Why We’re Broken
“Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”
— Georges Erasmus
Imagine you were in a country where the local people speak in a language you don’t know well.
You’re hungry, and you want to ask someone if you can eat the apple you have in your hand.
Due to your difficulty with the language, you actually ask if you can eat this rock.
It would be understandable for someone told you that you cannot eat a rock, but it also misses the point.
It is more useful to focus on the intended meaning rather than the words used. Real communication requires building a common understanding. When there’s a miscommunication, addressing it and building a common language allows you to move forward.
If one person is unwilling to see past definitions, there’s a lot of additional burden on the other. You’ll need to hear their words through their language, and then translate your own so that it is heard the way it is intended.
Sometimes you may find that there are no words which can be heard in the way you intend them. This often indicates that the other person is trying to “win”, rather than trying to come to a common understanding.
If neither person is willing to focus on understanding, then only conflict remains.
In politics this is especially evident. Arguing about the definitions of terms like Capitalism or Socialism is less useful than understanding what the person you are talking to means when they use the term.
Two people may agree that consolidated top down power is destructive and is harming them may find themselves on different sides of a disagreement when one sees Fascism and the other sees Communism.
They could potentially agree on a solution if they could work past the words. Without that understanding, they can each lean into oppositional top down power as the only feasible answer.
They will each create the problem the other saw coming.
