In interacting and communicating with other people we make a lot of assumptions about the other person. Sure, we have to make some assumptions to even begin to communicate (for instance that the other person can understand our language); if we didn’t we would have to start every conversation by asking a complete set of detailed questions – so many we would end up never communicating anything. But making too many, and too deep, assumptions, and not testing those we must make, is highly dangerous. Along with not listening to what the other person actually says, is in my experience the root cause of the majority of misunderstandings.
So I decided to set out those things which it seems to me we assume about the other person or the situation at our peril:
Any one person speaks for everyone
Anyone is right about anything
“Culture” or “society” is the same everywhere and for everybody
Someone else’s ethics and morals are the same as yours
How young or old or young the person is
Someone else is of a given race or nationality
What someone else’s religion or spiritual belief system is
What someone else’s first language or nationality is
What someone else’s politics are
What someone else’s personal values are
What someone else’s economic class is
What someone else’s financial situation is
What someone else’s level of education is
What someone else’s level of intelligence is
What someone else’s experiences or background are
What someone else’s life history is
What the person’s family or home background is
What someone else’s sexuality is or that someone else’s sexual ideals or ethics are the same as yours
Someone else has the same body or beauty ideals you do
Someone else has the same values, desires, interests, likes and dislikes as you
All things have the same effect on all people
Anything is universally yucky or universally yummy
What someone else’s skills and aptitudes are
What you find easy or hard they will also find easy or hard
What worked for you will work for anyone else
Someone else is better, worse, the same or different to you
Any given word means the same thing to everyone
One kind of learning works for everyone
Your logic is someone else’s logic
What they think is the same as you think
Someone else’s common sense is the same as your common sense
What is right for you is right for anyone else, and vice versa
Anything is possible or impossible
Yes we often can (and do) make pretty good guesses at many of these and we base our initial communications on them, but we’d better be prepared to test our guesses and change our position accordingly. I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where we’ve made an assumption about (say) someone’s education only to find we’re totally wrong – haven’t we all come across someone with a doctorate doing a job we wouldn’t expect (driving a taxi or a bus, dealing in second-hand books, selling insurance). Or we’ve spoken to a colleague on the phone and then been surprised on meeting them to find they’re a Sikh, a Muslim or Afro-Caribbean.
Curious article in yesterday’s Times (I can’t link to it as the Times has now gone pay-per-view) about people who go nude hiking in the mountains of Switzerland (oh, yes, they do!), the Swiss courts having recently ruled that they had the right to do so. As usual the paper sent some (apparently) feeble-minded reporter who couldn’t get his head round walking nude in the countryside – until he allegedly did get it, of course! In fact the article wasn’t all that interesting; there’s only so much you can say about “the walkers have won the right in court and some Cantons are objecting”; but they still managed to spin it into nearly two tabloid pages. 50% of which was two photos. The most interesting piece was the following quote from Puistola (one of the walkers).
At the same time as Switzerland is battling over the right to be naked, an equally acrimonious battle is being fought over the right to wear the burka. The irony is not lost on Puistola. “It is both ends of the sausage,” he says. “The same people against us are against the burka. They talk about freedom, but they mean only their freedom. They don’t think of law, they think only of order – and it is the order of their prejudices.”
He points to the mountain top on which, in the snow, there is a Crucifix. “One day I will go on a hike with a lady in a burka and put a crescent at the top. That will annoy them.”
Another in our occasional series of quotations encountered during he week which have struck me: because of their zen-ness, their humour, or their verisimilitude.
Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting and … ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want? [Wassily Kandinsky, 1910]
The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. [Chuck Palahniuk]
It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your pants if there’s nothing in your brain to connect it to.
Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
… the result of some wobbly high-heel work at a drink addled giggle-fest. [Alison Cross]
I’ve posted quite a bit about nudity, naturism and “clothing optional” over the years; a search on “nudity” will pick up the majority of postings. As you’ll all guess by now I’m a great believer in not wearing clothes if I don’t need to: “nude when possible; clothed when necessary” is the motto. Having said that I’m not an active member of the naturist movement, partly because I’m not a clubby sort of person and partly down to sheer convenience; I do though support British Naturism (BN) by being a member.
All of which is a preamble to say that I’m not sure I have blogged this cartoon before; if I have it was before this incarnation of the weblog, so a long time ago. You’ll need to click the image to get a larger, readable, version.
Now wouldn’t that be a great idea. I wonder which company would have the courage to be the first to introduce Mondays (or any day!) as Nude Day at work?
Well according to a recent Scientific American article it is very simple …
We masturbate. A lot.
(Oh, come on, it’s not that shocking!)
But the uniqueness is that no other animal, including our close primate relatives, does. The theory seems to be, at least in part, that it’s all to do with the ability of our well developed brains to create entirely novel and imaginary picture shows and videos.
I’ll leave it to you to follow the link and read the article. It’s long, but it’s interesting, especially if you’re a science geek.
Another in our occasional series of quotations encountered during he week which have struck me: because of their zen-ness, their humour, or their verisimilitude.
Although the world’s religions may differ fundamentally from one other in their metaphysical views, when it comes to their teachings on the actual practice of ethics, there is great convergence. All the faith traditions emphasize a virtuous way of being, the purification of the mind from negative thoughts and impulses, the doing of good deeds, and living a meaningful life. [Dalai Lama]
Don’t forget those irregular verbs like hoggo, piggeri, swini, gruntum. [pmh {at} cix]
Sex and money: the forked root of evil [Ross Macdonald, The Drowning Pool]
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. [Tom Robbins]
Girls are like pianos. When they’re not upright, they’re grand. [Benny Hill]
… and obscene is not a word I use often or lightly, but I am horrified at the story which is circulating of a New York doctor who is reducing the clitorises of young girls in the belief that they are abnormally large. In deference to my blood pressure I shall say no more here but refer you to the story over on The F-Word. If this is even half true the man (yes, a man, of course) is in my view a paedophile and child abuser.
I went past a building today. When I was a kid it would have been called St Bloggs’ Junior School. Today it is called St Bloggs Children’s Centre. Hmmm ….
