Community Discussion continued: A Feeling of Failure

This blog entry is a continuation of an ongoing community discussion
started by @rortian and @yvesoler.

You are invited to be a part of the discussion: leave a comment, post your own related post, upvote, resteem… anything that keeps the conversation and the learning going!

In case you missed them, here is the list of related posts so far in chronological order:

1. To Steemstem or not to steemstem, who defines science? by @rortian
2. Want to be a part of a Community Discussion? by @yvesoler
3. Community Discussion (continued…) by @rortian

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ENCOUNTERING

Wow… there is lots to process here. While I am thrilled to go deep into this discussion, the number of things to think about can be daunting. I will do my best to answer everything, but we may need to limit the number of concepts we add into one given post, lest we end up missing some important nuances in the mountain of words.

That being said, thank you Mike (@rortian) for the opportunity to walk this path. I am still not sure I am doing it right—hear that fearful doubt creeping in there—but I will do my best to be an educated participant, since this is a topic of great interest to me.

As a very quick aside: in my spiritual path, the main theme that has accompanied me for the last 13 years has been Understanding, which comes to me as the sephirah Binah from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. (I used to teach kabbalah.) I find it very fitting to be discussing Understanding with you now.

Response to post by @rortian

@rortian:
Here’s where I stand on this: I’m terrified (not convinced) that the people I talk to would rather discuss their opinions of my style and my personality characteristics than engage in deep learning about learning.

I no longer wonder about their motivation, as I've been studying this phenomenon since I was ten years old, and I think that I understand it quite well. It continues to recur regularly. (Oh, well...)

I am curious, what do you understand about this phenomenon? In your description you talk about being able to recognize when people don’t want to hear what you have to say, but I am not sure if I caught why you think they are not interested.

Could it be that their not interested appearance is actually a protective shield? To really learn, in my not-so educated experience, you have to open yourself to doubt and the possibility that you really don’t know what you think you know. In order to do this, I have to trust that the other person is willing to walk that path with me. If I think the person is going to use my doubt and vulnerability against me instead of open to the same level so we can really discuss the topic without preconceived notions, then my interest dwindles.

That is a word I have been looking for since we started this conversation: vulnerability. When you put out original ideas, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable, since your identity is often connected to those ideas. If you don’t trust the motivations of the other person, you are not going to risk allowing that person to stomp all over your carefully constructed personal house of cards made up of beliefs and “understandings". I think this is why motivation and trust play such big roles in these conversations.

@rortian:
I’ve spent the last eighteen years supplementing my science education so that I’d have the academic chops to explain stuff

Funny, you just summed up the reason I went back to graduate school!

@rortian:
I don’t think that we actually ever “prevented" conversations. My view is that I failed to reach people, and that they preferred not to be involved.

In this case, I think we are using two different words to say the same thing. I also feel like I have failed when I can’t engage people. That failure can take many forms: lack of interest, being seen as rigid and not open to feedback, etc.

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Another aside:

@rortian:
I’m seeking support in improving my writing. I could hire a coach, or an editor;

If you decide you want to go down this path, I know the perfect coach/editor to help you. She is amazing and would love the material!

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@rortian:
Do you think that many people want to learn that stuff?

I think there are people that don’t want to learn this stuff—as can be said for just about anything—and people that don’t get it. Only after reading your words multiple times am I starting to understand, and I am still not sure I fully get it! But… I find the whole thing fascinating enough that I want to learn more, since how we learn is fundamental to who we are!

@rortian:
Have you had the experience of seeing that someone doesn’t want to listen to what you want to say? Sure; you understand this, right?

Of course, it is what I experience each time I have a conversation with one of my brothers!

Which makes me laugh, because it is the complete opposite of speaking with my mother. With my mother, the discussion is always open, since neither of us thinks we have a monopoly on truth. All we have our thoughts on a given subject. Regardless of whether the other person’s thoughts support or negate one’s own beliefs, I find that comparing and contrasting one to the other only makes your own beliefs more complete.

@rortian:
If I could I’d begin every assertion with “I think" or “I believe" I would, in order to distinguish my humility, but that gets to be very clumsy, so I don’t. Yet I'll never insist that my beliefs or my sentences are necessarily true, because I don't believe that. I just think that they're reasonably justifiable.

In the absence of readable body language, I find these types of phrases to be quite useful. You don’t have to use them every time, but something to that effect could help establish that window of doubt that gives another the security needed to expose vulnerability. Did that make any sense?

@rortian:
Do you think that I’ve been pretending to suffer after working for my entire life to learn what goes on around people? Does anybody believe me when I say that I don’t get off on that kind of trip?

Honestly, I don’t think this I a conscious game, yet I think it is one we play often. Though our minds want to succeed, there is that saboteur part that finds it “safer" to be in that well-known failed space. Success is scary to the psyche, since it is often accompanied by change.

I don’t have any studies I can readily pull up, since my work is mainly on plants, but I believe there are a number of studies showing that while people want to be successful, they often sabotage their own actions because the subconscious is more comfortable where it currently is. This is what I meant by “rigged the game I your favor." It was an invitation to explore a deeper possible reason to why I felt that your words did not reflect the invitation your mind wanted them to be.

I find that thinking about this helps quite a bit. Whether it be business or relationships, I have found myself acting this way without awareness many times. For example, when I went to the college interview for Harvard a billion years ago, I flippantly answered the question of why I wanted to go to there by saying, “I actually don’t want to go to Harvard, I just want to see if I can get in." Needless to say, I didn’t get in, and while I made everyone think it was just as well, deep down I felt like a failure. As I thought about why I gave that answer, I realized that I didn’t really believe I had what it took to get in and succeed there. Instead of charming them during the interview, I sabotaged it so I could show the world that I chose not to go there, not that they rejected me.

You know what? I have never admitted that to anyone in the world—not even to myself—until just now.

@rortian:
There's also the distinct (to me) possibility that I might perform faultlessly (briefly, on rare occasions) and that someone could make up any unjustifiable accusation about me to change the subject and avoid my conversation.

Does that ever happen to you? (Is it just me? Am I completely mistaken?)

Of course it happens to me. But… if I have done my own internal work and feel like I did the best I could to lay out my discussion without judgment and open to any direction, then that person’s response does not bother me. Not only, I usually find that the community itself responds in my favor. When my actions and intentions line up, then nothing another says or does can hurt me. I still may not have tons of readers, upvotes, resteems, and comments, but I will know that I did the best I could possibly do. I am not sure if that comforts you, but it helps me quite a bit.

So now that we have established a strong foundation, where do we go from here?

I think you know what is necessary to have authentic communication and have the knowledge to really open new doors in learning. Not sure how I can be of further help. Heck, you already have a higher reputation score than I do and you just got here! And to be perfectly honest, this sort of irks me. I am super happy for you, that is not the irksome part, the irk is personal. I make a sincere effort to read, upvote, and comment on many posts to share and support the community. I get responses on my comments from people saying that they appreciate my words, but few upvotes and comments on my posts. Going back to our discussion, this makes me feel like a failure and makes me wonder if I have anything worth contributing. So you see, you are not the only one that fails to get the response you want.

Any insight?