quality of your conversations will go up.

So, win/win?

Misunderstanding as Mismatch

~ cafebedouin

“…you can choose the people whose opinions you care about (and on what subjects), and you can choose the timescale you care about them on. Most people figure out the former [1] but the latter doesn’t seem to get much attention…

…You should trade being short-term low-status for being long-term high-status, which most people seem unwilling to do. A common way this happens is by eventually being right about an important but deeply non-consensus bet. But there are lots of other ways–the key observation is that as long as you are right, being misunderstood by most people is a strength not a weakness.”

-Sam Altman, “The Strength of Being Misunderstood.” SamAltman.com. December 1, 2020.

It’s a tautology. If you understand something that the person you are conversing with doesn’t, you’re going to be misunderstood. Conversely, if someone you are talking with understands something you don’t, you won’t understand them either.

On one level, it’s a question of truth. The assumption that Sam Altman makes above suggests that, over time, truth will out. But, does it? I’d argue that we rarely have opportunities to check our understanding. Either we ignore facts that conflict with our worldview, or we tend to slowly change our views with new information and forget that we used to believe the opposite before we got it. Do we care enough about our own opinions to validate them? And for most of us, the answer is that we don’t want to rigorously validate our opinions. We simply would rather just believe we are right. This, at least, is the general tendency.

So, do we care about what our past or future selves might think? Are we willing to lay out our model, stake out probabilities and evaluate how we did?

Or, more generally, is this something that we can do in community, where people join together to come to a consensus, and reevaluate our beliefs as a group in light of evidence as it presents itself. In the group setting, the general tendency becomes exponential. Groups don’t want to evaluate how effective they are because bad groups will shed members and become extinct. Individual members will then be cut adrift, looking for another group, a task that is harder as we grow older, because group dynamics and cohesion solidify in ways that exclude new members and new thoughts, both of which are disruptive.

The question isn’t whether to care what people think, the question is whether it is worth trying to create consensus or come to a shared understanding or whether it is even possible. The reality is that most conversation isn’t driven by truth, it’s driven by groups trying to assimilate members into an existing belief system.

If we cannot even understand ourselves and deal in good faith with past and future versions, how then can we deal in good faith with the mass of humanity? Conversations are based in this tug-of-war, and the value, for individuals, is exposure to new ideas and different ways of doing things. This is also true of groups, but the strategy requires forming cliques and sub-groups to change the larger belief system. All the while, it is nothing but misunderstanding and the potential for conflict.

It’s easy to not care what people think when you don’t think you can do anything to change it. Further, if those people can make your life miserable, keep your thoughts to yourself. Being Jesus and trying to save everyone, whether from their ideas or their circumstances, is very often an exercise in futility and disappointment. Undertake it when you are willing to accept that outcome and have the energy to spare.

The Rule of Awkward Silence

~ cafebedouin

“[T]he rule of awkward silence is simple: When faced with a challenging question, instead of answering, you pause and think deeply about how you want to answer. This is no short pause; rather, it involves taking several seconds (10, 20, or longer) to think things through before responding.

If you’re on the receiving end–and not used to this type of communication style–it can seem very awkward.”

—Justin Bariso, “Intelligent Minds Like Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos Embrace the Rule of Awkward Silence. You Should Too.” Inc. September 9, 2020.