Staged Conflict and the Downward Spiral of Communication
“Oh, I’m not trying to change your mind about anything.”
Then what the fuck are we doing here?
Like so many in the COVID-19 world, the pandemic has changed much of my perception of things I used to take for granted as normal.
The amount of cash spent on food, for example. With eating in restaurants suspended for two months, I’m seeing that practice as a luxury rather than a staple. Unlike countless folks, however, I didn’t suddenly become a home chef concocting delicious experiments in bread making or sauces. The most ambitious experiment I’ve undertaken thus far is to combine a can of tuna with a package of Ramen (it was tasty but hardly my version of Beef Wellington from scratch...).
Dana and I decided to go to a local pizza place to dine in somewhere—both to actually get out and toe-dab into the pool of the new reality as well as do some recon on what it looks like protocol-wise in other, non-casino, businesses. It was kind of magical. The beer was draft, the pizza was delicious, and the fact that we were out in the world was novel.
Another normal detail has been something I’ve struggled with since high school. I was a National Debate Champion and learned at that tender age that winning the argument was the goal in most discourse. The training was such that manipulating the moment, spinning the truth, playing psychological games, whatever it took to win was the right thing to do. In debate, there is a judge who listens and watches and ultimately decides who won. The whole competition was performative rather than any sort of search for a common truth to build upon.
Thirty-six years later, in the wake of pandemic and economic throttling, with the now decade-old functioning of social media, I’m just now starting to really question this practice fully.
We’re seeing an increase in legitimate studies about not only why we are so divided politically but how we are dividing ourselves up. Scientific articles regarding confirmation bias, siloing of political thought, the effects of both disinformation and misinformation as well as the proliferation of both by media as well as partisan and international organizations are all summing up a roadmap to what becomes the dysfunction of democracy.
The human tendency toward conflict isn’t new. The history of tribes finding enemies and subsequently going to war with each other is the true thread that binds us. Likewise, the history of the educated waged upon the unwashed masses is as old as the Roman Catholic Church positioning priests as the only people allowed to read the Bible and thus establish the primacy of unexamined authority. Disinformation isn’t new, either. William Randolph Hearst was famous for being the FOX News of his day, routinely spreading disinformation via his newspaper to promote his personal agenda.
What’s new is our collective ability to argue constantly without ever having to come into contact with one another. Also new is our unparalleled access to information and our unprecedented ability to create false narratives and distribute them to millions in one keystroke.
“Oh, I’m not trying to change your mind about anything.”
Then why?
The answer was simple. We were arguing for the sole purpose of arguing. She started by announcing her opinion: “I don’t think government should have ever shut businesses down.” My immediate response was that I disagreed. For the next thirty minutes, we volleyed more opinions that supported our initial opinions, I threw out scientific consensus, she tossed around the idea that if there is the possibility 95% of scientists are wrong, they’re probably wrong. Both of us as adamantly without budging in our perspectives as we were thirty minutes prior until I nodded and told her my mind wasn’t changed.
“Oh, I’m not trying to change your mind about anything.”
!!!!!??????!!!!!!
We weren’t trying to persuade the other to rethink our positions. We weren’t curious enough to be listening for new information from one another. We were merely arguing to win and more pernicious was that we were arguing as if we were arguing in front of an audience just like we would if we were online.
We ended up doing that thing we do— agreeing to disagree. Despite the attempt to just get along, what has plagued me ever since that argument on the grounds of an empty casino was that we weren’t, in any way, trying to communicate with one another. Since then, I’ve been examining my interactions, both on- and off-line to see if I am communicating in a similar manner. I’ve even gone back through my history to see about online battles of the past.
A couple of insights have revealed themselves along the path. First, the desire to win the argument is really fucking hardwired into my brain. Like the most strident of the Left, I tend to use heightened vocabulary and the fact that I ingest information like a hoarder takes in Hummel figurines to beat my opponent. Second, I tend to judge the less educated with a casual disdain that automatically prevents any genuine conversation to unfold. It’s an odd snobbery only countered only by an equally dismissive anti-intellectual attitude which creates a spiral of posing and insults that prevent any sort of meaningful discourse.
For decades in my past teaching of theater and improvisation, I’ve insisted that if the audience doesn’t get it, it is the artist’s fault not the audiences. In these one-on-one situations, whether discussing politics, culture, art, or anything else, if my goal is to change minds rather than win the argument, I have to own the fact that if I am failing to get through to a particularly cemented opinion, it is my fault for not fully communicating my ideas, not them.
Finally, and the most damning of my insights, is that I tend to tailor my win at any cost pose based upon my own bias about with whom I’m battling. Once someone uses the phrase “fake news” or spout some anti-Obama spin or mention they saw something on FOX News, my demeanor changes and I’m simply no longer communicating. As soon as I hear talk of Critical Race Theory and the carrying of generational trauma, I’m fully disinvested with the conversation.
I can’t control how I am perceived (depends on which side of the tribal divide you sit on because I refuse to play the sides game) yet I can control my own perceptions. Like looking at the Boring figure, the most famous of the ambiguous illusions, I can choose to see the old woman or the young, the mouth-breathing moron or the human being I need to convince, at will.
“Oh, I’m not trying to change your mind about anything.”
I am and am failing miserably.
