It may have stopped one conversation, but it could be an opportunity to
talk about Conversation.
This is inspired by Bill's story of the odds and evens and Leigh's chapter
on categorizations. Plus, I am also interested in how to move from the
content level of communication to the meta-level of discussing how we
discuss what we do.
(And this is a most inclusive "we" because I would like to get my own
children and elementary students to do this, but haven't had much success.)
This is about a dark world of voices and their difficulties in their
struggles for knowledge and/or understanding.
Some voices are very LOUD and they say, "I AM SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH!
WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME THAT WILL HELP ME ACHIEVE MY OBJECTIVE?"
Some voices are spare and soft and they say, "I am interested in how you
understand truth. If I like some piece of what you say, will you share it
with me?"
(Let me clearly state that I do not think that anyone on this list matches
either prototype, and also, that I have spoken as both voices at different
times.)
The tools these voices use to build their meanings are Logic, Facts,
Emotion, and Compassion. (I am imagining a matrix here, of who uses what.)
Those LOUD voices who use Logic and a huge arsenal of Facts seem
diametrically opposed to the spare voices who value and use their emotions
and take a compassionate stance towards others. To these spare voices, the
LOUD ones seem to deny them any existence; there seems no room for people
at all in the Logical Arrangement of Facts. The LOUD voices aren't
interested in those they perceive as unwilling to play by the rules and
acknowledge the ultimate correctness and power of Logic.
The difficulty of moving any voices beyond the level of their
disagreements, it seems to me, lies in the embeddedness of voice in
identity.
When I perceive myself as a spare voice encountering a LOUD one, it feels
like absolute submission to have a conversation with this voice. It feels
like denying a huge chunk of myself, my emotional base, my compassion for
other people, it feels very dehumanizing. I feel the need to defend my
self and I have developed strategies such as changing the subject to
something I feel is more comfortable logically, or taking off on a tangent
that is clearly defiant of the structure of the conversation, or even
sometimes, allowing my emotion of fear or anger take over and then I can't
guess what I will say or do.
As a LOUD voice I feel threatened by the existence of someone who does not
except Logic as the final arbiter because I have devoted so much of my
life to supporting it, and usually at the cost of my emotional life. All
the energy I have put into collecting this huge number of facts and
organizing them so logically seems instantly devalued by someone who looks
at them with disdain, asking, as Virginia Woolf did in The Waves, "But
what about the cat?"
And yet, both these voices can speak from the same body.
Why is it so difficult to get them to speak to each other?
kathie
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.........Our words misunderstand us..............................
.....We are our words, and black and bruised and blue.
Under our skins, we're laughing....................................
.........................Adrienne Rich..................................
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Katherine_Goff@ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~katherine_goff/index.html
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