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Talking To People
Talking about talking to people today. I usually have three or four journal entries in my mind on a given go, but when I sit down to write one just comes to me. Well, anyway, I´ve been thinking about talking to people. One example that really stands our for me is from when I was a teenager. Stupid and stupider. I believed so much of my cultural programming, stuff I had been taught in school, social issues. Anyway, I was talking to some boys my age and I was parroting what we were supposed to believe and one boy in particular was really adamant that I was wrong. He had a very assertive contrarian position on an issue of importance to this blog and here is the thing: he was RIGHT! I was wrong. What do I do with that?
Well, what I have been wondering for quite a while now is, what could he have said to convince me? I mean he was right, but his tactic, to bash me over the head with the truth, hardly worked. The thing is, I don´t think it´s true that nothing could have worked, something, some approach could have made a crack. But what? Here is what I think:
He shouldn´t have painted me into a corner or made me owner of those beliefs I professed. He should have instead more patiently met me where I was and explained this issue on terms that were relevant to where I was. Instead of getting the thrill of arguing with everyone, he should have started with “I know this is what you are all being taught iu school and television. I am just trying to do and believe the right thing and I have found there are some real negative consequences to this way of thinking being taught.” De-personalising, by this I mean de-ownerising our ideas is so important. If I have come to reverse any positions or closer to any truths, it was´t sudden enlightenment or genius, but because through books or correspondance or lectures I learned things. I think it is far more effective when speaking personally with people about our revisionist ideas of history and what is going on now, to be really sincere and just speak our own stories of discovery plainly. In books and print you can be more strident and assertive, because you are really not in dialogue with the reader. But you can and should try to wake others up in real life too, when appropriate, when they want and initiate talks about politics or history, but you should be humble and patient.
For me, that would mean starting from the beginning and not the end. I make a huge mess of things! No one listens to me ever! They hear that I am a ´conspiracy theorist´ and that is the end. My best strategy is real self-knowledge and criticism. Many of my friends may be smarter than me. They may know some things. ´´Sheeple´ aren´t stupid, but they are sheeple. The best way I can talk about these things is starting from the beginning, how I came to question recent history, and not the end, what they see as la-la land, although my personal views I think are more Realpolitik than the accepted story….hmmm….
I also want to say that we aren´t all enemies. It´s easy to get up on our high horses and shake our heads at true believers in ´the Christian right. Well, actually what we have here are a group of people used to being hated for their views and able to look at life spiritually and morally. Hello, allies! These people started out as anabaptists minding their own business until they were harvested for political involvement by sinister forces. Read the way those forces talk about them. they really talk about delivering harvests from politically virgin territory. Do you know what their´hook´ was and is? Life. They got and get these people on board with a false pro-life stance. The Christian Rights hearts were in the right place, and then they got caught up in something insane, they no longer remember who they are, they just want war and privately owned prisons. Nuts, yes, but we have all been manipulated.
Anyway, I think we should all try to talk to others as best we can, however we can, about what is really going on. Take our egos out of it and let them see our sincerity and honesty. And also remember that we can be and are wrong as we go.
PS- I might be kind of a hypocrite here because I never actually talk to outsiders about this stuff, just to my journal here, and for my own reasons I keep my wacky ideas about history to myself around all of my family. oh well. My husband has more conventional views and i don´t feel like it is my job to instruct him. Also many of you are men and in theory the transmission of truth as an IDEA should be your job. I just type.
2012-08-23 14:54:14
Source: http://lavenderluck.blogspot.com/2012/05/talking-to-people.html
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