4 Reasons Humans Will Never Understand Each Other
In many ways, everyone who is different from us is a bewildering, inexplicable enigma. They arbitrarily hate the things we like and like the things we hate, and behave in ways we can't predict. That makes us hate them a little. We end up concluding that these people (members of the opposite sex, opposing political party, owners of a rival video game system) are just one-dimensional stock characters placed as obstacles or foils in the movie that is our life.
This has created a society that is almost sitcomlike in its huge, but simple, misunderstandings. It would be hilarious if the results weren't so tragic, and it's all due to the fact that we not only do not understand each other, but don't even try. That's because ...
#4. We Think Trying to Understand Someone is the Same as Siding With Them
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At some point after 9/11 when things had calmed down just a bit, some progressive guest on a news show was the first to say, "We need to understand why these people hate us." This person was immediately drowned out by a chorus of flag-pin-wearing pundits screaming, "The only thing we need to 'understand' about these maniacs is where to aim our cruise missiles! Now is no time to coddle terrorists, hippie!" You get the same reaction if you say you want to "understand" the motives of a spree killer or rapist, as if understanding bad guys is the same as giving in to them.
Somehow the idea has taken hold that understanding somebody you hate only benefits them, as if the only end goal is to be more sympathetic to the racist or terrorist or Wall Street crook or Star Wars prequel fan. Some people think that it's really about giving the awful people a chance to convince us they're not so bad.
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Let them run free and this happens.
We're afraid that trying to understand a terrorist opens the door for us having to say that blowing up civilians really isn't that bad, or understanding a criminal means we have to excuse all his crimes because he had a bad childhood. That is silly. Understanding is just about gaining knowledge. Once you've gained that knowledge, you can decide what to do with it. This includes using that knowledge to defeat them, if that's what the situation calls for. It applies to terrorists or criminals or aggressive co-workers or Internet trolls. You can't fight what you don't understand.
As a wise man once said, "In order to trap him, he must become him."
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Everyone quotes this wrong.
Sometimes you need to metaphorically undergo surgery to replace your face with your enemy's face, and (also metaphorically) infiltrate a prison and talk to your enemy's brother in order to find out where the metaphorical bomb is. You don't have to learn any lesson about how he's "really not that bad," and quite likely will learn he's even worse than you thought, murdering all your co-workers and displaying a creepy obsession with peaches.
I'm not going to dive into the debate about whether torture is effective, but I will say that interrogators have "broken" al-Qaida operatives with gestures as simple as bringing sugar-free cookies to a diabetic or finding a suspect's childhood nickname and calling him by it. One link in the chain to capturing al-Qaida's top guy in Iraq involved an American interrogator taking the time to find out why one imam was so pissed at Americans and then just saying sorry.
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More effective than waterboarding?
If you're not in the habit of defusing bombs, in daily life you can still figure out what annoying people (salesmen, clingy friends, prickly co-workers) want so you can convince them you don't have it and get them to go away. For example, if you understand what kind of attention a certain type of Internet troll is looking for, you can make sure they don't get it, and often they'll move on to a new target.
So yeah, sometimes understanding other people helps them out, but it always helps you out, because knowledge, power, all that. You can learn to be nicer and more sympathetic to them, or you can learn how to push their buttons to get what you want. That's up to you, but you'll never even get that choice until you get through step one and try to understand them.
#3. We Put Ourselves in Other People's Shoes
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"But wait," you might think. "Isn't that exactly what we're supposed to do? Isn't it a good thing?" The problem, as I see it, is it only gets you halfway there. Too often you put yourself in someone else's shoes -- but you stay you. You basically Quantum Leap yourself into someone else's situation with all your knowledge and emotional resources.
In this awful, well-meaning article, a middle-aged white writer talks about what he would do if he were a poor black kid, and about how he would take advantage of all the resources and options available to poor black kids who have the memories and knowledge of a middle-aged white guy implanted into their brains.
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Which probably torpedoes their basketball prospects.
Unfortunately, while we have the technology to surgically swap the face of a cop with that of a criminal, we don't yet have the technology to implant memories into kids' brains. And good luck getting Congress to fund that kind of procedure for inner city kids anyway.
On top of magically knowing how to hit up accounting and architecture firms for cheap or free computers and instinctively understanding all the specific technical and scientific jargon in the research papers he wants these kids to look up, the writer has also been able to carry along his free time and stable living situation when he Quantum Leaped into their bodies, which I'm pretty sure goes against the rules of the show.
Does the house have to do a good deed before it can leap, too?
People in a different economic class aren't just basically you, in a different zip code, with crappier stuff. "Imagine all the stuff I have is smaller and crappier and I live in a bad neighborhood" isn't going to cut it.
Having less money doesn't just mean they can't buy a computer; sometimes it means they don't have time to use any computer because they are working or running the household every non-school hour. And less money doesn't just mean a smaller house; sometimes it means getting evicted every few months because you don't have enough money to really rent anything. Good luck keeping your ISP when you can't even keep your apartment.
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"Have you tried browsing Google Scholar?"
Instead of learning two or three facts about people in a different situation and trying to fill in the rest by picturing ourselves if those two or three facts were true about us, you get a lot further much faster by just putting yourself away for a bit and maybe asking, or reading about, what a typical day for the other person is like.
If you really want to know what it's like for someone else, you have to be able to picture them in their shoes. Not you.
I am writing based upon vague, possibly erroneous information, but wasn't there a huge raucous about Obama not having a birth certificate, and refusing to show it, at one point?
ReplyAnd now, years later, we have a certificate, and that's that? Well, how long does it take to forge one, really?
I'm not saying he did, or that he ever did anything intentionally wrong or disingenuous at all (other than the dozens of lies in his campaign) but if there WAS a big deal made about him refusing to show his birth certificate, isn't that SIGNIFICANT, whether or not he now has a publicly available one?
That is, if I beat up a guy, and then three years later, the guy shows no signs of being beaten, does that mean I never beat him?
I sense that this is the kind of attitude we have toward on.
Yet, if he ALWAYS had a publicly available birth certificate, and the raucous made about it was unjustified, then my entire post is pointless.
Someone enlighten me.
There was no time where Obama refused to show his birth certificate. The lag time between request and presentation was days not years. I love that people make a deal out of it. I do wonder if he were white if any of this crap would have happened. Probably not. Even if he'd had a foreign born father (say, Sweden) and similar circumstances, I highly doubt this issue would have ever been raised, Something else to discredit him would. It always is. Clinton is accused of having murdered all his rivals by similarly misinformed people. I just find this one definitely has some racist flavour,
This article explains a bit of the dumbfucks I have encountered.
Reply"Virgins taste terrible"
ReplyYou just haven't had them cooked the right way.
What! All of my enemies are one dimensional haters, and understanding them on a more than superficial level (they're evil haters) would mean giving into them.
ReplyMy enemies are cartoonish alien robots that disguise themelves as people, and are all voiced by Frank Welker.
I dont do any of these things...
ReplyYes you do! Out of my way, creamtangerines, you are another 1D character in "Toad004's Life: the movie!"
Its coincidental that you wrote this article because in the past year I was trying to overcome my petty road rage as I knew it didnt help myself nor others on the road, my road rage was average not severe! So I started thinking what caused them to swerve in front of me or speed up and pass me, etc...By realizing that they were probably in a rush or they werent paying attention on the road as I do myself it made my anger fade and now I only get a little angry when they endanger my life!
ReplyThat guy who wrote the article could also be criticized for reason 5 "We think we can predict the future". He talks about what he would and wouldn't do if he were a poor black kid (in the future). He's not talking about having been a black kid (because he hasn't), so he's stuck trying to predict the future, and he goes ahead and does it with gusto.
ReplyIt's very difficult for people to predict how their ego, superego, and id are going to use their emotions and logic to come up with a behavior even when the circumstances are common and familiar. It's why people will complain about cell phone use by drivers one day and answer their phone in the car the next. Do I even need to write this sentence about how much more difficult it is to predict our actions when our circumstances are uncommon and unfamiliar?
and also self-deception everywhere D:
ReplyI always wanted to write an article like this, but I could never put it into a "4" or "5 reasons for...." type of format. I'm glad this exists.
ReplyIn a popular anime show called Naruto Shippudden, there was a story arc (long story short) where the main character was angry at the villain for destroying his village and killing his loved ones. But instead of killing him, he decided to put it all aside, and try to understand his intentions.
Despite killing the people closest to him, the main character decided to understand WHY the villain was doing what he was doing. He didn't threaten to kill him, he didn't discuss it with him through a phone or text, he sat right in front of him, face to face, and made the villain explain his entire situation and how he came to be. And funnily enough, just like some of the examples used in this article, after the main character understood the villain's intentions, he was able to convince him that there was an alternative way to reach his goal, without the death of the innocent.
This may sound very simple and done before over and over again, but it has never been done before to the extent that was discussed in this episode. It was one of the most mature and educational episodes I've ever seen. They showed the importance of understanding human emotions and intentions.
good article trying to understand each other between humans is hard but if humans don,t try who else could?so why don,t you all try to understand their motives maybe? because understanding is not evil
ReplyChristina, tell me about your cats. Not only would I like to know about their adorable mannerisms, but also how they may influence your view of the world around you.
ReplyPerhaps I could treat you to an elegant dinner in a posh restaurant of your choosing to enjoy this conversation?
Just thought I'd ask.
What kind of one-dimensional world do you live in that you would think is how people think? Maybe there are a few, but the rest of us have brains and are smart enough to think beyond the surface hype.
ReplyI very much doubt that there are only "a few" who think that way!
Purplefeen, I think you should step back and start trying to understand how other people think, instead of only considering your own opinions and perspectives.
"Awful, well-meaning article" in #2? That particular white middle-aged author is just really skilled at creating outrageous articles (and especially headlines" to get clicks. He's basically a troll masquerading as a journalist.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAnyway I normally C.H. articles but this one, not at all.
I think you accidentally a word at the end.
Darkona, I see what you did there ^^
This is hilarious, this pretty much proves Christina right.
Insightful article. I really appreciated the neutrality of it. Generally, when I hear people make a point similar to these, they're violating their own point while the make it. They'll call some Republican a racist homophobe, and preach "why don't they understand that you can't stereotype people"... then they say, But I guess Republicans are like that. But this article seems to care about truth. Nice. Thank you Christina H.
ReplyActually I worship Satan because the Old Testament God is an a*****e and anyone who wants to depose a God like that is fine by me.
ReplyYeah, but the Old Testament Satan is actually on God's side - he appears in Job and Ezekial as 'ha Shaitan', the accusing angel, and he's pretty much heaven's DA. It's only when Christianity needed a reason for Jesus' death that they came up with original sin and the devil, and he went from being a bit-player to a generic villain.
You know...I'm pretty sure every adult knows that when people do something, they have a reason to do it, even if it's something wrong.
ReplyYeah, I think Christina might be falling into her own trap by assuming people think other people are cartoon villains. In fact, I'd say that even those of us who act with the good of others in mind on occasion are doing so in the belief that what's good for society is good for us. That's why I act in socially responsible ways, at least. From my perspective, selfish people are just foolishly and destructively using an inefficient means to achieve their interests. Sure, sometimes being a dick works for a while, but it's rare and still usually ends badly.
You two have clearly not met my family....
Christina, I've always tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. Then you called Canada a second-rate country. I get it was supposed to be a joke, but that's not your strong suit and it came off plain insulting. You couldn't say France at least? Sorry, you've lost my support.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesSo wait, you're going to have a crybaby bitchfit over someone calling Canada a second rate country, and then you suggest calling France a second rate country? A bit hypocritical no?
No bitchfit, just opinion. Jokes against Canada are common as any other, but they should at least be done well. Like you know, a joke. It was cheap and had no substance, just a random insult. If she had to jab at a country, how about one that isn't so closely allied with her own? France is not second-rate either, but at least it won't have anywhere near the number of readers.
See, this is why Americans make fun if Canadians. Because you're all whiny pansies who get butt-hurt by casual jokes.
See what I did there? I emphasized both the theme of the article and your misguided attempt to defend your country against a very minor slander by tkaing the slander to another level and generalizing a whole nation based on a single person's single act. Because I'm awesome, and not Canadian.
Wow, more stupid f*****g Americans who cant read. He said he doesnt care about jokes against Canada. She resorted to random insults for laughs. Which apparently works on the small minded. Im not even Canadian and I know what hes talking about. I stopped 'supporting' her a long time ago because of her desparate attempts to recycle cliches. Read a f*****g book, yanks.
"Americans are uneducated, lazy, and fat. Look how original I am!" - BriliantStar
By the way, your name is spelled wrong.
Spoiler: This article is boring, trite and patronizing.
ReplyThis article is insightful, and sheds light on a way of thinking that all people should give far more consideration.
Hey, put yourself in his (her?) shoes. Maybe he (she?) is PMS'ing (PMS'ing?).
Wonderful, wonderful article. A little lacking in the humor, but it was well-worth the read just for the insightful, truthful comments. I can't tell you how many times I see people doing these things, and just wish they were more self-actualized and realized how irrational they're being. The worst part, really, is that the people who are most motivated by fear are the one's most likely to spread their point of view, creating more fear...
ReplyThis one was a miss for me. There are plenty of sociopaths who do bad things just for kicks. And knowing someone's worldview is based on bigotry or homphobia doesn't really tell you anything more than just blaming it on hate.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWe've been examining specific individuals in previous comments, and haven't really found one real-world example yet.
As for bigotry and hate ... a lot of that is actually based on fear. Mexicans are proven to be intelligent, adaptive, and hard-working. So a desire to see less of them in this country doesn't come from some perceived inferiority they exhibit as a race, it comes from a fear that as they gain more from their labors, there are less for others to enjoy.
But what about the Joker?
I'll repeat it for your benefit. Skip this, folks who've been following the comments.
First, let's be clear... the Joker is a fictional character. So even if he qualified, he wouldn't be real. But.. ok.
The Joker spent several minutes explaining everything to Harvey Dent. This world is predicated upon a lie. That lie is the idea that we are all decent people who are worth trusting, that we are safe among strangers. He felt that a poke in the right place, a word in the right ear, would expose the world for what it really was. He believed that a larger truth was concealed behind this lie we all participate in, and that was his motivation for chaos. He didn't care about the outcome, he just wanted people to quit with the bullshit and start being real with one another. That's not evil for evil's sake... that's a higher calling to truth.