Compassionate Critical Thinking and the Adventure of Teaching

For most of my childhood, my family lived in a house in Queens, New York, which is a suburb of NYC on Long Island. There was still a feel, where I lived, not just of suburbs but of the declining remains of a rural area. There were many trees. We were one block away from a huge golf course, with a lake and hills, where I ran with my dog, played football with my friends, and went sledding in the snow. It was quite a privileged and protected life.

 

I used to write all sorts of stories for myself. One fall, at the age of 6 or 7, I borrowed a little wagon from a neighbor. I invited 2 or 3 friends or relatives to hop on the wagon and took them on a guided adventure through my backyard. The adventure was partly a story I invented and narrated, partly theatre, partly a miniature midway ride. I had such a good time, I repeated it until there were no more customers and winter closed down the midway.

 

While my love of writing started in my early childhood, until recently, I thought of it only in terms of fiction. As I got older, I realized the motivation behind my writing was not just to entertain, but also to feel inspired. I loved the heady joy of pulling ideas, images, and feelings together. It was so alive. I felt that I had something worthwhile and meaningful to say and to give. In other words, creative writing had the power to teach. The only thing I was unsure of was whether teaching had the power of creation.

 

And I discovered that it did.  After college, I joined the Peace Corps, in Sierra Leone. As a teacher, I felt respect from my students. What I was doing mattered to them. So I wanted to do it even more when I returned to this country. I found this again in other teaching jobs, most notably at the Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca, NY. Part of my childhood desire was met. Now that my book, Compassionate Critical Thinking: How Mindfulness, Creativity, Empathy and Socratic Questioning Can Transform Teaching, is being published by Rowman & Littlefield, the other half of my yearning is about to come true. It is not a novel, but certainly describes a creative approach to teaching.

 

When you teach, you hold the hearts and minds of students in your hands. You have this amazing opportunity that you just can’t ignore and dread disappointing. You can take students on the greatest adventure imaginable—into the depths of their own minds and hearts. You can show them that there are these depths unrecognized in many schools, or maybe unrecognized since they were small and inspired children. You can show them how valuable and important they are. Show them the joy of play in PE, the miracles of nature in science, the creative spirit in literature, and in social studies classes, show the great diversity of possible ways of living and the importance of relationships, .

 

My book describes and illustrates methods to use in teaching as well as an overall conceptual framework for understanding the way the mind and heart can work together— to take in more of what’s around you and think more clearly and critically. Critical thinking is fueled by caring and feeling, and guided by mindful awareness to focus attention, and notice, formulate, and ask questions. Compassion and imagination help you understand and explore diverse perspectives and let go of distorting judgments.

 

When you quiet the mind by accepting, caring for and valuing it, you hear the world more distinctly. You hear what your own body is saying and how to befriend your emotions. The world is not at a distance but at your fingertips, or is your fingertips. What you think is right to do is evaluated more clearly. You feel more joyful, your life more meaningful, your relationships with others more conscious and honest. Now that is a worthwhile adventure to undertake—that is a way of teaching.

 

*The release date for my book was delayed a few days, but the book launch in Ithaca, at LACS, on Thursday, October 13, at 7:00, will go on as planned–I hope. There will also be a book talk on Saturday, October 22, at Buffalo Street Books, at 3:00 pm. I hope you can come.

A Story of Different Perspectives

In 1969, after graduating from college, I served in the Peace Corps in a rural village in Sierra Leone. I taught English and sometimes math or health. Sierra Leone is on the equator. Much of it is, or was, deeply forested jungle. One day, the headmaster and I were walking together to visit a village deep in the bush. It was near the beginning of the rainy season, so I carried my umbrella with me.

 

As we walked, the headmaster and I got into one of our usual discussions. They were more like debates, and I don’t think I ever won. He often had a twist to his reasoning that put his point of view into a league of experience beyond my own. He was older than me, although I never knew his age. I would guess at forty.

 

As we exited from the tall thick trees of the bush into a clearing, it started raining. We had been debating whether change was possible. Back then, talking about political change in Sierra Leone could be dangerous. People could be imprisoned for what they said. I argued that change was necessary. He argued that change was impossible. I thought he was referring to the fact that corruption was considered a normal way of doing business in his country and so corruption was the only reality. To my mind, change was not only a reality but a necessity because the political and economic conditions in his country were undermining the quality of people’s lives. As the rain increased, I opened the umbrella, held it over our heads, and said: “I changed the situation. We are no longer getting wet.” “No, you changed nothing,” he replied. “It’s still raining.”

 

He taught me a great deal in those months that I knew him. Clearly, our points of reference, our very notions of ourselves were different. He identified more with the natural world around him than I did. For him, changing my position in relation to the rain was no different from changing the position of a raindrop. So, no change occurred. Raining was the world being the world.

 

Both of our perspectives had value. His pushed mine to a new place. By allowing myself to take in his perspective, I was able to learn from him, and think about identity and change in a new way. I learned a valuable lesson about how to think with a deeper and wider perspective. I think such a perspective is an important element of thinking critically, but goes beyond such thinking.

 

A Zen Master from the 13th Century Japan, named Daito Kokuji, wrote:

            No umbrella, getting soaked,

            I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat.

I don’t think I fully understand or can put into words exactly what this means, but I feel the rightness of it. Instead of huddling to get away from the rain, the cold and the miserable feeling of being soaked, I can allow myself to feel the cold and the raindrops as me, too. And then I am no longer a skin wrapped soaking package. I am something much more.

 

In the same way, we all can feel our self-judgments, our pains, as something to learn from and let go, as a raincoat, not our identity.

 

An Education in Human Development and Aging

I think all of us, certainly all secondary school children, need to learn about the psychology of human development and aging. Schools are largely islands of youth and as such are highly artificial and developmentally problematical. Children need to be around people of various ages, who can serve as models and provide care and support. Children do need to learn from other children. But it is easy for them, especially when largely isolated from other age groups, to over-value the example of their peers, the example of youth, and of what is new and popular. In the 1960s, I remember the talk about not trusting anyone over thirty. As a sixteen to twenty year old, I couldn’t imagine being thirty, let alone sixty. Sixty was a time of frailty that I would never get to. I am now sixty-eight and am constantly astonished that I am not anything like I once imagined a person of sixty-plus years to be like.

 

Another consequence of the isolation of youth with their peers is a fear of aging. It is easy to fear or distort what you hide away. A study of human development can show students there are many phases of human life and all of them are valuable and have their own rewards.

 

I remember a discussion in a psychological literature class. I commented to the class that our society needs to value the elderly more, instead of hide them away in institutions. Students asked why should the elderly be valued? Getting older, they said, does not guarantee wisdom, or even intelligence, so why honor them in any way? In reply, I told a story. When I was in the Peace Corps, living in a small village in Sierra Leone, I once went to visit the home of an older man, a weaver of beautiful blankets. He was thin and his hair was grey. He had gaps between his teeth which meant it was sometimes difficult (for me) to understand what he said. His eyes were alive. When his family sat down to eat, he was the first person to be served. Why was he served first? Because he was the elder. He was highly valued by his family and village. He had the most to teach and taught by his mere presence that each phase of life had meaning.

 

What happens if we de-value the elderly? Since we all age, what does that de-valuing do to how we think of ourselves? To devalue aging, we devalue ourselves. As our lives go on, we become less and less important. If youth is the prime of life, then most of life is involved with regretting what was lost. Fear of death and the unknown is multiplied by fear of aging and fear of losing who we are. By valuing the old weaver, I said to my class, everyone in the village felt valued. As they aged, their core of selfhood grew ever larger.

 

Another purpose for teaching human development to teenagers is to help them realize what young children need, how they change, and thus, how to be parents in the future, and help raise younger siblings now. Many teachers recognize the value of teaching about adolescence. But teens often don’t want to hear about adolescence. They think they know it all too clearly, as they are living it. They might mistake learning about adolescence as the school prescribing what they should be as adolescents. They might all too readily anticipate being judged. However, if you start the unit by talking about infants, how their perceptual system and brain develop, their unique needs, then there is no apparent threat. Students get excited. They are learning about themselves but at a safe distance. Then you can move closer and closer to the psychology of who they are now, what is going on with their brains and bodies, what their unique needs are.

 

And for all of us, to value aging is to value life as a whole, to value human life in all its stages.

 

**Sometime, I hope to write a blog suggesting materials you could use to learn about and teach human development.

Model What You Teach

One of the most important lessons a good teacher teaches, beyond the subject matter, is how to live a moment or a year of moments. On the first day of classes, you teach how to meet new people, how to start an endeavor, how to be open to whatever comes. On the last day of classes, you model how to end something, how to say goodbye. You model how to face freaky spring weather in winter and winter weather in the spring. How to face a test, sickness or other challenge. To share insights, listen to the insights of others, think deeply about questions raised, and fears and joys expressed. How to face evil with insight, and violence with calm clarity. And how to celebrate what you value and value what you celebrate.

 

In this way you model the most important lessons one person can give to another. You create a community. You state with your very life that a loving, caring community is possible and, thusly, create the seeds for a more loving and sustainable future. You think of teaching not as a job, not even an avocation, but just what you are doing now with your life. You think of each moment as an opportunity to learn, to expand your sense of self, to see others in you and you in others. All of us in this world that we share need this sort of gift. This is what I hope to celebrate and wish for all of us this season.

 

My first teaching assignment was in the Peace Corps, in a small village in the bush in Sierra Leone. One day, my classroom was invaded by a swarm of bees. They settled in my book cabinet. I imagine as I think back on it that they were “killer bees” but I don’t know if that was true or not. To get rid of the bees, I got out insect spray that I had somehow acquired and gathered my students, in a line, outside the classroom door. Each was armed with a bucket of water to throw on the bees, and me, in case they chased me from the room. I put on a raincoat, hat, pants and boots. I entered the classroom, sprayed the cabinet—and the bees flew out in a swarm from the room. A seeming miracle. The students and I celebrated.

 

The next day, my neighbor, the paramount chief (one of five powerful traditional tribal chiefs in the country) came to see me. The whole village was of the Mende tribe. His chief wife, one of five, was a tall, majestic woman. She seemed to like making a fool of me. She only spoke deep Mende, the language of the bush, not the more modern version I spoke, and not Krio, a hybrid language of English, Portuguese, and Sierra Leonean languages; she certainly did not speak English. Whenever I tried to speak with her in new Mende, she always corrected me in old Mende. Anyway, she was in trouble. She had heard about how I had chased the bees from my classroom. Another swarm had invaded the hut where the chief’s beer and food was stored. The maintenance of food and beer was her responsibility, so she tried to duplicate my miracle and somehow chase out the bees without using the spray or protective clothing. It didn’t work. She had twenty to thirty stings and was possibly in shock. The chief said I had to give him whatever medicines I had to cure her. There was a shaman living near the the village, but no medical doctor within hours. The Peace Corps provided all its volunteers with a large first aid and medicine kit. I gave him skin cream for bites, aspirin—I did what I could, fearing that neither my knowledge nor medicine would be of much help.

 

Three or four days later, while I was resting on my porch in my hammock, I heard the voices of several people. I lived in the Paramount chief’s rest house which was set back maybe a hundred feet from the road. The group stopped at the path leading to the house and one person, a woman, left the group on her own and was walking toward me. I got up to meet her. It was the chief’s first wife. Obviously, she had recovered quickly. I don’t know if what I gave the Chief cured her, or whether it was her belief in the power of the medications, or what. She walked up to me. Now remember, no one had heard her speak any language but deep Mende in years, maybe forever. Yet when she stopped and looked in my eyes, she thanked me, in English. Good English. I started crying. And laughing. Then came a celebration. After that, she no longer made fun of me. In fact, when I got extremely sick a few months later, she helped me get to a doctor.

 

The world is a miraculous place, if only we can make it so.

 

 

**The Good Men Project is a great site to check out. They also published a blog of mine today, on the relationship of all humans.

Presence

My cats Milo and Tara often wander the world with me. If I sit at my computer, they sleep nearby. If I go outside, they follow me. They seem to like simply being in my presence. I sometimes feel a very silly sort of happiness seeing them sleeping by my feet. This happiness doesn’t just happen with cats, although the people I know luckily don’t follow me around or sleep at my feet. I love simply being with my wife, family and close friends. When I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, I lived in a big house by myself in a relatively small village in the bush. When I first arrived, there were no other Peace Corps people or friends within miles. A few of the villagers liked to come and sit with me. If I talked with them, they would often leave. When asked why they came, the response was that they didn’t want me to feel lonely. Talk was unnecessary, even an obstacle. What is it about presence that is so satisfying?

 

What is presence? It is certainly not well defined. Is it about feeling safe? My cats feel safe with me, I hope. I certainly feel safe with them—and certainly with my friends and wife. I can relax and open up. There is little or no need for pretense. Presence is an absence of pretense, a type of mirroring back. One party opens, trusts and the other feels it and gives it back. One hears, sees, feels and is in turn heard, seen, felt.

 

Presence is not just being in the same space with someone, and not just with other beings. It can be on one’s own or with any place, object or situation. Recently, there was an opinion piece about presence in the NY Times called, “Being There: Heidegger on Why Our Presence Matters.” The author, Lawrence Berger, said many cognitive scientists argue that, “We are information processors rather than full-bodied human beings.” For these cognitive scientists, human beings don’t experience anything “outside” us, like another person or a tree, directly but only some sort of “internal” representation of it created by our senses and brain. We supposedly respond not directly to the tree or person but the representation. We are, in principle, locked away from the world. What is ultimately real are the physical and physiological processes, synapses, neurons, myelin sheaths, not presence. But on other “levels,” we can speak of electrons jumping around, or on another there are chemical interactions, etc.. So, isn’t each person a universe of multiple perspectives? Aren’t each of these perspectives equally about what’s “real”? And isn’t one of these perspectives, and an important one, the sense of a face lighting up in your presence?

 

One neuroscientist mentioned by Berger said that conscious awareness is “a cartoonish reconstruction of attention that is as physically inaccurate as the brain’s internal model of color.” These cognitive scientists remind me of different, older theories which “reduce” consciousness to something mechanical, physical and measurable. For example, the behaviorists of the early twentieth century argued that consciousness could not be studied and was irrelevant to explaining human behavior. It had no causal significance. Human behavior, they theorized, is conditioned, basically “programmable,” like machines. This position led to some important discoveries but also abuses.

 

The cognitive scientists focus on the mechanisms of what happens in the body when we attend. For Heidegger, a 20th Century phenomenologist philosopher, attention is not just selecting what in the world we take in, but what becomes present to us, or what takes on life, being. The “beingness,” or the mere sense of aliveness becomes primary. Attention is not just selecting what we pay attention to and with what strength or intensity, but the quality or the “feel of” that attention. So, if this is true, isn’t presence crucial for constructing meaning, understanding, and clear thinking?

 

Berger said, “When we feel that someone is really listening to us, we feel more alive, we feel our true selves coming to the surface — this is the sense in which worldly presence matters.” Presence is a recognition of our subjective experience as an event in the world, not separate from it. It is not just internal physical mechanisms or processes which have an effect. The quality of our awareness, our presence has an effect on the world.

 

And for scientists to say that conscious experience has no causal relationship to our behavior, or is merely a representation separate from a reality it simplifies and depicts, is untenable. To date, there is no clear or definitive understanding of consciousness from either science or philosophy. Anyone can theorize or have an opinion, of course, but must recognize the tentativeness of their position.

 

In my high school classes, I sometimes asked students: What are the implications of these different theories of consciousness on how you act or feel about yourself? If humans are totally programmable, would it be ethical or humane to hurtfully experiment on them and then just wipe away the memories of pain? What happens to how you treat other people when you conceive of them as machines, even computers? Which understanding of your own mind would best enable you to do school work—one which conceived mind as a cartoon, or one which thought of mind, consciousness as powerful?

 

And, you are never separate from the physical universe. If what you experience are representations you construct or cartoons you draw or theorize, this is an event inseparable from the universe that you construct. Thus, when “I” see “my” cat Tara, the perception is inseparable from me, Tara is inseparable from me. I and cat, (I-Thou) arise together. The theory by which I explain the universe is a metaphor I use to view and act in that universe. Thus, shouldn’t the effects on behavior of the theories you use be considered as part of the evidence by which a theory is evaluated?

 

If you’re a teacher, you must do the physical things, like prepare, bring in supplies, give clear directions and ask meaningful questions (and eat a good breakfast). But, as Berger said, you must also remember your “worldly presence matters.” For the student, the aliveness of the teacher, the caring, the “being heard,” the feeling that your is life mirrored, held and valued by the other—these matter. You model and teach presence and how to make theoretical questions “present’ or alive to your students. And when you do so, the mere act of listening with your whole being means you are heard, you matter. You give, you receive. This, I believe, is clear.

 

 

**The photo is of the Bosporus Strait in Istanbul, Turkey.

Taking A New Perspective

I served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in 1969, teaching English and sometimes math or health, in a rural village. Sierra Leone is on the equator. Much of it is, or was, deeply forested jungle. One day, the headmaster and I were walking together to visit a village deep in the bush. It was near the beginning of the rainy season, so I carried my umbrella with me.

 

As we walked, the headmaster and I got into one of our usual discussions that were more like debates, and I don’t think I ever won. He often had a twist to his reasoning that put his point of view into a league of experience beyond my own. He was older than me, although I never knew his age. I would guess at forty. At possibly forty, he was already a few years older than the average male from his country.

 

As we exited from the tall thick trees of the bush into a clearing, it started raining. We had been debating whether change was possible. Back then, talking about political change in Sierra Leone could be dangerous. People could be imprisoned for what they said. I argued that change was necessary. He argued that change was impossible. I thought he was referring to the fact that corruption was considered a normal way of doing business and so corruption was the only reality. To my mind, change was not only a constant reality but a necessity. As the rain increased, I opened the umbrella, held it over our heads, and said: “I changed the situation. We are no longer getting wet.” “No, you changed nothing,” he replied. “It’s still raining.”

 

He taught me a great deal in those months that I knew him. Clearly, our points of reference, our very notions of ourselves were different. He identified more with the natural world around him than I did. For him, changing my position in relation to the rain was no different than changing the position of a raindrop. So, no substantive change occurred. Raining was the world being the world.

 

By taking in his perspective, I was able to learn from him, and think about identity and change in a new way. This openness to and empathy for totally new perspectives is important in thinking critically, but goes beyond such thinking. A Zen Master from 13th Century Japan, Daito Kokuji, wrote: “No umbrella, getting soaked,/I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat.”

 

 

Maybe there’s a kinship between the headmaster and the Zen master. What experiences have you had where your perspective was suddenly turned on its head?

Why Teach?

Why become a teacher? After high school, I told myself I would never teach in a public school. I wanted to be a writer or do something else that was creative. In my senior year of college, I wrote a poem about poetry. In writing it I realized that what I loved about writing was the feeling of being inspired. I loved pushing myself to pull ideas and images together. It was alive. I felt that I had something worthwhile and meaningful to say. In other words, poetry had the power to teach. The only thing I was unsure of was whether teaching had the power of poetry.

 

And I discovered that it did. A good lesson can have the intensity and artistry of a poem. And when teaching with the Peace Corps, I felt respect from my students. What I was doing mattered to them. So I wanted to do it even more when I returned to this country.

 

In today’s world, the question is not only why become a teacher but, if you are a teacher, why stay one. Because teaching in some ways is more difficult now than it was thirty years ago. Class sizes are bigger, there are fewer support staff, and the profession is more maligned and more strictly judged. If anyone purposely wanted to undermine the teaching profession and public schooling, they could learn a great deal from the present situation.

 

So, considering all these factors, why teach? Because it is one of the most meaningful things you can do. After a day of teaching is over, you don’t have to find other ways to make the world a better place; you do it daily. Of course, this can be as true with other professions as well. Focusing on helping others is very different from focusing on how much money you can earn or how you can stand out or look better than other people. It changes how you view your own life. Standing out is isolating, helping is connecting. With the former, you feel bad if you aren’t at or near the top. With the latter, you can feel good about what you do no matter what.

 

When you walk down the street, you might meet up with an old student who remembers how you inspired him or her. I remember meeting a former student who I thought hated me because I held him accountable for some unacceptable behavior. Fifteen years later he thanked me. He is now a teacher. In any crowd, someone might be there who appreciates what you did for them. So on those days when you forget how important teaching is, or you get depressed because a student dropped out of school or because of some newscast you heard, or you feel overwhelmed by the difficulties many of your students face, you can remember the student who, 15 years later, thanked you for how you changed his life. Or you remember the former student who told you she was the first child in her family to graduate from college and the only reason she was able to do so was the trust and self-belief that you taught her. Now that’s a worthwhile way to live.

 

*The mural is of teachers from the Alternative Community School painted by a few students.

Freedom Of Mind

In 1969, after being in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone for about four months, I was unsure if I was doing the right thing. I felt a personal sense of isolation. The culture was so different from what I had previously known. And I was only 22. I wasn’t sure that I knew enough to teach anything useful to my students. I took a trip one weekend to visit a colleague. There was no public transportation. To get anywhere, you hitchhiked or flagged down a lorry. I was at a crossroads and a man came to speak with me. After greeting each other, he asked where I was from. I told him. He asked how long I planned to be in Sierra Leone. I said that I wasn’t sure. I admitted that I felt like leaving. He said: “You can’t leave yet. You taught us how to eat with spoons. You can’t leave until you teach us how to make them.”

 

This story is very similar to a quote, of disputed origin, which is popular now but I didn’t know back then. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Instead of doing something for someone, teach him how to do it himself. The quote has also been interpreted in other ways, for example, as speaking about the value of teaching technological or employable skills. However, I think it is primarily about independence of mind. Knowing how to make the spoons you use frees you from dependence on other manufacturers. Knowing how to make your own choices frees you from mental dependence. It is mental freedom that is most important.

 

Learning a skill, like fixing cars or repairing computers or writing stories can be glorious. Career readiness is important. Many people think, as reflected in the Common Core, that the first priority of schools should be college and/or career readiness. However, without an equal concern with state of mind and social skills, this emphasis can teach students to focus in the wrong place, on some idea of the future instead of on what they are doing right now. Students can feel that being in school is not real living, and thus distance themselves from their own education and actions. If now isn’t real life, why care about consequences? And without the understanding that each moment is both real and important, students might feel that “real life” might never arrive. Learning is a moment-by-moment process, which is obstructed when the future, the imagined product, is valued over the process.

 

So, what exactly does freedom of mind mean to you? To me, it means having this broader perspective. ‘Freedom’ is the opposite of being controlled by someone else’s interests. It is the opposite of being restricted, stuck, bound or feeling lacking in some way, unless those bounds are mindfully self-imposed in order to accomplish some important goal, for example.  It means you think and act readily and fluidly. You rule yourself. To rule yourself, you need to know your own mind. To know your own mind you need to know how to think clearly and ask appropriate questions. It means understanding and being aware of your emotions and thoughts, so you know when your thinking and perception is distorted and how to let go of that distortion. It means that you can understand and thus better deal with the difficulties that arise in life. It means understanding how you create a sense of happiness and satisfaction. You can have all the academic and job skills most schools teach; yet, what does it matter if you never feel good about or satisfied with your life?

 

To rule yourself also means that you are free even from your idea of freedom. It’s not the idea that you want but what lies underneath it. An idea is not the same as nor as deep or complex as the reality it tries to describe. As I said in an earlier blog, your description of the taste of an orange is never as delicious as actually tasting an orange. The underlying reality is your ability to know, taste, change, and feel. It is the fact that you are never isolated from the world no matter how isolated you may feel.

 

Ruling yourself requires that you are attentive to how you influence others and they influence you. This requires empathy and the ability to hear other people’s viewpoints. So, when you find yourself holding so tightly to an idea or concept that your very identity or sense of security is dependent on it, focus instead on your awareness of what you are doing and with whom you are doing it. Realize that freedom of mind is the ability to perceive clearly and act fluidly, adaptively, in a harmonious relationship between your own mind and heart and that of others and the world.

 

When you combine the limited job situation in the U. S., the debt many college students accrue in order to get a diploma, and the habit of focusing on the future over the present, it is easy to understand why graduates can be filled with fear and anxiety once that future arrives. College graduates having difficulty finding a satisfying, well-paying job might easily feel something is lacking in them, their options greatly limited, or their lives held hostage by debt, afraid to speak out and take chances. A life aimed mostly at an imagined future only teaches you to live an idea, not a reality, and so misses the point of education–to learn how to live a good life, contributing to the reduction of suffering in the world. When you understand your mind, you realize there is nothing lacking in you. Only an education that fosters this understanding of mind is truly an education in freedom. And this needs to be made a central focus of schools and the Common Core.

 

 

*The photo is from Maui.

Learning From Different Viewpoints

Recently, I had a startling experience. I got into an intellectual argument with two acquaintances over the Affordable Care Act. What startled me was the fact that these two seemingly reasonable people were saying things that were, in my estimation, totally unreasonable. Yet, they had a great many facts to back them up, or what they thought were facts. They had more facts then I did. They also had more conviction, so much conviction that I couldn’t even begin to get across my viewpoint. I tried to listen to them. They took my listening as an opportunity to repeat their view again and again. Anything positive I had to say about the ACA was, in their view, not just inaccurate but an abomination. They picked out as important very different aspects of the question than I did. We were looking at totally different realities.

 

After the incident was over, I felt bad. I had failed to convert them. Even more, our previous peaceful coexistence was, at least temporarily, ended. I was unsure what would happen when we next met. Then I realized I had learned a great deal from these two men. I realized I did not know as much as I thought. I realized how difficult it is to actually think from another person’s viewpoint. And I was reminded of how holding tightly onto an intellectual position can distort the situation you are involved in.

 

The possibility of such disagreements occurring is enhanced by the fact that many of us listen exclusively to people we agree with. One of the men in the discussion about the ACA said he researched the act with three different sources, but all the sources he cited were from the same political perspective. It can be difficult, unsettling, even threatening to be in the same room with people who you know have viewpoints, political ideologies or religions different from your own. The loud voices often used in political speech, for example, can easily remind you just how threatened people can feel from hearing differing viewpoints.

 

In the early 1970s, I often hitched rides. This gave me the opportunity to learn valuable lessons about talking with people who held viewpoints very different from my own. On one occasion, I was hitching to California from Arizona and was picked up by a marine who had recently returned from Vietnam. I was recently returned from the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. He was very upset about how anti-war protesters spoke about soldiers. I had the long hair of a protester. Somehow, he started talking about the snakes and insects he had encountered. Maybe he was trying to scare me or gross me out.  However, Sierra Leone has an abundance of wildlife. After dueling with scary stories, we particularly bonded over our experiences with black mamba and other snakes.

 

So, how do you deal with different perspectives? Be aware that when you take on an intellectual viewpoint, it’s easy to think your viewpoint is the “right” one. You might think your position is privileged, outside or above it all and you are looking down on your “opponents.” You might think you know something that they don’t and if only they knew what you knew, they would repent. In Aristotelian logic, something is either true or false. It can’t be both. So, if this “other” view is correct, that means your view is incorrect. And most people I know don’t like being “wrong” or being looked down upon.

 

Start by mindfully noticing your thoughts and the story you are creating in your mind. Realize that as you are thinking of your “opponent,” she or he is thinking of you. Your viewpoint of this person, or of whatever question you are discussing, no matter how deep, can never encompass the reality of the person or question. Our description of the taste of an orange is never as delicious as actually tasting the orange. However, when you talk honestly with others about the reality of your life, often a connection is made. But, if you use buzz words with deep emotional and intellectual connotations, you can lose both the sense of yourself and the others you are with. When you hold your viewpoints with some lightness or humor, this leaves more room for others to enter.

 

These differences can also show up in a classroom. Students can seem to teachers to be “intransigent” or just “not getting it” when in reality they are simply disagreeing with something we said or the way that we said it. Teachers can seem, to students, to be judging them, imposing a viewpoint or value on them.  Of course, with students, teachers can have agreements about how to examine and analyze evidence, derive conclusions, and what constitutes a sound argument—something that is more difficult to pull off in the world outside the classroom. We can teach students that the most valuable lesson to learn in a class is how to learn, understand, and change. In that way, when they face a viewpoint that is different from their own, they take it as an opportunity to learn, not a threat.

 

So, when you run into perceived opposition, take a breath. Notice what you’re feeling. Breathe in the sense that this is another person you are speaking with. You are speaking with a person, not an idea. Feel the fact that the person is feeling something just like you; you feel you have the correct view, she might feel the same. Maybe he is feeling scared or defensive. As you breathe out relax, look at the other person, and only then begin to speak. Hopefully, you and the other person will then meet.