Friday, September 08, 2006
Winning and Losing...
....
If numbers of comments on a blog are a sign of "winning" some kind of competition, than Bastardette" is ahead at over 160 or some such.
If accomplishing anything is an indication of making progress, than they are loosing the battle by leaps and bounds. I see nothing constructive in cursing and calling one another "evil." I see hate just escalating with no controls on it whatsoever. All that is happening over there is a widening of the gap and each person getting more and more entrenched in their own positions. It is making schoolyard brawls sound like intelligent debates.
Interestngly, a friend just sent me a Washington Post article in regards to partisonship in politics: "How the Brain Helps Partisans Admit No Gray" By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, July 31, 2006.
Here are some relevant quotes:
"People who see the world in black and white rarely seem to take in information that could undermine their positions.
Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are. (When people are asked whether they are biased, they say no. But when asked whether they think other people are biased, they say yes.) Partisans who watch presidential debates invariably think their guy won. When talking heads provide opinions after the debate, partisans regularly feel the people with whom they agree are making careful, reasoned arguments, whereas the people they disagree with sound like they have cloth for brains."
Jonas Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, says: "in the political process, people come to decisions early on and then spend the rest of the time making themselves feel good about their decision."
"The result reflects a larger phenomenon in which people routinely discount information that threatens their preexisting beliefs," said Emory University psychologist Drew Westen.
In other words: My mind is already up, so please don't confuse me with the facts! Or, put another way, trying to change someone's preconcieved notions is about as useful as trying to teach a pig to fly - especially when it is done in anger.
The only way to approach a dispute is to approach it as a learning experience. Even if you have no expectation of ever changing your mind - say on an issue like abortion (which all of us have pretty clear opinions about). But, if you can go into a DISCUSSSION and just try to HEAR and UNDERSTAND the other's posiiton - without feeling you are trying to be convinced or feeling a need to DEFEND your posiiton...just LISTEN...then, you just might come out a bit enligtened.
All too often when listening - or even reading an email or post - we are formualting our repsonse AS we are listening or reading, and thus not really listening at all. In email it's far worse, because we IMAGINE the OTHERS "tone."
If numbers of comments on a blog are a sign of "winning" some kind of competition, than Bastardette" is ahead at over 160 or some such.
If accomplishing anything is an indication of making progress, than they are loosing the battle by leaps and bounds. I see nothing constructive in cursing and calling one another "evil." I see hate just escalating with no controls on it whatsoever. All that is happening over there is a widening of the gap and each person getting more and more entrenched in their own positions. It is making schoolyard brawls sound like intelligent debates.
Interestngly, a friend just sent me a Washington Post article in regards to partisonship in politics: "How the Brain Helps Partisans Admit No Gray" By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, July 31, 2006.
Here are some relevant quotes:
"People who see the world in black and white rarely seem to take in information that could undermine their positions.
Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are. (When people are asked whether they are biased, they say no. But when asked whether they think other people are biased, they say yes.) Partisans who watch presidential debates invariably think their guy won. When talking heads provide opinions after the debate, partisans regularly feel the people with whom they agree are making careful, reasoned arguments, whereas the people they disagree with sound like they have cloth for brains."
Jonas Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, says: "in the political process, people come to decisions early on and then spend the rest of the time making themselves feel good about their decision."
"The result reflects a larger phenomenon in which people routinely discount information that threatens their preexisting beliefs," said Emory University psychologist Drew Westen.
In other words: My mind is already up, so please don't confuse me with the facts! Or, put another way, trying to change someone's preconcieved notions is about as useful as trying to teach a pig to fly - especially when it is done in anger.
The only way to approach a dispute is to approach it as a learning experience. Even if you have no expectation of ever changing your mind - say on an issue like abortion (which all of us have pretty clear opinions about). But, if you can go into a DISCUSSSION and just try to HEAR and UNDERSTAND the other's posiiton - without feeling you are trying to be convinced or feeling a need to DEFEND your posiiton...just LISTEN...then, you just might come out a bit enligtened.
All too often when listening - or even reading an email or post - we are formualting our repsonse AS we are listening or reading, and thus not really listening at all. In email it's far worse, because we IMAGINE the OTHERS "tone."
# posted by Senior Mom @ 12:26 PM 
