IT'S NOT JUST WORDS THAT MATTER
12/15/2019
It’s true that words matter. As a psychologist, my career was spent listening to people’s words and the emotion they said them with. But, in point of fact, the important part of a therapist’s work is NOT in listening to what people say. What people say is what they want you and themselves to know. But the really important work of the therapist is to listen for what is NOT being said. What are the people hiding from themselves and others? Where are the inconsistencies? What are their motives for saying what they said?
Now, contrary to popular belief, psychologists have no special talent for knowing what is unsaid. We are trained to use a very complicated strategy of figuring out what may be unsaid: we ask the person about it. Sometimes we even take guesses but we check them out with the person.
The important part here is that words matter but so too do the empty spaces in what people say. The empty spaces often matter more. And the work of the therapist is, with the client’s help, to fill in all the empty spaces.
Just the opposite is the case for the politician. A good politician’s special skill is to say words, sometimes lots of words, but to leave lots of space in between those words. Politicians don’t want to be easily tied down to a position certain. They want to appeal to as many people as possible, so they leave lots of empty space around their words for people to be able to fill in the blanks for themselves; to see what they want to see.
Because politicians do this, we the people are left to fill in the blanks. It used to be that an objective press would challenge the politicians to fill in the blanks just as the therapist does with his client. But, when the press itself becomes partisan, it does two things. It repeats the politicians words and pretends there are no blank spaces to be filled in OR it fills in the blank spaces with what it wants the public to believe. The media fails to do its job when it does either of those two things. And people who do either of theses two things, they too become partisans and fail to do their jobs as citizens.
What I am saying here is that we must pay attention to both the words and the empty spaces, what is said and what is not said. And, even more specifically, if we pretend that only what is said matters or only what is not said matters, then we are probably missing the truth.
Let’s take some current examples. President Trump had what he called a “perfect” conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky. He released the transcript of his conversation. Republicans are focused on what words were spoken. They have generally turned a blind eye toward the possibility that there was more to the conversation than the mere words indicated. Democrats, on the other hand, want to focus on the unsaid while ignoring that there is any truth to the words that were spoken. They want to fill in the blanks between the words. Adam Schiff’s “parody” of the call transcript was a prime example of filling in the blanks with a partisan bent.
But, it doesn’t always work that Democrats are filling in the spaces while Republicans are sticking to the words. Democrats are sticking to the word only when the discuss Trump’s comments asking the Russians to find HILLARY Clinton’s 30,000 missing emails. They use his words as proof that he was openly colluding with Russia. Meanwhile, Republicans want to fill in the spaces with context, saying he was being sarcastic, scoring a political point, and wouldn’t say such a thing so publicly if he were, indeed, colluding with Russia.
Nearly everything that separates this very divided nation is based on either taking things word for word without some attention to the blanks spaces that need to be filled it or by filling in the blank spaces while ignoring the legitimacy of the words spoken. Ordinary people and politicians are smart enough to know that they are being blatantly partisan when they do this. But they no longer care. Anger at their opponents and WINNING is utmost in their minds.
The fault lies with the politicians’ tendency to deceive the electorate by creating lots of ambiguity (ie, leaving lots of blank spaces). The fault lies with the failure of the press to investigate and challenge the politicians to clarify the ambiguity. And the fault lies with ordinary people who are intolerant of ambiguity and want things to be simply one way or the other but NEVER a little of both.
We may never be able to resolve this divisiveness as a nation without the occurrence of some catastrophic event which brings us all together. However, individually we need not participate in this partisan farce. Be honest about what is known and what is unknown. Do not permit yourself or others to get by with constructing stories made up of exact words or empty spaces filled in unproven assumptions. Consider that things may not be ”either this /or that” but rather ”both this/and that. Be willing to say to yourself and others: “That is something you think is so but not necessarily something that IS so.” Be willing to say: "I don't know because there are not enough facts available to me in order to know."
We still may continue to disagree, but if we could agree on the principle that we sometimes don’t know for sure, that leaves us open to the possibility of being incorrect as much as being correct. At the very least, with this understanding, we can speak civilly to one another.
