>1. Stone racists who hate immigrants, especially brown ones.
This is one of the biggest, most common mistakes a lot of well-meaning people make regarding their mental model of their society. Not that this group isn't significant, but that the author doesn't go on to identify the milder version of that group, which may be large.
It's so easy and obvious as a regular idealistic person, who values justice and advanced society, to look at the entire group of people who, e.g., have bitter opinions on immigration, and under-categorize them into one big group of "these are the people who just plain hate other races". Yeah, there are a shocking number of those people, but I think we may be surprised by how many other people in that group we're making have some amount of reasonableness or understandability in their opinions. In the end, the source of all opinion and action is the human experience, and a lot of humans are having objectively negative experiences with immigration that have nothing to do with their own morality.
This applies to pretty much every negative opinion we all have of one another, but this is a salient one.
> Clearly, we the minority have failed in explaining our views. Many years ago I wrote an essay called Two Laws of Explanation. One law says that if you’re explaining something and the person you’re explaining to doesn’t get it, that’s not their problem, it’s your problem. I still believe this, absolutely.
I agree with this whole heartedly, it’s the responsibility of the person doing the communicating, not the listener to pass on the message. If you feel your message is worthy, true, and just, what gets in the way of the listener not accepting a message?
Seems to me there are three main things…
- You are not able to effectively communicate the message.
- The message is actually not as worthy, true, and just that you believe it is.
- The listeners don’t recognize your authority
Yes, this is a "main thing" in that it is common and has a significant impact, but this one falls to both sides to get right. Communicators shouldn't try to invoke authority at all if it's not relevant (e.g. "I have X amount of experience with Y" may be relevant). But listeners also tend to have a problem of over-perceiving imposed authority (underdog/oppressed minority syndrome, i.e. "don't tell me what to do"), in the common case where the message can and should be judged without considering the speaker's level of authority (perceived or actual) at all. Or, in the cases where the communicator may actually have expertise on the topic, a listener who rejects the communicator's authority may do so based on those same tangential emotions.
I have friends who disagree with me about how much taxes should be. I have friends who disagree with me about military intervention. I have friends who disagree with me about voting reform.
But I don't have friends who believe that women, people of different races, or LGBT people should be treated as lesser. Because that's not a "political belief" so much as "being an awful human being".
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 21.4 ms ] threadThis is one of the biggest, most common mistakes a lot of well-meaning people make regarding their mental model of their society. Not that this group isn't significant, but that the author doesn't go on to identify the milder version of that group, which may be large.
It's so easy and obvious as a regular idealistic person, who values justice and advanced society, to look at the entire group of people who, e.g., have bitter opinions on immigration, and under-categorize them into one big group of "these are the people who just plain hate other races". Yeah, there are a shocking number of those people, but I think we may be surprised by how many other people in that group we're making have some amount of reasonableness or understandability in their opinions. In the end, the source of all opinion and action is the human experience, and a lot of humans are having objectively negative experiences with immigration that have nothing to do with their own morality.
This applies to pretty much every negative opinion we all have of one another, but this is a salient one.
I agree with this whole heartedly, it’s the responsibility of the person doing the communicating, not the listener to pass on the message. If you feel your message is worthy, true, and just, what gets in the way of the listener not accepting a message?
Seems to me there are three main things… - You are not able to effectively communicate the message. - The message is actually not as worthy, true, and just that you believe it is. - The listeners don’t recognize your authority
Yes, this is a "main thing" in that it is common and has a significant impact, but this one falls to both sides to get right. Communicators shouldn't try to invoke authority at all if it's not relevant (e.g. "I have X amount of experience with Y" may be relevant). But listeners also tend to have a problem of over-perceiving imposed authority (underdog/oppressed minority syndrome, i.e. "don't tell me what to do"), in the common case where the message can and should be judged without considering the speaker's level of authority (perceived or actual) at all. Or, in the cases where the communicator may actually have expertise on the topic, a listener who rejects the communicator's authority may do so based on those same tangential emotions.
But I don't have friends who believe that women, people of different races, or LGBT people should be treated as lesser. Because that's not a "political belief" so much as "being an awful human being".