Antidoters Assemble! Pt 2: Stop Shouting. Get Curious
Playing our individual part in a positive counter-culture
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” H L Mencken
I gave myself a weekly deadline for posting and yet, here I sit with 48 chrome tabs still open and three exam-tomorrow nightmares later, pressing ‘publish’ two weeks late. Frankly, I’ve been a little overwhelmed by my naivety in presuming to come up with solutions to the huge, hairy problems that I successfully conflated within my last post.
In sum: the attention economy’s need for salacious, dumbed-down clickbait; the unreliability of data especially when cherry-picked to sustain activist narratives; and perhaps most fundamentally, human psychology and our tendencies towards tribal thinking, confirmation bias and of course, negativity bias. Phew. Maybe people like feeling a bit annoyed a lot of the time and I should just leave everyone to it?
“I’m not young enough to know everything” James M Barrie
Any ‘solutions’ to follow come with the disclaimer that I’m only scratching at the surface of something I now appreciate requires Hawking-level brainpower. What I am, is many of you: a slightly perplexed everywoman tuned in to the problems and capable of listening to smarter people. I’ve simply committed more time to it than most normal people can afford whilst in a phase of enjoying the professional adventure between adventures. A curious generalist seeking to dive a little deeper.
For simplicity’s sake I’ll split the solutions I’ve gleaned (so far) into two posts: External ‘Top down’ ie. systems change, products, education etc (my next) and internal or ‘Bottom up’: things that we, as innately irascible individuals can do to acknowledge, correct and potentially push back on doomsaying. I balked a little at this as like most people, I prefer to put the blame on someone else (Cambridge Analytica), but as I researched deeper I came to see my own culpability.
Bottoms up it is (cheers!)... and wow, there are some smart people who have invested their careers in seeking to understand the psychology of trauma, polarisation and negativity. Calm, positive people I aspire to be more like. My book list has piled up (on which I’ll report back), but even chapter skimming and the many youtube/ podcasts I’ve consumed have yielded a positive, optimistic framework for the thinking and behavioural change that we can all implement in ourselves - and indeed must, concurrent with any systems change.
So how many of these have you experienced?
The need to ‘correct’ people online and/or re-shared something you disagree with (to make the point that you disagree with it)
Felt irritated, or worse, contemptuous at seeing a tribal identifier in someone’s bio (MAGA, FBPE, pronouns, flag emoji etc)
Gone ad-hominem in an online debate- ‘Well, you would say that.. You’re x’
Discounted someone because someone else has referred to them as a contrarian, provocateur or charlatan
Clicked on a ‘Person-you-like destroys Person-you-dislike’ link (and now your Youtube algorithm makes you look like a psychopath)
Kept quiet during a conversation that doesn’t sit right for fear of saying ‘the wrong thing’ (you and 62% of every American apparently)
Googled assertions (as opposed to open questions) that chime with your worldview
Embellished a negative anecdote to ‘fit in’? (oh, just me then?)
None? Pass Go. You live and breathe the Athenian democratic ideal of thesis and antithesis in healthy balance. One, two or more? It’s you. You’re responsible for prolonging the career of Piers Morgan (insert favourite/ most hated talking head here).
Step 1: Look in the Mirror
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering” Dostoevsky
Unfortunately for those seeking a quick fix or to point the finger, an end to negative polarisation starts with us. We, by our knee-jerk reactions are responsible for exacerbating the divides and helping negativity proliferate. Brexit… Trump… ‘Triggered’? We may not all be ‘traumatised’ but we all feel a threat perception on so many issues and we simply cannot divorce external polarisation from our internal tendencies to go all-out-Gordon-Ramsey. Democracy depends on us managing our own mental state and not perceiving threat in every unwelcome comment, opinion piece or data point and yet many of us live in a state of constant reaction and overwhelm.
We know this as we’re signing up to yoga and mindfulness apps in our millions, Charles Macksey’s horse and boy sketch philosophies have been a bestseller for 2 years and everyone’s posting about ‘self’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘flow’ or ‘authenticity’. There’s a hypothesis here with regards to how far the decline of religion and the transcendence it provides has contributed to the growth of these (arguably fairly narcissistic?) industries which seek to focus all our energies on our ‘inner self’... which I’ll hold my breath for a deeper dive into in due course 👀.
Is it working? Maybe for some, but it can all seem a bit like sticking plasters on a broken leg. Positive resolutions that dissipate with the evening news bulletin or your next scroll. The truth is it’s hard work to evaluate ourselves and consciously shift our instinctive responses away from the primal amygdala (whose job as the lizard brain is to trigger us into self preservation flight or fight on negative news) to the rational prefrontal-cortex - which is more reflective, calm and measured. It takes practice but it’s critical, because we simply can’t demonstrate empathy without it.
Alex Evans, Founder of the ‘Larger Us’ initiative- set up to tackle them and us thinking - details three simple techniques to enable us to take back control and resist the lizard brain just as soon as our hearts start pounding: 1. Ground yourself: stop, breathe, count, exhale. 2. Let the body discharge it by itself 3. Don’t suppress but notice it - label it, disclose it, write it down. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Maybe with practice it can be…
Many of us need to accept that we are treading water on the very surface of debates we simply don’t have the time to understand the complexity of, paddling amidst our tribes at the whim of doomsaying headlines. Curiosity has given way to a desire for certainty in all things and the desire to align ourselves with goodies over baddies (who are rarely either - not in complicated societies, politics or ideologies). But there are no life-vest ‘truths’ that can be articulated simply. Life’s complicated, people are complicated and there will always be competing interests and rights to consider. What we can do is swim out further. Get curious and dig deeper trusting with greater optimism that most people’s motivations are ultimately good.
”The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence” Charles Bukowski
Step 2: Personify Curiosity
Why do we need certainty? When and why did we stop thinking out loud? When did we start demonising u-turns even when information changed? Surely it’s not weak. It’s strong.
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”. George Bernard Shaw
Let’s Ask. More. Questions. Be suspicious of statistics offered in isolation and distrustful of headline writers who wilfully misrepresent for clicks (esp regarding scientific research: ‘Studies show men’s inability to put laundry in as opposed to ‘on’ the basket solely responsible for soaring divorce rate!’ Daily Mail.. probably) and that’s not even touching on ‘fake news’ and the fact that when discovered (post a billion shares) a retraction makes the bottom of page 24.
Who is presenting the data and why? Might their salary even depend on a binary interpretation? Simply googling an opposite assertion can uncover a rabbit hole of tenured experts with years of study contradicting each other. All know a lot more than us, our mates or the average journalist and even they can’t reach consensus (see any search on ‘innate female traits’ or ‘James Damore’ - with apologies if you open that can of worms which I lost a few days of my life to).
This is not ‘skepticism’ as it’s so often written off - it’s curiosity, however unfashionable. And whilst it certainly requires empathy, it’s not cold or “oppressive” to be objective or to consider broader data when confronted with a horrific lived-experience. It’s critical to understanding the scale of a problem and to being able to address it. There just might be more than one thing going on e.g. underrepresentation of women or minorities = discrimination, or rising anxiety rates in children = screen time. Both/ many things can be true at once and by ignoring the complexity, we ignore a whole host of possible other solutions. If it feels too simple...
“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought” JFK
Headlines undeniably have a subliminal effect but in spite of the convenience of harvesting bite-sized knowledge in this way, we need to seek out experts who challenge us, and preferably in longer-form. People who sit in the middle of the ‘doomed!’ to ‘everything is awesome!’ spectrum or slightly to the other side of our intuitive position. Especially those who are prepared to step on a few landmines or hold their own-side to account. They do so bravely, as even attempting nuance or to query binary thinking can result in being maligned as an agent of the other side or for an evil ‘ism’. It’s a clever (if cynical) tactic as their output is then hard to publicly share without fear of being accused of the same, but with this trend seriously devaluing the terms for when they are required. My own’ internalised misogyny’ a case-in-point. Ouch.
Typically, such commentators reveal not only a refreshing spirit of curiosity but positive motivations to build upon progress and get to the heart of the same complicated societal challenges that they are accused of not caring about. Of course we should beware the professional contrarians who make careers out of doomsaying about doomsayers - there are many - but we do constructive debate a disservice by discounting everyone as such. Listen intently for experts that say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘we can’t be sure’’. For ‘however’ as opposed to ‘moreover’... they are more likely proven right in the long term (another Tetlock gem). Side note: they’re typically also poor (if they haven’t achieved a best-seller or academic tenure) as nuance is rarely rewarded with clicks and these days, may even come at the cost of their livelihoods (resists urge to go off on a ‘cancel-culture’ tangent)..
The more we read and listen, the less confident in our views we will become. If we assume a baseline of humility and become comfortable with uncertainty we discover that... how odd!…. it’s impossible to be curious and pissed off at the same time.
A fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool’. Good old Shakespeare.
Step 3: Have Better Conversations
Share your curiosity. Be the good-natured skeptic in conversations. Dialogue, by its nature, requires reciprocity and we need to actively listen. People who don’t, get angry or belligerent but maybe we can knock a few spiky edges off each other simply by listening.
Our neurophysiology in disagreements is super important. Jamie Wheal (a leading expert on ‘Flow’) shares (c. 28 mins) how studies have shown that the most significant single factor in a leader’s success was that they could regulate their nervous system into a coherent, calm state and bring others into that state - that they had ‘the longest pendulum’. If we evoke a defensive posture in someone else, they will double down.
Share things you like or find intriguing (‘Wow, who knew renewables generated more energy than fossil fuels in Europe last year?) using questions if you want to avoid seeming to condone an assertion or fact. Argue from compassion and ‘star-man’ the argument as opposed to resorting to strawmen (great article on this by Angel Eduardo): To star-man is to not only engage with the most charitable version of your opponent’s argument, but also with the most charitable version of your opponent, by acknowledging their good intentions and your shared desires despite your disagreements. Shrug off those who play the player and not the ball.
Everyone seems capable of advocating for this but few can actually do it. Some phrases that can help: “Can’t both be simultaneously true?”, “Might that be an oversimplification?”, “Interesting! What’s the source?” Track up to the shared ambition (e.g. equity, justice, hope) whenever you feel tempers fraying and know when to walk away if your partner is too entrenched. Above all, we don’t need to have an opinion on everything and can acknowledge and own what we don’t know. This displays humility and makes us more likeable and often, only by asking questions, we’re likely to reveal to our conversational partners how little they actually understand whatever it is they’re pontificating about. Some great experts on this in the sources below (just please don’t please mirror me Chris Voss-style. ‘Mirror you.. you say” It’s just weird).
Step 4: If all else fails, turn off
Time out.
Yes, you’re the product. Just stop reading, listening or clicking. Go to the park with your kids. Pick some daffodils. Call your Mum. Zoom your mates. (They can still be your mates, whatever your differing views on face masks).
And if that all of the above feels far too much like hard work, look out for my next ‘Top Down’ post where I’ll be sharing some new tools, counter-initiatives, great content resources and ideas to look out for. And do please send me any you’ve come across (@jesbutcher)
The Antidoters are on the case.
A Random selection of sources for further reading
The Larger Us initiative
Rebel Wisdom - 3 part documentary on ‘The Science & Psychology of Polarisation’
Bloomberg interview with Phillip Tetlock on the fallibility of experts
Stephen Porges work on Polyvagal theory on the neuroscience of polarisation/ the physiological impact of our fight or flight reflexes being triggered.
‘How to have Impossible Conversations, a practical guide’ by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose ( or Rebel Wisdom interview with authors)
‘Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together: Ian Leslie’
‘What are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement’ Buster Benson
Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss
Quotes c/o ‘Real Social Justice’ instagram