Adversarial or Empathetic: Our Presuppositions Impact Our Dialogue Outcomes

An excellent article from Aeon was forwarded to my inbox this morning about the roots of our toxic public dialogue. The article by Alexander Bevilacqua, edited by Sally Davies, is titled The empathetic humanities have much to teach our adversarial culture.

The article begins with these sentences (highlights in blue.)

1. As anyone on Twitter knows, public culture can be quick to attack, castigate and condemn. 
Too true. Witness the flare-up in response to the recent #Gillette commercial.

2. In search of the moral high ground, we rarely grant each other the benefit of the doubt. 
Unfortunately, too often this is also true.

In her Class Day remarks at Harvard’s 2018 graduation, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addressed the problem of this rush to judgment. In the face of what she called ‘a culture of “calling out”, a culture of outrage’, she asked students to ‘always remember context, and never disregard intent’.

The article is an essential read for our time, for it identifies the root ideas that created our culture of distrust.

One mode of reading, first described in 1965 by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur and known as ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’, aims to uncover the hidden meaning or agenda of a text. Whether inspired by Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche or Sigmund Freud, the reader interprets what happens on the surface as a symptom of something deeper and more dubious, from economic inequality to sexual anxiety. The reader’s task is to reject the face value of a work, and to plumb for a submerged truth.

* * * *

This approach to history results in the erosion of all foundations for determining anything. It's the seed from which ideas like Pizzagate sprang.

A second form of interpretation, known as ‘deconstruction’, was developed in 1967 by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. It aims to identify and reveal a text’s hidden contradictions – ambiguities and even aporias (unthinkable contradictions) that eluded the author.

The problem we have is one of approach with regard to what we read. The speed with which we judge or condemn others in public discourse springs from our lack of charity. The root of this comes from what Bevilacqua calls the ‘adversarial’ humanities?

Our approach, he suggests, should be more like historians. The task of historians is understanding, not judging.

I am reminded here of Dr. Edward de Bono's P.I.N. method of listening to one another in dialogue. Everything has a Positive, Interesting and Negative aspect or features. Instead immediately jumping on the negatives, we detach ourselves emotionally and address ideas rationally.

This AEON article is a MUST READ for anyone desirous to understand the current heated state of Twitter/Reddit social debate and contemporary dialogue.

Near the end he writes, Reading like a historian, then, involves not just a theory of interpretation, but also a moral stance. It is an attempt to treat others generously, and to extend that generosity even to those who can’t be hic et nunc – here and now.

As I see it, the ideas in this piece, if taken to heart could help reduce the tensions of our current polarized culture. At least it's a basis for hope.