The Insights of a Child

I read a blog post of one of my friends, and she told an intriguing story about a time when she gave her 7 year-old cousin a dollar because she lost a bet, and her cousin started running around the house screaming “I’m rich! I’m rich!” It made me realize that we have our best communication skills when we are children. Children don’t worry about being politically correct or whether or not what they say is offensive. They tell you exactly what they mean without being tactful. If they don’t like how something tastes they will say, “Yuck,” whereas an adult would say, “I think that it has too much salt.” Why is it that as a human race, as we age we only get worse at communicating.

Maybe that’s exactly the problem: we age. As we get older, it is not socially acceptable to be blunt. With a child, those blunt comments are seen as funny, whereas with an adult it is only seen as rude. As we age, there is an expectation that we will also mature, and as we mature, there is an expectation that those offensive, blunt comments that get to the heart of the problem should no longer be accepted. So then why is it that as we mature, and our vocabulary and processing skills improve that we find it more difficult to say what we want to say?

One of my hypotheses is that we become too concerned with social correctness that we lose the meaning in what we are saying. It’s like writing a good essay. There is a reason that many drafts are required, we don’t get it right the first time. When we talk, it’s like speaking in first draft form. This could be why many people are communicating more frequently with texts and emails. It allows us to formulate the “right” sentence without the awkward moment when the person is standing in front of you waiting for an answer.

Many people, when hearing a criticism, immediately assume that it is only meant to demean what they have done. Often times, criticisms are meant to improve what you’ve already accomplished. We think of the word ‘criticize’ in its pejorative sense too often. It could be this way of thinking that is forcing us to revise our criticisms to the point that it loses its meaning. Instead of using the word ‘bad’ we replace it with ‘developing’ or always make sure to add a ‘but…’ What I mean is that there is always a comment praising another portion of what you’ve done that makes the criticism meant for improvement seem less important. That is why I always tell people who are trying to come up with “the right words” to tell me what they initially thought. From my experience, the watered down version of the truth that occurs from mental revisions only cause more communication issues. Ironic how in trying to come up with the right words to solve a problem, we can often create another one, and the most innocent people in the world, children, are the best at saying what needs to be heard.

The "Information Filter Bubble"

We live in a world where all the information is available to us right at our fingertips. If we want to know something, then we can find it on the Internet: the invention that has revolutionized the way the world communicates. Well…not exactly. Eli Pariser was completely unknown until he discovered recently that the algorithms for search engines, and even social networks like Facebook, are using our past searches and providing us with the results that it thinks that we want, and he discussed it a TED talk. In essence, they are filtering our results for us. He calls it an “information filter bubble”. To see the video, click here.

All that this is doing is causing the global community to become more ignorant to the issues going on in the world. The search engine may identify us by our religion or political beliefs or interests and will tailor the results to fit our interests ignoring the fact that there is another side to each argument. This will only enforce the beliefs that we already have without testing them against other’s counterpoints. For example, two different people could enter ‘food’ into the search bar, and one might get results about great local restaurants that provided ratings and comments while the other might get pages on recipes and ingredients. The differences may be subtle, but they more that you browse the web, the more that the Internet will personalize your results, until eventually, the opposing arguments have disappeared completely from your searches. The Internet in its attempt to broaden knowledge throughout the world has only proved to be detrimental by narrowing the breadth of information to which we have access.

By no means do I want to scare or prevent you from using the Internet, but this is a real problem that exists. We are getting what we want to hear instead of what we need or should hear. I do not know how to solve this problem or I would tell you, but I want to warn you of this “information filter bubble” that surrounds each of us on the Internet. When doing research on the web, be sure to always ask yourself, “Do I have the complete truth?”

Poisonwood Bible

In class at the moment, I am reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It follows the Price family (mother, father, and four daughters) as they move from Georgia to the Congo to convert the natives there to Christianity. But, as in any quality novel, the family faces their fair share of challenges, and many of the issues the Price family faces in terms of their mission could have been minimized had they been willing to communicate with the native people.

Reverend Nathan Price, the father, is the guiltiest on this count. His thoughts are clouded by his faith, and his ego. He refuses to work at all with the local figures and judges them without giving them a chance to defend themselves. For example, Mr. Price often sees the local religious leader drinking, and not acting “proper” in terms of his beliefs, but never once has he held a conversation with the man. Mr. Price might also be more successful if he could grasp his mind around the idea that not every native will want to convert. He assumes that because he is “bringing the word of God” to them that they will willingly change their belief system. He is arrogant to think that he can come into another culture as a foreigner and change everything that he believes is wrong.

Mr. Price is not the only person responsible for the lack of communication. The natives are equally responsible as well. For example, Mr. Price wanted to have a baptism in the river nearby, but many locals weren’t comfortable with that plan, and based upon the portion of the novel that I’ve read, the baptism has yet to happen, but Mr. Price did discover why people were uncomfortable with the location of the baptism, a child had been eaten by a crocodile in that same river recently and people were afraid of it. This information was relayed to him months after he initially voiced his plans. The natives are probably doing this because they had finally ousted the Dutch colonial presence, and were cautious of any person who had white skin because Dutch brutalized the population.

Both Mr. Price, and the natives are guilty of the same crimes: failing to communicate to others and failing to allow others to communicate to them. Communication is a two-way street. You must first be willing to communicate in order to receive anything in return, but at the moment, neither Mr. Price nor the natives is willing to take the first step because neither is interested in learning from each other. And until one does, they will remain in a tension-ridden environment that will displease both parties involved.