What ails our discussions and debates

Often when we are trying to convey our views to another person and the other person is just not receptive to it- they might give counter arguments, be non affected by it or just rubbish your entire point. Why does this happen? How should we approach this problem?

Let us take an example of something like trying to convey a political opinion to another person. First lets backtrack and understand the dynamics of how we came to adopt that opinion - the common notions are that we acquired it by reading some articles, hearing people talk about it or by having experienced some of it in personal life. There is another important aspect to it - it is closely associated with your own personality. An aggressive approach is more likely align to right wing approach, the artistic community will tend to have more liberal leanings etc. - there is some psychology at play here. A right wing approach in my understanding is of prioritizing the individual's interests or the interests of your own community which will seek favour with an aggressive person because his aggression is representative of his holding his own thoughts, beliefs, rights, ego etc at a higher priority than others. The artistic community will have people who are tuned to feedback from others because empathy becomes an important part of their profession - therefore they are more likely to be sympathetic towards needs of others. I know I have painted aggression and artistic community with a very broad brush stroke and that it is never that tight a compartmentalization - there will be a lot of exceptions in both the communities but for the sake of argument, let's consider it.

We tend to believe that our own opinion is based on facts and /or scientific principles that are beyond question - these articles, talks, personal accounts and experiences are what formed our opinion. We feel it is a result of knowledge of truth while the others are ill informed or biased or belonging to the opposing group of liberals/right wingers/leftists etc. But often we do not realize there is a personality component to it. So the political opinion that we have is also a result of  cherry picking of information - we will read articles favoring our view, we listen to speakers favoring our view and we tend to experience real life situations also through the lens of our confirmation bias. To us any article, talk or personal experience of opposing view is either false or biased or is downright ignored or is an exception.

The problem is the opinion is too closely tied to our personality for us to be able to see the opposing viewpoint. Our personality attributes are shaped by a combination of several factors primarily nature (stuff you are born with) and nurture (what we learn from our environment). The personality attributes are so well integrated with our belief systems that to adopt a different viewpoint on the subject is akin to adopting a change in your personality which cannot be done without shaking the very foundation of your belief system of not only politics but life in general. We all know that it is a very daunting task. It involves bringing down a complete edifice on which many parts of one's life are resting and one odd article, talk or personal experience will not be able to achieve  it. Studies have shown that when people are presented with evidence disproving their opinion or beliefs they disbelieve the evidence or try to find faults with it. The end result is that they end up clinging more dearly to their own opinions.

I believe one way to approach this problem is being aware of these biases existing in all of us. Accepting that we are as much prey to these cognitive biases as others is the stepping stone. Then comes understanding why the person of opposing view came to the subject conclusion on the  issue. By that I don't mean thinking that they are misinformed fools or that they have fallen prey to PR stints that you yourself are far too intelligent to fall trap to. It means genuinely trying to understand if there is some merit in their belief and what are the emotions/behavioral attributes at play. The approach has to be similar to the case of a disease treatment where ideally the medical practitioner should try to understand the cause and treat it rather than treating the symptoms. It is not an easy process and it makes a lot of demands on your time and energy - that is why we keep failing miserably at it. We will generally not understand the other person well enough or are not invested enough in the process to indulge the required time and mental energy.

                                        

                                                      Four Blind Men and Elephant

The story of the four blind men and the elephant often comes to mind. In the story four blind men are touching different parts of the elephant and trying to figure out what it is. The one touching its tail thinks its a rope, the one touching its leg thinks its a tree, the one touching its trunk thinks it's a hose and the one touching the tusk feels its some weapon. Each of them is absolutely convinced that he is right and the others are wrong. This is how we tend to take sides in a debate. We tend to think we are absolutely right and others are fools. The truth is generally that there are elements of right in other person's perspective as well. I have often felt that the best approach is to try to genuinely understand why the other person has come to that conclusion. The benefit of practicing this method is that you will end up having a richer and more comprehensive perspective on the subject of discussion. In the example of the four blind men and elephant, if each person was to try and understand the opinion of the other 3 persons, he would have a better, more well rounded appreciation of truth. 

Most subjects of debate are complex multifaceted issues with myriad aspects that we are not fully conversant with even when we consider ourselves somewhat of an expert on the subject. In the age of information abundance it is easy to be lulled into believing we know a lot. The Dunning -Kruger effect comes to mind. 

                                                            Dunning Kruger Effect        

It is very difficult to see that random information collected from the net does not translate into knowledge on the subject. We generally tend to have a reductionist or simplistic view of the subject and try to impose it on others as well.  It is at best selective and biased. When the starting point is that I know the subject completely you are blocking your chance of getting a more well-rounded understanding of the subject. You cannot pour water into a glass that is full. We have to realize that our comprehension of the subject is also not complete - only then does true learning happen and we will get a more nuanced perspective of the subject.

The beautiful part about the whole process is that when you start to practice this, not only does your comprehension of the subject improve but the other person also starts to get what you are saying. It is very difficult to implement but whenever I have practiced this successfully in personal life I have got the stated result. Maybe its that people start mirroring each other's emotions/behaviour etc. When you yourself are truly open to understanding the others point of view without being judgmental, they tend to follow suit and start to understand your perspective. Another way to think about it is - if someone needs a hundred rupees, you can give it to them only if you possess a hundred rupees i.e. "You cannot give someone something that you yourself do not possess". If we expect others to understand and be receptive of our viewpoint, then we have to first have that quality ourselves. You can give only what you have. I have seen this playing out in real life in many ways. When you are angry and frustrated with your spouse, you will get a similar response from them, if you keep debating with someone feeling that the other person is not understanding your perspective , you will elicit similar response from the other person as well. A corollary to this is  - "In any situation desirable or undesirable, we need to realize how we are contributing to the situation". because believe me you are contributing to it. In any undesirable situation , we tend to misplace the blame onto others, circumstances etc . That is true, no doubts - they all have also contributed to the situation. But we also by omission or commission have contributed to it and we fail to see it. 

                

                                                                     Vector Addition

I feel having a visual reference for a philosophical concept is very handy. To give a visual reference to people who are familiar with vector addition - consider the vector addition depicted in diagram above. Four different forces (F1,F2,F3 and F4) are acting at a point and they can be resolved into a single resultant vector (R) which gives the final output of the forces. The final force(R) acting can be called the resultant force/vector and the resultant's components give the contributing forces/vectors (F1,F2,F3 and F4). We can think of any situation we are faced with as a resultant sum of various forces and it can be broken down into its components which are the contributing factors. Any major issue is a sum total of several contributing factors like circumstances, people etc. One important vector in any situation is our own contribution. That is one vector we can for sure make a change in - a change in that vector of your own contribution will mitigate the resultant vector or situation in life. We should be aware of how we have contributed to it and try to fix it as well. Real life is dynamic unlike the diagram of vectors. I have personally felt that when you work on your own contributing factor, the other contributing factors are more likely to follow suit. This is a subtle twist to the way we approach issues but a very powerful one. It is very difficult to practice but very effective.

The nature of understanding

How do we understand anything? How did people like Gautam Buddha manage to gain enlightenment by just sitting still and focusing inwards? 

I want to take you through the mental process by which I arrived at some conclusion to these questions. 

There is something about thinking in terms of questions and answers that triggers a mental process enabling moving towards a solution or clarity. when a question is posed to the mind it seems to start a process of going through the available database of knowledge , information and experience and at times it will come up with an answer. To me, this simple mental process is quite baffling in how it works. We routinely experience this process without realization of how it is working. It might be the desire to trigger this mental process that Bhagwad Gita is in the form of a question answer session between Krishna and Arjun. Reading it is expected to initiate a process of contemplation and reflection.

Sometimes when we pose a question to ourselves, we find that our minds are able to come up with some solution other times it cannot. When we cannot find the answer, it is indicative that we are not able to access the mental database of information and experience required- so either we presently do not have that knowledge or we are not able to fetch that knowledge from the mental stockpile.

I like to picture the process of contemplative thinking as something that involves two things - an external reference and an internal reference. I like to think of external reference as a key specially designed so as to be able to hook up with an object of certain specific shapes only. An internal reference is like a lock with grooves of specific shape that will engage with an external reference of a matching shape only. The whole thing works similar to the lock and key mechanism of enzymes as shown below.

                                                      LOCK AND KEY MECHANISM
 

When we ask ourselves a question, it works as an external reference. This external reference is the form of specially designed key takes a dip into a well of knowledge, information and experience. Whether we are able to get a solution or not will depend on if that answer piece of information has a suitably shaped lock to engage with this external reference. If yes, then we have a probable solution which just seems to pop up in our mind. In case we do not get an answer, the reason could be either that the shape of the external reference is not suitable to the solution i.e. the internal reference or there is an absence of an internal reference.

There is an ancient saying which translates into: "No one can teach anyone something that he/she did not already know". The underlying theory probably is that our minds already have access to every required knowledge. This availability is a sum total of all the information, knowledge and experiences that we have had in our lives. If the concept of Hinduism is subscribed to then, it contains the sum total of all knowledge and experiences of all our past lives since the soul is a common factor in all our lives and it carries forward everything. Most of us clearly can access this database atleast from this current life. There are claims of people who can remember things from previous births and some people claim to be able to tap into previous lives in a state of hypnosis. But we will not delve into that since most of us cannot seem to access it even if it exists.

The shape of external reference is determined by language - so it is dependent on how we pose the question- how we frame that question will decide whether or not we will get the answer we are looking for. The internal reference's shape is decided by the manner in which we consume that knowledge - it can be in terms of  experience or co-relation with other information or experiences. We can alter the shape of the internal reference by two methods: one is by thinking about it and second is by association and co-relation with other knowledge/experiences. The process of thinking about it helps translate what we know through experience into language. We learn in experience but we think in language. It is somewhat like how computers understand in machine language and to interact with humans it needs to be translated into programming language. The process of association and co-relation helps build a sort of graph where each piece of knowledge is interconnected to others in different ways as shown below.

                                                             CONNECTED GRAPH

The associating of "a" with "c" will enable an external reference capable of accessing "c" to also be able to access "a" because of this connection of "a-c". So co-relating "a" with "c" has an effect of altering the shape of the grooves of the lock of internal reference such that it accommodates a wider variety of key shapes. Ergo, the more connected an event "a" is, the more the ease of fetching it from the database. It is this interconnected nature of information that translates into knowledge that can be actually applied.

The shape of external reference is dependent on language and its articulation. That is why reading books helps. An author is able to articulate things in a manner that allows an external reference to form that is able to fetch a suitable experiential internal reference from within us to make us really understand the point being conveyed. But the fact remains that unless we have had an internal reference relevant to the external reference, we will never truly understand what it means. Therefore the ancient saying "No one can teach anyone something that he/she does not already know".

Let me give an example from personal life. You are teaching Yoga to someone and he/she says that they are experiencing pain in some body part during a particular asana or pose. Now for you to truly understand what they are saying, you must have had experienced something similar in some point of time when you were doing that asana. Let us retreat further and think about the word 'pain'. When someone says they are in pain, for another person to truly understand it there has to be some personal experience of pain. The word pain carries meaning for you only if you have experienced it - otherwise it is just a word and you are just parroting it without truly understanding it. Most of us in some part of early life have learned to associate an uneasy bodily experience with the word pain. So the word pain is an external reference for getting an internal experiential reference of that unpleasant feeling. So if we look at it, humans think in language while we learn in experiences. 

Now this presents a fundamental problem of translation of the experience into language. This is probably why despite having all knowledge inside of us, we do not have clarity on things or we do not truly understand many things till we are somehow able to articulate that experience. When we read a book many a times you feel you have understood a concept or idea correctly. That is because the author has been able to articulate it in a manner that you were able to correlate it to a personal experience which allows you to truly understand what is being said. He has been able to provide a suitable external reference to enable you to fetch the relevant internal reference.  

When someone like Gautam Buddha has been able to sit still and focus his mind internally I feel what really happens is that he is able to tap into all the experiential knowledge he has had- maybe also tap into previous life experiences. One might feel how can anyone have had sufficient life experience in such young age to understand the nature of life and the universe. But let me give you an example. You are watching a cricket match. You see the batsman execute a particular shot but you just see him move his body and bat and the shot is over. But when an expert batsman or a commentator sees the same shot, he is able to give nuances about the batsman's body position, back-lift of the bat, his foot position, his head balance, his follow through etc. But the event was the same for both you and the expert. So what expertise teaches you is the ability to focus and see the nuances and details. But the fact remains that the information was always present - the difference is your ability to see and understand it. Similarly every life situation is full of information that reveals the secrets of life and the ways the universe functions. You just don't see it. We all have experienced this in personal life when long after a life event is over, something happens that triggers an insight or a deeper understanding of  what happened. What you understood at this point of time was available as far as information is concerned at the point of time when it occurred too. What changed now is you were able to get some other association which provides that insight into the event.

So when Buddha sat in meditation he was probably through focus able to gain that "eye of an expert" allowing him to tap into the enormous information present in every event he experienced and co-relate everything to obtain the knowledge that gives an insight into how the universe functions. Also the universe seems to have repetitive patterns - if you gain sufficient insight into any particular field you start seeing the underlying patterns which can be applied in other aspects of  life. When you dive deep into an any field, you arrive at philosophy. Look at Bruce Lee - who was he ? He was a martial artist - someone most people would expect to be a meathead but he had dived deep enough to come up with philosophy. His deep philosophical statements like "Be water my friend" give a preview into this aspect. It can be seen in old time wrestlers of India - they can be heard philosophizing that their devotion to wrestling is their way to find God. The centenarian Fauja Singh who used to run marathons used to say he connects to God when he runs these marathons. Buddha was able to unravel the mysterious patterns of life and saw how it repeats itself in every aspect of life and how this world functions. Buddha and other enlightened people probably gained from reflecting upon what has transpired in their life and gain a sort of clarity that reveals the laws and patterns of the universe.