POOP? ROCKS? Do you want to avoid the tempting “us-against-them” mentality? In this episode, Tyler discusses the tremendous importance of Perspective Taking. Follow The 5-Star Approach on: • LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-5-star-approach • Facebook https://www.facebook.com/5starapproach • Instagram https://www.instagram.com/5starapproach/
with Tyler Small
"... Polarization means that each side vilifies the other, and says: It's us against them. And we have this critical difference between our different groups; we're so different that we should believe poorly of the other group."
Hello again! I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.
Today, I'm going to talk about perspective taking, which is something that is a big theme in the science of emotional intelligence, communication, negotiation - anything around your personal relationships.
Perspective taking basically means that you're taking the other person's perspective. You're able to try and put on their lens, try and mentally walk a mile in their shoes... basically look at this person I'm talking with: What is their perspective? Even just to admit or recognize that they have their own perspective; that their perspective is valid and that it's real for them; and frankly, that, it's the only reality that they know. It's obviously gonna be different than ours.
And also that our perspective is merely a perspective. It's just something based on our senses - the opinions that we have, the beliefs that we have, the philosophies that we subscribe to... this is our perspective.
I want to tell you about an allegory that I came up with this morning with a buddy of mine. (I'll introduce you to him on the show eventually.) What we came up with is an allegory of a tribe.
So we're talking about polarization. And here we are in this time where we have probably the most polarized environment that we've ever seen - within one country, without being in a civil war. I don't know if that's true- but if not, it' s close.
So we're talking about polarization, we're talking about the way that we think about some of these big issues. Specifically we were talking about vaccines. There's some people who are "anti-vax" they say. And then probably the majority that's okay with vaccinations in general. There's a lot of arguments going back and forth.
This allegory was born from this conversation of mask-wearing and vaccinations - these supercharged topics. Although I think it can apply to many different topics that people are taking sides on.
When I'm creating a scenario that I'm sharing with somebody - a fictitious scenario - I like to create the simplest possible representation that can possibly hold all the components that are present in the more complex reality that we exist in.
What we did is we said, okay, there's this tribe of people... And just to give you a tiny bit of background, it started out and he was talking about if some people want to poop in the river. And so one perspective is that not getting vaccinated, not wearing a mask and walking around and not social distancing, ignoring the precautions... could be considered by some, by many, to be like pooping in a river when others who live downstream of the river actually rely on that as a source of drinking water, and that it could potentially be killing people downstream.
So we designed this allegory to try and be as objective as possible and to help the audience to see the other side's perspective. Okay. So it's a perspective taking exercise.
Basically it starts out: there's two friends - there's Gina and John. Gina and John are friends. Gina likes to wear Converse shoes, and she likes to eat pizza and read. She's a big reader; she loves fictional books, fantasy. She also read some self-help. And she works at a big company. So Gina's this normal person, right?
John is one of the tribespeople, and they're friends. And he wears shoes and he likes to eat vegetables, and he likes to talk with people. They both have children. And they're friends, right? They've known each other for a long time and have a mutual respect for one another.
One day this little girl in their tribe, her name is Emma. Emma unfortunately passes away. The people in the tribe are concerned about this; you know, there's only a hundred of them, there's only a hundred left. And so they say, Emma passed away... Why did she die? What was the cause? And so originally we had talked about people pooping in the river, but we decided to change it because I think that it's easy for most people to agree that pooping in a river when there's people downstream drinking from the river is bad.
In the interest of creating an allegory where both sides could potentially have a different perspective, we decided to make it throwing rocks in the river: Gina believes that throwing rocks in the river actually killed this little girl. And John, he likes to throw rocks in the river; he doesn't see a problem with it. He doesn't believe that throwing rocks in the river killed Emma. He doesn't think there's any danger at all.
And so the two argue about this and they have these opposing views. And it turns out they talk about this a lot in their tribe; someone has died, they're trying to find the cause. Some people believe they found the cause. It turns out that 90 of the tribe members agree with Gina, and they're on Gina's side that throwing rocks in the river is what killed Emma. And John and nine of the other tribespeople, they say that throwing blocks in the river did not kill Emma. There's no inherent danger in throwing rocks in the river.
So you can see how the COVID virus some people actually claim that it is this totally fictitious thing; it doesn't exist - some people believe this in its entirety. Some people believe that COVID is the most dangerous thing ever; it's more dangerous than any other threat that we currently face, and that we should be acting against it with more vigilance than any other danger that exists in the world. And then there's everything in between, right? There's people who are like, it's dangerous, but it's not much more dangerous than a normal flu, a normal seasonal flu that comes around.
So there's all these different perspectives. And in an effort to help you do this perspective, taking, we're saying that in our allegory that 10 of the tribes, people believed that throwing rocks in the river did not have any danger, any bad side effects or anything. But 90 of them believed that it did. Okay. And as the authors of the allegory, we're saying, we don't know; we don't know if it did or not.
But we know 90 percent of the people believed it killed a girl. And further that Tommy, who hangs out around the river, that Tommy is at risk. If we throw rocks in the river, Tommy may die as well. He's young, he's a little kid just like Emma, about the same age. And we believe that Tommy is potentially next. If people are throwing rocks in the river, Tommy could die as a result.
And so with 90 of the tribespeople believing that Tommy's life is in danger; and 10 of the tribespeople believing that Tommy's life is not endangered, at least from throwing rocks in the river. We have these conflicted belief systems, right? These two belief systems: John, on the one hand leading the one belief system and Gina on the other.
So Gina and John are opposed on this. What are John and Gina to do?
So we figured out that they can do nothing. They can negotiate. Or they can fight between themselves, just Gina and John. Or the different groups within this tribe can go to war. They can organize and decide that they're gonna go to war and have a war.
And we talked about polarization, and we talked about negotiation. And we said, okay, so the goal more or less of negotiation, in this circumstance, would be to coexist peacefully; and to decrease the chance, probability, duration, intensity of war; and to also decrease the amount of constraints that people should endure. Those are the goals of negotiation. To minimize war violence, any type of constraints.
Whereas the goal of polarization was violence, war and constraining other people. And that, that was the goal of polarization. Not that was John's goal or Gina's goal; but if they desired to be polarized - and I want to talk about polarizing, what that does: polarizing means that each side vilifies the other, and says: It's us against them. And we have this critical difference between our different groups; we're so different that we should believe poorly of the other group and we should not respect their right to have an opinion. And, we should degrade them and potentially go to war against them - or have violence, or we should constrain them.
So we talked about government, and we talked about social agreements. And we said, okay, so it seems like they need to have a social agreement. And with the analogy of people pooping in the river, the social agreement that - this is a different analogy, different allegory - is that, okay, we're not going to poop in the river anymore. We have a social agreement that people aren't going to poop in the river. So that the people downstream can drink the water and not die and not get sick and stuff like that. So there was this, there was a social agreement and people believed that a social agreement was a good thing.
So in the case of our little tribe, some of the people in the group of 10 that John was with - we called them the Johnites - some of the Johnites, one of them was so extreme he said, we don't need social agreements. We just need no rules, no agreements at all. And we just all do our own thing. So it was, Nobody can tell me what to do.
And on the other hand, the 90% said, Oh yes, like we have these rules. We agree on these certain things. These social agreements we've negotiated. We've talked about it. We've United. And we've agreed that these are going to be the rules that we live by.
And and so the very idea of having a social agreement - whether that is okay we're going to have a government and we're going to have to live by the laws; or that we're going to be kind and honest to each other; or that we're all going to get vaccine; or that we're going to wear seatbelts; or we're going to tax cigarettes and alcohol... All of those are social agreements.
And so in our story, we decided that John has options. So what is John to do?
Oh, also we realized that John throws rocks into the river for his living. And John must throw rocks into the river to make his living. And so John can either go to war. He can either rally the members of his group that believe that there's no big deal. He can also look in Gina's group the 90, and he can say, is there anyone here that maybe you believe that throwing rocks in the river is bad, but you don't want to make a social agreement that constrains me from doing my job? Is there anyone he could find - maybe one or two - that wanted to come over and join his group and say, look, if you don't think that we need a social agreement, a law on this, then you can come over and join my group.
So John could then get his group together and he could say: We're going to negotiate with Gina's group. Or he can say: We're going to war with Gina's group. Or he can say: We're going to leave; we're going to go find and live next to some other river. So they have these options.
Similarly Gina's group, they can say, okay, we've got 89, 90 of us. We can go to negotiate with John. We can go and kill John and his group. Or we can ask them to leave. Or we can, the 90 of us, can leave and go find a different place to live.
So this is interesting because sometimes a family is living in a certain neighborhood and they realize: we don't like it here. We don't want to negotiate with these people. And we don't want to fight with these people. So we're going to go somewhere else and live by a different river. So that happens, right? It's Oh, I don't like my neighbors. I don't like the social agreements that they have. Or I don't want to negotiate and come up with social agreements with them. So I'm going to leave. I feel uncomfortable here.
So we always have options. We always have the option to negotiate. Or to go somewhere else.
So if we liken it back again to reality: If the rule is that everyone has to wear a mask. And the 90 people in the tribe say, okay, we're making a new rule: there's no more throwing rocks in the river. Okay. So that's this similar part in allegory. And then the 10% say no, no,no - we don't want that social agreement, then they have options. They can try and negotiate. If the negotiations aren't successful to turn over the 90% - which could happen. They could negotiate and say, alright, we're going to throw rocks in the river anyway. We know that Tommy will probably die. We believe that Tommy will die if we do that, but we're going to throw rocks and we're going to allow people to throw the rocks in the river. So they can negotiate. They can determine whatever they want through that negotiation. They can leave or they can fight.
I won't make it much longer here, but this is the scene that we set up, this is the allegory. People believing this way, believing that way. And so I'm interested to see what you think about this. I'm going to have more conversations with other people. I may continue this thought process this thought experiment.
But think about your own perspective; and think, okay - What are my options? What are the social agreements that exist? What can the 90 tribe members do; what rules should they make that apply to everyone?
If they believe that Tommy's going to die if they don't do something about this - and that other people in the tribe may die as well. And if they fully believe that will happen, then what are they going to do that will affect these other tribe members, these 10 who disagree with them.
What is John to do? He can pick another line of work, right? He can negotiate. He can fight. He can rally and war. Or he can move somewhere else on his own; or he can rally the 10 and move somewhere else with part or all of them.
So I think that it's important to remember perspective taking, and thinking about the fact that other people have perspectives and we don't necessarily know everything. But even if we think we do, other people believe that they know contrary. And I know this is a very simplistic example, but hopefully it becomes a way, a new way for you to think about and talk about different things that happen in our environment, and give you some options for action in the future.
And so by perspective taking, by exercising your muscle to take another person's perspective and think about it from a different angle and think, okay what can we do here? We can negotiate. We can fight - we can make violence on each other. We can move apart. We have different options.
And what does polarization mean? What is the "us versus them" mentality going to do for us? Can we seek for peace? Can we seek to negotiate? Do we agree that having social agreements is better than no social agreements? 'Cause if we say there are no social agreements - basically with no rules and no consequences for any rules, then that makes it okay to, willy-nilly, kill other people or take their things and to walk over the top of them... Without any social agreements, that becomes very barbaric... a very barbaric situation.
And so, are social agreements a good thing? And who should determine the social agreements? If it's not the majority, then who should? Should John be the dictator? If you believe that throwing rocks in the river is not dangerous, and that John is smarter than all these other people, then should John be the dictator and determine all of their social rules? Should he be the Sage, the medicine man? What do you think John's role should be?
These are questions that we talked about on our 10 mile run this morning, and I hope that you enjoy tugging on them a little bit. And I know that some of the things I've said have probably been short-sighted and wrong from your perspective. And probably as I think about it more, I'll discover things that I've said that I disagree with myself. But I think it's more important to open up the thought and to practice perspective taking and make some mistakes than to just bear down and dig in our heels on our own perspective and not seek for understanding from others.
I think we have something to be gained from perspective taking, from exploring what's going on here. What are the social agreements? What options do we have? Can we negotiate? Can we seek for peace? Can we explore the other person's perspective? I see a lot of good coming from that. I'm looking forward to hearing stories about where this goes.
And with that, I am Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.