Regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election, the US has developed problems that must be resolved if we are ever to come together as a healthy and prosperous country. Hopefully, that’s everyone’s ultimate goal.
Labels are a fundamental part of our belief systems. We make decisions based on our life experience and what we think we know. After reviewing an issue or event through our unique filters, we’ll often attach a tag that might describe how we’ve rated that person, event, or circumstance. Something is “good” or “bad”. A person is honest and firm, or deceitful and crooked, etc.
While categorizing the things we encounter according to life experiences is a normal human response to stimuli, most of us resent labels applied to us or our actions that we disagree with. Our resentment then becomes part of how we interpret the person or people who applied the label. In other words, we find our own labels for those who have negatively labeled us.
In a discussion with someone about a performance review, I was informed that tagging a person in the review process is completely inappropriate. For example, you should never brand a person as lazy, incompetent, irresponsible, etc., during performance reviews. The problem is that the tagging occurs whether you communicate or not. Perhaps labeling is less of a problem than our lack of strategy and ability to share our thoughts. That attempt to share our tags with others is probably a good thing, since it rarely turns out well when we say it out loud.
Start with the premise that it’s not the saying of the label that’s bad, or even the formation of the label in the first place. The negative impact of sharing a tag has much more to do with how it is said. This distinction is important.
Imagine that you are in the position of needing to give someone feedback. You have decided that this person’s constant tardiness, frequent personal phone calls during work hours, and the fact that the person leaves exactly on time each day are all signs that the person is lazy. During a review with this person, you focus on being on time, without personal calls, and showing a different approach to the clock. He thinks you’ve done a great job of fixing the problem by being specific with your feedback. Now the person is on time, stays five minutes past the end time, stopped taking personal calls.
Unfortunately, this person’s breaks are longer, arguments around the water cooler are more frequent, and other escapes from focused work are evident. Apparently, you were correct in your assumptions, and that person is now figuring out different ways to avoid work. You are starting over. If you had declared the person lazy at the beginning, he would have better understood what problem he needed to solve to be in your favor.
The difficulty is that most of us don’t know how to communicate our labels, even though they are an important part of our evaluation. There are simple rules that need to be followed to do it effectively.
One must always start with the assumption that you may be wrong. Yes, he formed his conclusions based on everything he has learned about human behavior. Certain behaviors are indicators of a person’s nature. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, you’ll be right, but those behaviors can mean something else entirely. If you’ve ever called a person lazy, for example, you may have been inundated with all the reasons why what you saw didn’t mean what you thought it meant. They could have just been excuses and you’re still right, but pretend you don’t know everything.
If you presented your comments with the idea that you might be wrong in your conclusions, you keep the other person’s attention and increase the chances of solving the real problem. So instead of identifying and resolving every work ethic violation, he shares those violations as probative to your conclusion. “I’ve noticed that you’re often late, get a lot of personal calls, and leave as soon as you can each day. Unfortunately, from my point of view, that can seem a lot like a pattern, and I might mistakenly conclude that you’re on the lazy side of the game.” spectrum”. And then you shut up.
It doesn’t really matter if he or she tells you that you are completely wrong and then gives you a multitude of excuses for the behaviors. This person now knows that he or she must change their mind about the reasons. The person is now solving the problem that you think he or she is lazy.
Labels may be a mixed pickle, but they are important pieces of the puzzle.
And now we return to focus on our country.
The good (and bad) news is that in the political arena of our time, no one stops at labels. Everyone is pretty free with labels like racist, liar, cheater, thief, socialist, etc. Unfortunately, these labels are applied to entire groups of people with little discrimination. They are being applied in a way that makes their target completely closed to anything that follows the tagging.
So we start with the understanding that the labels probably need to be listened for so we know what problems we’re solving. If you know that being conservative labels you as racist in the other person’s mind, and you care what that person thinks, you may want to identify why you came to that conclusion. If you’re the person applying the label, assume you’re wrong, and stay open to the possibility that you’re applying that label to someone you actually know it to be. No racist. You do it because the person belongs to a group that you have determined (rightly or wrongly) to be racist. What is the point? Quality of life is always the point. Labels are good and bad, but the widespread application of labels is generally a mistake with big consequences.
Apply the concept to people who consider themselves liberal. There are many labels thrown at liberals that do not apply to every individual in the group. If he assumes that someone in the group is therefore a cheater or a socialist, he may be making a serious mistake, and it may only be in a relationship that he cares about. None of us wants to live in a divided country. We need to understand why others are so committed to one side or the other so that we can begin to meet somewhere in between.
It’s time for all of us to grow up. We are allowing people with personal agendas beyond our comprehension to divide us at the most essential levels. If, in fact, we erred in trusting them and have not been diligent in our fact-checking, we deserve the consequences. Fact checking does not mean going to fact checking sites on the internet. Most of them are very unreliable. Checking out fact checkers is part of due diligence.
Fact checking brings us to one more element that must be added to this understanding of the problem. That element is the importance of critical thinking. It fits perfectly with being humble when assigning tags that haven’t been confirmed.
We must accept the fact that we are often influenced by people who assume we must trust without truly knowing if they are trustworthy. They shape and manipulate our understanding and beliefs of what is really going on and often have an agenda that is all about themselves. And yet we quote them and destroy personal and public relations for what they say.
How do we know the difference? How do we determine the truth? Always, start by assuming you are wrong. Look for factual information to support both sides of an issue. You may still be fooled, but the chance of being wrong decreases the more diligent you are in seeking information. And remember, humility is good. It could save him a great deal of embarrassment when he finds out that he backed the wrong horse.
We currently have so many people trying to influence our collective consciousness that trusting no one should be the starting point. And then do your homework. Don’t just absorb the opinions of others. Read the books, listen to the people closest to the people you are trying to analyze. Do not walk away from sources of information because you do not believe in them. No one is perfect, so watch what they do and what they accomplish for clues. Typically, you’ll find that each person brings good and bad baggage to the mix. Try to determine a means to weigh the luggage by what they actually deliver. Do they keep their promises? Are they sincere about what they are attempting? Would you volunteer to do something dangerous with that person and just know that he or she will go through with it?
As a personal opinion, I would never consider the media as a reliable source of information. They too appear to be operating from an agenda that is beyond objectivity.
The stakes are high, and the lack of critical thinking is discouraging. Many of us have had our beliefs shaped by those who have personal agendas. Shake it off and stay open. Anything less is ignorant.