Welcome back Viphilus*
Last week I spoke about the
importance of not flattering yourself and thinking that everyone is thinking bad
things about you … because almost nobody is thinking about you at all. We each
have an incredibly strong internal defence mechanism which constantly scans the
environment looking for threats and danger. Whether you believe that this
defence mechanism is the product of thousands of years of adaptation through
genetic mutations beginning in our more primitive times when our ancestors were
hunters in a harsher environment … or simply instilled in us by God … or a
combination of the two … the fact is that this is in us.
This defence mechanism is important
to survival and when it is working well it enables us to get out ahead of
danger by correctly predicting threats before they turn in to a
real-and-present-danger (I’ve been looking for an excuse to use that line). This
mechanism can actually become quite finely tuned and present itself as a highly
honed skill. For example, in the Bourne series of books and movies, the
Proponent, Jason Bourne, discovers that he has innate skills of self-defence (a
product of special-ops training that he had forgotten because of amnesia) where
he is able to interpret and see real threats in things as simple as glances and
silences.
I have a friend who spent a
measurable portion of his life in prison. He tells me that in that environment,
one that is arguably harsher than the one in which I have lived my whole life,
it is very important to your survival to know how to interpret the difference,
not just between a glance and a stare, but even in different kinds of glances,
based on the situation, the person, the crowd, their body-language and a hundred
other intangibles.
OK, very few of us have skills
trained into us through special-ops trainers or prison … but we all have a lot more
skill in interpreting our environment than we think. Our experiences, beginning
when we were babes-in-arms, have taught us how to interpret micro-expressions
on people’s faces. Through this skill we know when someone is angry with us or when
they are happy with us. We can infer sadness, elation, fear, joy, anxiety,
serenity, and dozens of other subtle emotional states. Now we all have varying
skills in this area but unless you have a brain dysfunction which makes it
impossible for you to pick up on these subtle signals (in which case, don’t
ever play poker), you are remarkably good at this.
Sometimes, this mechanism
gets whacked: messed up so much that you interpret almost everything as a
threat. I’m seeing more of this all the time in people. If that describes you
then go back and read last week’s post (again and again and again, if need be).
But if you are “normal” (don’t ya just love that word), then you are pretty
skilled at interpreting the emotional state of others.
Almost everyone assumes that
since they are “good” at reading people,
then they are also good at inferring motives. Almost everyone believes that
they know WHY other people do the things that they do. And it goes further.
Most people also believe that they are skilled at inferring character strengths
and weaknesses in other people and that they are good (really good, actually)
at determining WHY people behave the way that they do.
And therein lies the
problem; all of us absolutely stink at it. I mean we suck big-time at inferring
or knowing the WHY behind people’s behaviour. But the problem goes much further.
I wish I could say that our tendency simply goes to the dark side, but it doesn’t … it goes to the schizophrenic side. It turns out that all of us have this natural
tendency to do two things when interpreting a person’s poor behaviour:
1. Interpreting others: they behave poorly because
they have a character flaw or they are “bad/immoral” or they are against us;
2. Interpreting ourselves: circumstances made it
impossible for us to behave well and we have a valid excuse for the poor
behaviour.
This leads me to the next
expression that my Mom taught me when I was in my twenties:
"Never attribute to
malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."
Before I explore this a bit,
let me first say that when my Mom said these words to be, they did more than
impact me. They stopped me dead in my tracks … floored me … changed me. I was
astounded at her wisdom and knew instantly that, of course, she was right in a
profoundly Yoda-like way. It wasn’t until a couple decades later that I learned
that this truth about human beings was well-understood and catalogued by
psychologists, who refer to it as the Fundamental Attribution Error.
As I started investigating
psychology texts and social science studies I soon came to realize that this
was exactly (and I mean EXACTLY) what Jesus was pointing out two thousand years
ago when, at the end of a powerful sermon, he told the large crowd:
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same
way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will
be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye
and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your
brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a
plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
Implicit in his words is the
implication that we all do this. He was right … we all do. We all see our own
dysfunctions or misbehaviours with mercy and grace and we cut ourselves a large
amount of slack by providing an excuse or reason for our actions. However, we
judge others much more harshly, extending little grace and mercy, and assume
that their dysfunction is rooted in character weakness or innate badness.
Queue Mom:
"Never
attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
incompetence."
Long before I read the
psychology books or knew to metabolize Jesus’ words more deeply, my Mom was
basically telling me, “Look … Bob acts the way he does because he doesn’t know
better, not because he’s a bad man.”
Why did that change me? How
could it not? There’s a huge difference between assuming that Bob is just lazy
or that he is malevolent or that he is vengeful or that he is change-resistant
or that he is … well, fill in the rest with your own negative choices. The
truth is that for the most part, Bob acts the way he does because he doesn’t
know better. He’s ignorant. Mom was trying to teach me that, “if you have to
choose a reason behind WHY people do what they do, then before you jump to the
conclusion that they are trying to hurt you, a more likely conclusion is that
they are simply ignorant and don’t know better.”
Mom said, “choose ignorance!”
If you go to the hyperlink
that I provided for Fundamental Attribution Error you will see that it covers a
wider range of motives than simply malice. For example, when Sally shows up
late for work 2-3 days each week, we assume that she’s lazy or inconsiderate.
Perhaps a better interpretation is that she is simply undisciplined and is
actually filled with anxiety because of this dysfunction in her life. She would
love for someone to teach her how to unclutter her house and life so that she
could implement greater structure and improve her behaviours across the board.
In his amazing book about
the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells a story
that makes this point in a poignant and powerful way. He tells of being on a
bus or subway where a father sat staring blankly, oblivious while his children
ran amok, bothering the other passengers. Covey said he gently chided the man
that his children were bothering other people and he needed to control them
better. The response from the man was a paradigm-shifting moment for Covey.
Turns out that they were returning home from burying his wife and the kids’
mother. OK, you can swallow hard now. Covey was making the assumption that this
was a bad father who never disciplined his kids and who didn’t care how his
kids were imposing on everyone around them. Of course, the man was simply numb
as he returned home with his kids to figure out how to go on living on his own,
without his life-mate. Gulp!
What difference does your
interpretation make? If you that assume Sally is lazy or inconsiderate then you
have already erected a relational wall that will prevent you from ever getting
to know her well, and you certainly could never see clear to doing anything to
help her. If, however, you assume that she just doesn’t know better, then
just-perhaps you might befriend her and, in time, be able to show her a better
way. Of course, she will never listen to you or care what you know until she
first knows that you care. And here-in (for me) lies the biggest casualty of
the Fundamental Attribution Error … it is a huge obstacle to relationships …
which means that it is a huge obstacle to life, because life is all about relationships.
My Mom taught me to give
people the benefit of the doubt. I’d like to say that I learned that lesson
immediately and learned it perfectly … but I would be lying. As you will hear
me say often in this blog, not all lessons-taught are lessons-learned. I didn’t
actually LEARN this lesson until 2002-2003, following my breakdown. Of course,
Mom’s words came back to me and helped me piece together a number of other
truths that are important to my overall effectiveness in life, but some of my
self-sabotaging ways could have ended twenty years earlier had I actually
learned that lesson when she delivered it. I miss her.
I hope to see you back next
Monday.
Blessings Viphilus,
Your friend, Omega Man
* Viphilus means, "lover of life"
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