Pragmatism: Why Asking Questions Matters

We are so excited to bring you this episode, which draws on some brilliant writing by Jonah Platt about why we should work to keep on bringing out what is 'implicit' inside us into the world of relationship - making it 'explicit'. In this conversation we tackle the world head on, from the most intimate relationships to the largest scale challenges facing us societally and politically, and we wonder together about the maturity, generosity and boldness it takes for us humans to keep talking and listening to one another. And we talk together about pragmatism - doing what it takes to improve things, rather than falling into trying to avoid certain feelings, or keeping ourselves in familiar territory, or trying to keep things too safe. It's a bold, warm, playful and important conversation - and we are very glad to share it with you.

This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
05:30 The Importance of Making the Implicit Explicit
10:28 Exploring Resistance to Explicit Communication
15:26 The Role of Patience and Slowing Down
20:09 Navigating Complexity in Relationships
25:22 The Pragmatism of Explicit Communication
30:14 The Risk and Creativity of Sharing Implicit Thoughts

Making the Implicit Explicit

To achieve clearly understood communication in our relationships, personal, professional, casual, romantic, online, every level of life, it is critical that we remind ourselves to make the implicit explicit. That's the idea. Whatever we assume to be obvious, be it our emotional state, the purpose of an event, or the location of a stapler, we must teach ourselves to assume that it actually is not, and therefore must be stated out loud if we are to be understood. 

Why is this important to do? Because the literal opposite is true. What is most obvious to us is generally not obvious to other people, and in fact, they are often making a totally different and wrong assumption than the one you also wrongly assume they are making. 

Why does this happen? Well, there are several cognitive biases at work here… Primarily, there's what's called the curse of knowledge. Once we know something, it becomes difficult to imagine what it's like not to know it, so we overestimate how obvious our thoughts or intentions or explanations will be to others. 

There's the closely related illusion of transparency, where we overestimate how clearly our internal states, our emotions, thoughts, our sense of morality are visible to others. They're not. 

And last, naïve realism, where we assume our perceptions of reality of what's obvious about the world are shared by all. These misalignments happen constantly in our interpersonal lives, and they lead to resentment, misunderstanding, conflict, and harm. 

I think at times there are also certain common resistances to being explicit. One… is a sense of, "Well, if you really loved me, you would already know this about me," which is an understandable way to feel, but is really… a failure to communicate. 

Another may be a sense of self-respect or maybe self-preservation that warps into a kind of peremptory and self-defeating resentment. "Why should I have to make something explicit just to give you an understanding about me you haven't bothered to ask for?" And the answer to that is, if a greater understanding would be a positive outcome, however it's arrived at, why not just take responsibility to ensure it arrives? 

There's also, and I think this is the one that has most prevented me from making the implicit explicit as it pertains to my views on certain public issues, is the sense of not wanting to play the game, of not wanting to debase myself in order to pass somebody's morality test. And also the question of, what does this really change? … 

And yet… if playing the game and taking the test opens a door to greater understanding, a door through which perhaps more understanding can then travel through that otherwise might have remained closed, that may in fact be change enough to make the enterprise worthwhile… 

So if you've got questions for someone in your life, ask them. Expect that they have questions for you too. Preempt them. Make the implicit explicit. Talk to each other. Talk to each other. 

Jonah Platt
from ‘Making the Implicit Explicit’ 
Episode 44 of Jonah’s podcast ‘Being Jewish with Jonah Platt’

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash



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Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.

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