I become increasingly frustrated listening to panel discussions, interviews, cross examinations, debates, and even just regular conversation between average every day people. It seems like nobody is really interested in what anybody else has to say. Everybody wants to interrupt and talk over the other people. One person will ask a question of another person, but they won't let them answer. Often they will interrupt just to say, "You're not answering my question." Everybody wants to steer the conversation in a certain direction, but nobody else will let them, so nothing really ever gets fleshed out in a conversation. It's all surface level jumping from one topic to another in kind of a multi-directional tug-of-war.
I got into a rabbit hole of binge watching police interrogations on YouTube a few months ago. I noticed a huge difference between the way these interrogations take place and the way TV interviews, debate cross examination, and Congressional testimony goes down. The difference is that the police give the suspects as much room to talk as they can. They do everything they can to keep them talking, hoping all the while that they don't invoke their right to remain silent. The reason is because they know that the more the person talks, the more likely they are to give up a piece of information the police can use. So they don't interrupt the suspect even when they know the suspect is lying or being evasive. If the suspect has a story to tell, the cops will let them go on and on, and the cops listen to everything they say.
Why the difference? Well, I think it's because in most cases, we aren't actually interested in what other people have to say. We're just interested in what we have to say. We want to be heard, but we don't want others to be heard, especially when they disagree with us. We're not actually interested in learning anything from anybody. We just want others to learn from us. Often we don't think others have anything to teach us, but we think we have something to teach them. There is a general lack of respect we have toward people who see things differently than we do.
The police are trying to find out the truth. They know they're going to be lied to if the person is guilty, but even lies can be useful information. If somebody is in a debate, interview, or cross examination, the object isn't to find out the truth, but to win the conversation. In the case of Congressional testimony, it's often just posturing.
Of course the police can be very manipulative. I'm not claiming they're more honest than the rest of us. I'm just attributing their tactics to the difference in goals. I think that we should be more like the police in these interrogations, not in the sense of being manipulative, but in the sense of letting others speak and listening to them with the goal of eventually revealing the truth. The police, more than politicians, the media, apologists, or just your friends, family, and neighbors, are very interested in what the other person has to say. They make it their goal to draw them out as much as possible, to get them to say as much as possible, and to think carefully about what they are saying.
That is what we should do. Sometimes, we'll ask a question that's based on our assumptions or frame of reference, but if the other person doesn't share those assumptions or frame of references, and they try to respond, it's going to sound at first like they're not asnwering our question, and we're going to be tempted to interrupt them and say, "Just answer the question!" But we shouldn't do that. Instead, we should hear them out. Let them talk. Maybe it'll turn out that we had a misunderstanding. Maybe they'll make some necessary clarification we hadn't anticipated. Maybe they'll say something that doesn't directly answer the question we're asking but still contributes meaningfully to the conversation. Maybe it will reveal more clearly where the misunderstanding lies or why it seems like you're talking past each other. At the very least, it will give us more information about what's going on in the other person's head.
And besides that, it's the polite thing to do. As I said before, we all want to be heard. That's why we interrupt and talk over people. With that being the case, you should strive to be the one that's listening. It's an act of kindness and a show of respect to hear somebody out, show curiosity, listen to them, and think about what they are saying. One of the best compliments I've ever recieved was when somebody said, "I thought about what you said."
If you're an apologist (whether for theism, atheism, capitalism, socialism, or whatever), and you really want to advance your point of view, it still behooves you to hear the other person out and let them speak as much as possible. Just as in the case of the police, that will give you information to work with. You are in a better position to reason with somebody if you know how their mind works, what they already believe, and how they think. So you should make an effort to draw people out and not get flustered when they aren't directly answering your questions the way you'd like. You should still let them finish because they might say something else you didn't know but can use. Or it might be that they just have a round-about-way of communicating, in which case you just need to be patient.
In my own case, I can tell you that I often interrupt people because they are throwing too much information at me at once, and I can't process all of it. I need it in smaller doses so I can think about it and ask questions. If somebody monologues for ten minutes, and I have all kinds of things to say while they're talking, I'm not going to remember any of it when their ten minutes is up, and they want me to respond. Sometimes straining my brain to keep track of something somebody says so I can respond to it when they're done makes it difficult for me to pay attention to the rest of what they have to say. That's not as big of a problem in a classroom setting because I expect the lecturer to monologue, and I take notes so I can ask questions about something they may have said fifteen minutes earlier. Of course conventional wisdom is that you should listen to understand rather than listening to respond, but in reality, we do both. One does not simply give up the urge to respond, and one shouldn't give up the urge to ask follow-up questions.
I suspect I'm not alone and that some of you might interrupt people for a similar reason. While this post is mainly geared toward encouraging you to be a good listener, and not to be the obnoxious interrupter, I don't want to end this post without also saying that you should strive to be patient with those who interrupt you and who seem like they aren't listening to you. Maybe they aren't, but not all interrupting is a sign of disrespect or disinterest. The case of interrupting to keep your train of thought is just one example. Another is interrupting on accident because you thought the other person was done when they were just pausing for dramatic effect.
But even when people interrupt for bad reasons, we should be patient with those people, too. Dealing with people in general requires patience because none of us are perfect. We're all sinners, we can all be selfish, and we're all a little bit self-absorbed. If you can't be patient with people, you're going to grow to dislike people more and more as you get old, and then you're going to be all alone.
Here's a link to another post I made that's related to this subject: Just Answer: Yes or No?
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