In this day and age, trying to discern what the truth is can seem impossible. Did someone really do that egregious behaviour or not? Sheryl Sandberg, for example has come out with a new documentary on the sexual violence perpetrated on men and women in the October 7 attacks.
We know many of the political conflicts around the world are marked by the most horrible acts. What we can do to each other brings me to my knees in sorrow and despair.
Yet, some things have changed. We are more connected as a global community than we ever had been in the history of our species. We also have more people living longer than we ever have. We have more freedom and peace than other times in history (according to Steve Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined).
Most salient, we live in an information age, with AI making it even more so.
“Fake news” and “disinformation” means we can no longer win by providing the truth or evidence of the truth. There is so much distortion and enough data to prove anything.
So, what can we do?
Firstly, we need to let go of the belief that what we know is the absolute truth.
When we hear a point of view different than our own, it’s easy for our soft, animal bodies to experience a threat to our interpretation of reality. That sense of danger produces a quick response that can override our rational mind and our self-awareness.
It’s easy to jump to: “They are wrong.”
That thought is not the road to influence.
From my perspective, living in the age of information provides us with new and incredible opportunities.
- We have the opportunity to change the ingrained impulse to negate another person’s perspective, which shuts out a wider reality.
- We have the opportunity to grow our awareness of ourselves, each other and life.
- We have the opportunity to create a new, diverse and integrated sense of the truth.
To reap these rewards and more, we need to train ourselves out of the habit of wanting to correct the other’s deficiency of information and switch to a new habit in the face of conflict.
We need to create the habit of hearing diverse perspectives. We need the classic “yes-and” way of thinking. “Yes-and” thinking – just like theatre sports.
We may not agree with the perspective we are hearing. That’s okay. We shift the aim away from agreeing. We want to invite integrative thinking. A saying in my field is “I want to understand you and it doesn’t mean I will agree with your perspective.”
Until we can get to mutual understanding, there is no influence.
With a “yes-and” integrative mindset, we can deal with “fake news” by accepting that each perspective is to be understood.
This thought invites dialogue.
As my colleague Gordon White likes to say: “It only takes one person to stop an argument: they just need to listen.”
If we can adopt the idea that acknowledging a perspective different from our own has merit, then we can apply the art of listening.
And, listening is an art. What are we listening for in the face of someone having a different opinion than ours?
Let’s come back to the new documentary Sandberg released. I saw her comment in one news story that the Hamas leadership said the violence on October 7 did not occur because it is against their law.
What to do with that? Do we disagree or find something to build on? That’s a choice point that can have leverage and power in it. Can we listen for where the common ground is in our disparate positions?
We can get caught in the different interpretations of the “truth.” In the age of information and disinformation, debating which side has the truth is over.
Instead, we need to search for what we can agree on in terms of our deeper values. We all hurt, we all bleed, we all fundamentally want joy and peace and freedom.
We share fundamental emotions and desires as human mammals. That is our common ground. We can unite around those and together face the problems of violence and our own human propensity to fail.
Of course, there are certain acts of violence and power-over behaviours that we want to unite in and say “No” to.
What can we agree on and then get curious about?
We can agree that violence is not okay.
In fact, it seems like both sides in this war are saying atrocious acts of violence is not acceptable.
One denies it happened. The other brings proof it has.
When information has lost its past power to influence, how else can we build a future that has more kindness, compassion, and joy and contains no acts of violence?
Let’s call for dialogue, with the aim of mutual understanding, as the highest and most important aspiration.
Let’s keep calling for dialogue. What magic can then arise?
Like these two. An inspiring exchange of differing perspectives and common ground:
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” … Martin Luther King Jr
