No Complaints and Genuine Interest Are A Difficult Combination
“Look, Trump is president now, and we owe it to him to give him the cabinet he wants and to let him do the job. If things go badly, we can figure it out later, but for the time being, all these protests are just nonsense. It’s a bunch of people complaining about things that they THINK might happen in the future but haven’t happened yet.”
No one has said this to me, yet, but comments I’ve heard from some family members and co-workers make me think this attitude isn’t far below the surface.
To put it bluntly: I am not interested in being genuinely interested in this particular viewpoint. So how then do I balance in our next principle: “Become genuinely interested in other people”?
Of course, this isn’t the ONLY thing about the person. People are multifaceted, and I can ask about other things. But any “Carnegie Approved” response to this comment seems to entail asking more about it, finding out why the person believes what they do, and so on.
For example, I cannot note that our president’s comments on the campaign trail and before tell us a great deal about his leadership style, or that the Republican party agenda under Paul Ryan has been publicly presented for years. And for the record, these are GOOD things. There is no mystery about what Paul Ryan believes or wants to implement. It’s just that they belie the hypothetical person’s comment above.
And I don’t want to ask more about this person’s values. I don’t want to probe about why this is frustrating to the person or if they have some alternative plan. I am not interested in learning more about their views on peaceful protest.
So what can I do? One option here is some Socratic questioning: “How much do you think Trump’s specific pledges on the campaign trail will guide his actions as president? Do you think his voters want him to act on his pledges? If not, why not? Do you think Republican leaders are interested in enacting his pledges? Do you think there will be friction there? Are there steps that Congress and the president could take that you think would be worth protesting against? How will we know when these things occur?”
This is the approach I took when teaching. We would pass the entire hour with me mostly asking questions and writing things on the board.
So is that the answer? Is this how to become genuinely interested in another person without also criticizing, condemning, or complaining? Are these questions part of arousing an eager want? I don’t know the answer yet, and I feel like things are going to be more difficult living these principles going forward!
