Types and shapes of talking

Originally on my SUBSTACK!

You know, there’s the thing people say now that like “we can’t talk to one another anymore.” And I think the way that most people read our pathological dialogue is that it’s representative of some deep underlying philosophical difference — that there is, in fact, a deep disease, an irreconcilable chasm, that we’re careening toward another Civil War in this country because those people are not like us. And I basically think that’s bullshit.

I think in many ways we just haven’t done the work to become more self-aware of what conversations we’re having when we’re having them, and so we get pissed at one another when one of us is proposing aspirational solutions while the other is saying pragmatic stuff about the problem. Repairing our discourse is our own responsibility. We are may each choose to be diplomats or warriors. Often we’re each both at one time or another. But war mostly sucks. Killing people is not Romantic.

And this piece is not about conflict aversion. It’s about how to see the form of our disagreements. Here’re some scattered thoughts about the shapes of conversations.

Pragmatic & Aspirational
Is this conversation about what is possible right now, or is it about what we’re trying to work toward? Both of these are really important conversations to have at different times but not clarifying which we’re doing at any moment often leads to an implicit sense of disagreement even if there is none.

Like, I can say over and over again that I don’t want the Yale of the Environment to be a predominantly white institution, and then some higher-up can say that’s not realistic right now and like, we have to raise $10 million to hire new faculty and we don’t have that money right now. That sort of interaction can give me the sense that we disagree about whether white supremacy sucks and is bad for everyone, but that’s not really what’s happening. What’s happening is that I’m pushing an aspirational ideal and the higher-up is offering a pragmatic response.

An alternative is that when you’re the person taking a pragmatic stance in a conversation it’s really important to reaffirm the basic aspirational goal before offering a pragmatic perspective. And when you’re the person offering the aspirational stance, it’s also really important that you be willing to participate in a conversation about how to move toward that aspirational goal in a realistic way and not see the two as zero-sum or in competition. We always have to do both.

Problems & Solutions
Are we talking about a problem or a solution? Is what we’re talking about here a gap between what we expect of reality and what reality is doing (a problem) or have we already agreed on the problem and talking about what to do about it (a solution).

For instance, with climate change, we’re still working on defining the problem. Our expectations of reality — that natural resources are infinite and we can just keep consuming shit forever — are misaligned with reality: that natural resources are only unlimited if we consume at a rate below a certain threshold. “Science” broadly construed works to define problems. Or more specifically, allow us to see problems. Science is never a solution, which is a fucking dumb thing that people always say.

And if conversations about problems are about science and seeing, conversations about solutions are a matter of design. Conversations around solutions must be rooted in reality. Even Donald Trump agrees on a shared reality when it comes to building a skyscraper or a bridge. If someone calls themselves solutions-oriented what they are often saying is that they are a design person willing to accept the conventional definition of any problem. This isn’t bad, but for them to do good in the world requires relationships with people more concerned with conversations about problems.

We need to be sure not to let conversations around problematizing/science/critique/seeing and conversations around solutions/design/business/doing be in conflict and disrupt our discourse. These two types of talking must work together. In fact, they are part of the same broader family of pragmatically making the world better. We don’t need familial infighting.

Technical, Institutional, & Cultural (Problems & Solutions)
But once we agree we’re having a conversation about, say a problem, not a solution, it’s important to be aware that we all gravitate toward certain aspects of problems (or solutions) based on how we’ve been taught to see. I was raised by a Sociologist and so I tend toward problematizing the world at the institutional level. For me, I walk around with an institutional hammer that renders all problems to look like institutional nails. But that’s not how it is for everyone.

The reason this little mental map feels important to me is that it allows me to be more aware of the types of conversation I’m participating in, and this transcend my default setting. Being able to notice when I’m in, say, a conversation about technical solutions preempts my autopilot tendency to want to say “you don’t get it, this problem is about groups and power and identity and you don’t even get what the problem is that you’re talking about”!” AKA, me wanting to push every conversation I’m in back to problematizing institutions because I was raised by a Sociologist. This little map gives me humility.

Two final notes on this: First, if you’re going to problematize something in one way, please try to generate solutions within the same column. The worst here is misalignment. For instance, if you’re willing to notice that climate change is a cultural problem, please don’t then suggest we install carbon vacuum cleaners in the Ozone layer…please offer a cultural solution. Pitch a public humanities project or something.

But also, finally, our most complex problems ultimately demand integration of this entire table. Today, we often pit each of these boxes against one another for funding or airtime or force young professionals into specialized education programs that further entrench them into one of these boxes. Problem-solving often feels like a zero-sum game these days and with each of us taking on this role or identity of problematizing the climate problem in one way, solving it in another.

The plain reality is that real leadership on complex issues is to integrate across all six of the boxes on this problem-solution space without marginalizing any of them. Leadership and expertise are two separate processes. On is digging your hole deeper, the other is connecting all of the holes.

Foregrounding, Backgrounding, & Dismissal
For me, I see so much of our conflict emerging not from disagreement, but just from what we choose to foreground versus background. For instance, one of the deep cultural divides between right and left in the United States is whether you, in your mind, choose to foreground the philosophical value of liberty or equality. In doing so, we see the two concepts in competition. And according to Danielle Allen, this is silly.

On the left, we attach the prefix “social” to “justice” (“social justice”) to imply that we’re not talking about justice broadly, but instead the small subset of jurisprudence that foregrounds equality. But then like, you talk to people on the left and ask if they think other vague values like democracy or liberty or freedom are important and they often say, sure! So do equality-obsessed #BlackLivesMatter activists really disagree with the liberty-captivated militia folks on what the good life looks like? Or is this just an issue of what’s foregrounded and what’s backgrounded?

We each only have a limited number of breaths in our lives, and we actually have to curate our words. We are forced to foreground certain things and background others, but that does not necessarily mean we are dismissing what’s being backgrounded. I think we need less “yes, but” and more “yes, and” today and sort of give up the basic sense that when someone is foregrounding something else that this is surely an attempt to actively background what we care about.

If a problem isn’t being framed in a way we’re satisfied with let’s actively add our perspective. And of course, if when we do someone actively dismisses what we offer then like, yeah, fuck that. But also, if you’re in a technical solutions conversation about how to build a bridge and we’re upset because everyone isn’t taking into account Brownian motion or post-modern relativism then like, we’re just in the wrong place.

So what?
I just wanted to offer these little tools for self-awareness because I think a lot of what we see as deep cultural chasms today in our talking to one another is in fact us just missing one another — whether because one of us is talking about solutions while the other problems, or whether one of us would rather focus on the ways our institutions need reforming versus the way we tell stories in the first place. There are, to be sure, horrible people with bad intentions and irreconcilable gaps sometimes in what we see as the good life versus someone else, but I think most of what is causing conflict these days in real life (in Congress, it’s a different story) is us just missing one another — us not recognizing the shape of the conversation we’re in and trying to stuff a square peg through a round hole, or whatever the saying is…

Consider the shape of a practical conversation about a technical problem.
Or imagine the contours of an aspirational dialogue about an institutional solution.
Or even think about a pragmatic discussion about a cultural problem.
They’re all different and yet can all be loving.

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