Why posts could never resolve anything

Not all media are created equal. If the whole point of communication is understanding, what benefits do we really get from the many ways – emails, posts, tweets, videos, audio – we have devised to reach each other? The easiest and quickest way to react to someone’s views now is by posting your reaction or comments. But easy is not always effective. How much do we really want to rely on written posts if we want to have a world in which it is crucial that we understood each other?  

Apparently, when it comes to issues where people disagree, we should not really look to posts if we intend to genuinely listen to each other. “Listening” does not necessarily mean “accepting” the other’s views BUT listening is a pre-requisite for either an admission or rejection. “Listening” is what should happen so that we are each assured that we are given “spacetime” for our views, regardless yet of their validity. This is because people consider their views “personal” and as such, is attached to who they are so that if you do not afford them time to express it, it comes off as an insult.

A recent study has come out and found that when people judged people whose opinions are different from theirs, the “judges” were “kinder”  in their reactions to those when they were heard or seen than when they just read their opinions, even if the opinion was the same word for word. The topics that were heard, seen and read were on war, abortion and music. This means that our judgement of people whose opinions are contra to ours are less harsh if we see or hear them express their opinion than if we just read their posts.

The scientists think this has to do with what earlier studies have found – that when we find someone who disagrees with us – we do not just feel discomfort or repulsion, we assume that the other has the lesser mind or we dehumanize them. While it is a generally acceptable observation that we all have different slants of mind, very few, if any at all, would volunteer to admit that their mind is “inferior” to someone else in opposing arguments. The study found that this natural repulsion to contrary views can be mediated if we hear their views instead of just reading these same views. It will not convert you but it will make you remember that the view that you hate belongs to a human being – alive with a mind that just happened to be going in the opposite direction to yours on a certain topic.

This also puts a spotlight on how multi-splendored human beings are. The meanings we convey are nuanced by the way we speak, the way we smirk, wince, pucker, put our hands out, clench our fist, widen our eyes, stare out into space, or even pause with pregnant silence. Those are the things that could not be directly translated by words that could only be read. Touch is another thing. If someone shook your hand sincerely after you have had a heated argument with him or her, would you refuse his or hand? But if you had just read that same opinion on a blog or post, would your reaction have been tempered?

I think the insight from this study is particularly relevant in these volatile times. Before posting has become a natural media for many of us to express our reactions, we had to risk being seen or heard. That involved a personal stake in the argument.  That personal stake is now a mere option. Social media does not that require that we show up as we offer our views and claim them. We can now take on veils that are guarded by secret codes to ensure that.

We worry about how AI may dehumanize us when we have been doing this to each other for as long as we have had arguments with each other. Social media has unleased the mother dam of views but it has also silenced some truths that were somehow easier to discern because they required then that people showed up with more than just their keyboards. Somehow, posting has reduced us to mere machines that specialize in knee-jerk reactions. We could do better. We must be better. – Rappler.com