It’s not what we say but how?

THIS will convince them to see my side!

Every so often when in a silly mood I’ll post something “meta” on Facebook, like “Generic post oversimplifying a complex issue and branding all the opposition as idiots.” Strangely enough, these tend to be my most popular posts, with numerous people jumping on the bandwagon to post stereotypical responses seen in other online arguments. It seems everyone has experienced online debates that repeatedly fall into tired patterns and pointless repetitions.

The thing is, we’ve probably all been those commentors before. It’s easy to spot those behaviors in others, but not so much in ourselves. But more importantly, such discussions have convinced me that the trouble with our national dialogue is not what we disagree on, but how we disagree. The fact that anyone can reasonably predict how any given online discussion is going to go suggests that we either don’t know how, or don’t want to actually discuss issues in a rational manner. That, or social media is not a very good platform for doing so.

And perhaps most importantly, I’m convinced we’ve forgotten how to listen well. Far too often, as Stephen R. Covey puts it, we aren’t listening to understand, but listening to speak. We’re thinking of what we want to say, and just waiting for the other person to stop talking long enough for us to say it (at least when we’re being polite; I know plenty of people who talk over each other rather than wait). We aren’t reading through the other person’s comments trying to understand their perspective, we’re looking for mistakes we can zing them over. We’re sharpening our knives, looking for just the right spot to stab.

In short, we’re not interested in understanding, building common ground, or actually solving the problem. We’re interested in winning. We want to be able to come away from the discussion thinking, “Heh. I sure showed them! If I can’t change their mind, at least I can make them cry!”

And then we wonder why the world continues to polarize, nothing seems to get done, and problems just continue to pile up.

And yet all it takes is one “meta” post to watch people often on opposite sides of issues all line up together to make fun of how we communicate. It seems one of the few points of common ground is unwittingly making fun of ourselves.