Emotions vs Evidence, Assumptions vs Questions

image taken from experiencelife.com

In recent months I have been confronted with many emotion-filled situations from either my work situation or the work environment of others. And in the media there have been stories that have divided the public around emotional polar opposites and opposing principles such as the Planned Parenthood videos or the Same Sex Marriage debate. While it is impossible and even inadvisable to remove emotion and principles from our attitudes and approaches, when we work only with emotional input then the greatest losers are creativity and the truth.

At one point in time in my earlier years, I had started down the road to becoming a journalist. The feeling didn't last very long and looking back I am grateful for that. I would have been greatly frustrated by the need to range myself on either side of a great political divide. Am I liberal and progressive? Or am I conservative? It is not acceptable anymore to say, "I take each subject individually and judge it on its merits and not on its politics." Currently, I can read the same piece of news in the media that labels itself as liberal and again in conservative media outlets and I wonder if they are even the same story.

The Washington Post published a chart that places media outlets along this conservative/liberal continuum. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/21/lets-rank-the-media-from-liberal-to-conservative-based-on-their-audiences/. It contained few surprises.

Social media posts (Blogs, Twitter and Facebook particularly) have a similar divide where there are conservative audiences following conservative posts and vice versa for the liberals. It is becoming an increasingly emotional environment where expletives, insults, personal slinging matches greet any kind of information that feeds either the conservative or liberal viewpoints.

I have been reading a wonderfully insightful book called, "change your questions, change your life" by Marilee Adams, PhD (Berrett-Koehler, 2004). In this she describes a "judger" mentality that we can have as opposed to a "learner" mentality and that this can apply not just to individuals but to teams and groups. I want to be so bold to suggest that our society as a whole has taken on a "judger" mentality. With all our freedoms we have become so much more judgemental. We are losing the ability to listen with the real intent to learn from each other. We are more concerned with proving that we are correct and we will twist any fact just to arrive at that end.

Strangely enough, as a result of this, we are losing our true freedoms. We are seeking to do away with oppression but if our processes in doing so are oppressive then have we really gained any ground? People are frightened to ask questions and to look for real evidence. Science has become pseudo science depending on which side of the divide you are on. It is a finger pointing and self-validating exercise and not one of true intellectual gain. The Emperor is not wearing any clothes but there is no-one listening to the little boy who is crying out the truth.

Why is this happening to this degree? In one word: Emotion. It is about fear, insecurities, pride, anger, disdain, shame and guilt within ourselves or imposed on others. It is time to step back from the emotion of each situation and look for the facts, ask questions and examine the evidence. It is the quality of our questions that will move us forward, not the selection of our solutions. We may be surprised.