Hi hello! It has been a while since I have written something meaningful here on The Albatross, or anything really! I could go on about a myriad of excuses but what good does that do? The hiatus, however, did not pass in vain as it did allow me to meditate and think outside the box. At times it is not so much what you have to say, but how you communicate that information that is important and something that I have been thinking about recently is the emotional element surrounding a discussion.
My previous piece, Article 1, is very logical, thus to follow that up with something emotional is very fitting and avoids redundancy by being complimentary. I encourage you to read that piece, but it is not necessary for understanding this essay. As you can tell from the title, this essay is about the emotions surrounding a sensitive topic. Of those emotions, I am singling out offense and disrespect.
Even when all things are considered–read Article 1 for those considerations–you may still end up in a situation where someone mistook your input as disrespect or offense which naturally can lead to a whole slew of negative reactions such as unfriending, angry outbursts, being unfairly judged, them shutting down the discussion, or quite simply being told to “fuck off”. This is problematic especially when you are attempting to persuade the other party with your ideas. As a side note, persuasion is actually a very quotidian exercise so there’s high utility for anyone mastering this skill.
Persuasion tends to be seen as a logical exercise given how our professional and academic institutions tend focus on objectivity. In reality, beliefs are more complicated than. Beliefs are ideas that you happen to agree with and ideas are recorded in our minds as memories. These memories are heavily influenced by our emotions which is why it is so easy to remember things that interest us (positive emotion) than it is to remember things that are insipid and boring (no emotion).
So when engaged in a discussion regarding a sensitive topic (emotionally laden) armed with only logic and facts, you will eventually step on an emotional landmine triggered by your lack of emotional awareness. At this time, it is typical to be called out as being insensitive, rude, stupid, offensive, and disrespectful; I would like to focus on the latter two.
As mentioned previously in a memo, I believe that damage control can be better than doing something well. Say you grow the best tomatoes on the west side of the Mississippi then a pipe breaks and your whole crop dries up. At this point, you are worse off than the person who has an average crop yield but invested in better plumbing thereby mitigating the risk of a drought. The concept remains the same in a discussion. What may matter more is being able to avoid triggering an emotional landmine than delivering the best argument ever conceived and pissing off the whole town in the process. This is where my fixation on offense and disrespect comes from.
This isn’t an in-depth “how-to” article on how to avoid triggering landmines from going off in the first place but stay tuned for a future post. Just watch what you say and how you say it for now. Words can carry a positive, negative, or neutral meaning. So avoid using words with negative connotations and use synonyms with neutral and positive connotations instead.
Now what to do once you’ve triggered an emotional landmine? Putting it simply, a negative emotional trigger tends to identify you as the aggressor and the offended party as righteous. Therefore, the first step in defusing their reaction is to dismantle the narrative. No I don’t mean calling them a “little bitch” and showering yourself with self-proclaimed righteousness! You should use logic, ironic isn’t it? But first a bit of background is needed.
Righteousness and “asshole-ness” is derivative in part by actions but more importantly by intent and perception. Our legal system works the same way when judging a defendant. Mens Rea is a condition dependent upon mental state and Actus Reus is another condition dependent upon action. This leads to categorizations such as murder and manslaughter where murder satisfies both conditions and manslaughter only one, the act of killing someone without malicious intent.
When it comes to offense and disrespect, they both categorize an action–you blurting something out–as inappropriate. Yet they differ in the intent behind the act and the perception of that intent. Being offended describes a feeling in response to an event. Offense means that the offended party perceived the accused as having ill intent and behaving as such, whereas disrespect is a conscious intent on the part of the accused to act offensively. Therefore, you can be respectful and still be perceived as disrespectful by an offended person. That is why no matter what you say or do, someone is bound to be offended. This is because offense relies upon the offended to believe that the accused had bad intentions, regardless if the accused really did harbor bad intentions. That is crucial to diffusing the escalation.
Once the offended has been triggered, try to calmly shift your focus subtly from the discussion taking place to the person’s feelings (emotions remember). Now rather than directly persuading them that you are a good person or that they are wrong, remove yourselves from the situation thereby framing the issue as impersonal and emotionally removed. Attempt to explain how your intention to make a certain point may have caused them to misinterpret your message and ultimately your intent as well. Be sure to communicate verbally or by tone that you are sorry and did not intend for the outcome. The simple act of caring about their feelings, your behavior, your intent over the discussion, often time convinces the offended that you are a caring person and caring people aren’t disrespectful people who go about offending people!
Case and point is someone who is offended by you politely wishing them “happy holidays” and the person receiving the compliment becomes triggered, angrily shouting how offended they are and how disrespectful you are for saying “happy holidays”. You cleverly deduce that this individual watches too much cable news, and ask the person if they were offended by you not saying Merry Christmas. Upon confirmation, you first appeal to their bias by now wishing them a Merry Christmas, then communicate to them how you had no bad intentions by saying happy holidays. At this point you may suggest that happy holidays is a way of saying Thanks Giving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year all at once but that it in no way is meant to attack Christmas. Having heard you say Merry Christmas without hesitation, then logically explaining how happy holidays is utilized without ill intent, will set the person up to be less defensive and thus more receptive to what you have to say.
Lastly, it is my personal opinion that offense is cheap. Anyone can be offended by anything, it does not even have to make sense. As the late Christopher Hitches once stated
“I am very depressed how in this country you can be told, ‘that’s offensive’, as if those two words constitute an argument”
