How is there so much disconnect and misunderstanding in a world saturated with various languages and complex forms of communicating? A glimpse at how we interact with understanding felt like the perfect introduction to this newsletter.
A phrase my father used to say to me was “listen, don’t hear me.” As a kid, I couldn’t believe I had a madman for a father who said confusing things like that. As an adult, it is a bit more apparent what he meant when he said that. Our society has a bad habit of hearing but not truly listening. We don’t listen to context, tone, circumstances, language, or perspective. We hear to respond, not to understand. This often renders us incompetent to have serious conversations about things that matter because nuance is thrown out the window with understanding. Here is a short take on the intimacy of understanding and why the death of nuance in society could contribute to the demise of ideas, the progress of justice, compassion, and healthy human connections.
Please note that I use the word intimacy to conceptualise beyond the physical and emotional. In this context, intimacy will be utilised on an intellectual and societal [and perhaps on an epistemological] level.
We lack intimate encounters with understanding, such as understanding ourselves, people, culture, our environment, and wisdom. We lack the kind of understanding needed for a more compassionate, complex, society and environment. The world is falling at our feet due to our collective actions as a species and yet, we fail to comprehend our role in it.
Currently; intimacy is lacklustre in a generation that views it as a weakness or a special element reserved for only a select amount of people or ideas, neglecting wider views and nuance altogether. It doesn’t help that we get stuck in bubbles that confirm our stance on ideas and agendas instead of challenging ourselves with ideas that may not align with ours in order to expand our understanding. All that we find relevant and important are the things we know and understand thus, we build our closeness towards them. What we’ve failed to see is that utilising understanding is a radical and non-conformist act in a climate of herd mentality and empty think pieces. In addition, having productive ideas alone isn’t enough to implement change but being able to comprehend the impact can be a starting point. When we have impact rather than intention as a focal point, it allows change to benefit both sides of the conversation rather than a disillusioned one-sided action that ends up having negative and unproductive impacts. Although intentions may be true, honest, and wholesome, the impact is what matters. Intentions can be lost when the impact isn’t anticipated.
How do we create connections to one another using understanding and compassion to compel change?
Firstly, we can challenge our sense of individuality. Our individualism disillusions us, it encourages us that we are each unique and singular entities apart from others even those in our families, peer groups, or society, rather than complex organisms reliant on other systems, beings, and environments to exist fully. This tends to promote a false sense of objectivity that tells us it is possible to be free of all bias (which we know is not true) and reflects poorly on how we obliviously think or move through spaces. Individualism can render us incapable of productively challenging our sense of self or facing a collective identity that challenges our objectivity.
Secondly, we can exercise more gratitude for honest opinions. I am not encouraging blatantly harmful and dangerous opinions or ideas but encouraging a healthy framework for evaluating opinions to discourage anti-intellectualism. Sometimes we don’t have accurate language for complex expression and that’s okay, we can only try, if not, the death of nuance will depreciate intellectual rigour. Besides, not everything said or done should be viewed as strategic, western society is paradoxically turning hypersensitive and insensitive simultaneously; two extremes that end up cancelling each other out and leaving the metaphorical blind to lead the blind. Furthermore, we don’t feel accountable for those we may cause harm to; be it intentional or not, but that’s a deeper conversation [we will save for another newsletter] on how individualistic cultures have socialised most of us. Recognising societal cause and effect is a lapse many of us have but need to bring awareness to. We are also focused on the wrong things which can lead to sometimes mislabelling actions that end up stifling conversation and progress.
Why should we seek to exercise a wider range of intimacy with understanding?
The simplest response will be because our experience as human beings deepens with our elevation of comprehension. This answer isn’t always satisfactory because it sounds and feels like a cop-out. The dire reality is our escalated technological potential for destruction through sophisticated and annihilating gadgets of war and environmental domination makes it difficult to avoid human and environmental catastrophes, thus, making it a matter of overwhelming exigency that should spark something within us all to act or reconsider. Reflecting deeper, we should seek to exercise a wider range of intimacy with understanding for the same reason we try to be better people in our daily lives. Not everyone exists to be a change maker or world shaker, but we all seek a better quality of life one way or another. Although, there are collective shortcomings, systems, and institutions set up that hinder collective intimacy, awareness of it is the first step.
The aim isn’t to arrive at a homogenised state or to create a homogenised group of people, the aim is to arrive at a diverse state that values difference and encourages healthy dialogue and action for the collective good of the planet and all its inhabitants. Until we figure out a functional and healthy framework, let’s not fight so hard to be understood we forget to be understanding.
Beautiful beyond words.