The other day it was raining heavily. I chose to take an umbrella rather than shaking my fist at the sky. Shaking your fist at the sky seems pretty stupid, but people do analogous things all the time.
Complaining to your ingroup about your outgroup isn’t going to change your outgroup. Complaining that you are misunderstood isn’t going to make you understood. Changing the way you communicate might. You are not in control of how people interpret you, but you are in control of what you say.
It might be unfortunate that people have a hair-trigger tendency to interpret others as saying something dastardly, but, like the rain, it is too large and diffuse a phenomenon to actually do anything about.
Thinking in terms of virtue (or blame), and thinking in terms of fixing things , are very different. It’s very tempting to sit down with your ingroup, and agree with them about the deplorability of the outgroup, who aren’t even party to the conversation...as if that was achieving something. You can tell it is an attractor, because rational people are susceptible to it, too
Possibly related:
The other day it was raining heavily. I chose to take an umbrella rather than shaking my fist at the sky. Shaking your fist at the sky seems pretty stupid, but people do analogous things all the time.
Complaining to your ingroup about your outgroup isn’t going to change your outgroup. Complaining that you are misunderstood isn’t going to make you understood. Changing the way you communicate might. You are not in control of how people interpret you, but you are in control of what you say.
It might be unfortunate that people have a hair-trigger tendency to interpret others as saying something dastardly, but, like the rain, it is too large and diffuse a phenomenon to actually do anything about.
Thinking in terms of virtue (or blame), and thinking in terms of fixing things , are very different. It’s very tempting to sit down with your ingroup, and agree with them about the deplorability of the outgroup, who aren’t even party to the conversation...as if that was achieving something. You can tell it is an attractor, because rational people are susceptible to it, too