For many, closing our minds to new information, believing we already know the right answers, and refusing to listen to what others have to say, has become the modus operandi. In other words: our mind is made up—judgements are made before information is received. If we engage in conversation, but aren’t open to learning anything new, what’s the point? Why are so many unwilling to hear a different perspective?
Blocking Technique #1: Invalidate The Source
One way to block incoming information that you don’t want to receive is by invalidating where the information was sourced from—specific news source, person, or publication. This is negativity of reception and stimulates the hate gene.
Blocking Technique #2: Invalidate The Humanity Of The Other
Generalize that the other is invalid because they, them, the other, are not like me, therefore I’m not obligated to validate them by considering their perspective/opinion.
How can these blocking techniques be neutralized, shifting the conversation to one that is knowledge-based rather than ego-driven? How can we find balance in reactivity—feeling compelled to block the reception of rational knowledge and information—and shift the focus to problem solving itself? Don’t we all have an investment in solutions?
This blocking behavior is neurotic, even psychotic when taken to extremes. I don’t know its foundation, but it has to do with the validation of one’s sense of self, status, and place in the hierarchy of the group, tribe, community . . . the world of circumstance and experience. What is it in our thinking, perceptions, and interpretations of how others see us, that we are so easily threatened by another’s opinion? What’s at the heart of these feelings of social invalidation?
My own experience of feeling alienated from others, that I am not acceptable, shows up for me when I feel I am not being received in open confidence and trust, or worse, to feel criticized and rejected outright . . . “No place for me on the bus!”
I wonder about the atmosphere of attitude that must live in a person subscribing to the belief that blocking knowledge will somehow serve a purpose. Or, that the diminishment of ‘the other’ will serve them in some way. Does one do this, thinking it will validate their position? Maybe it has to do with not having the capacity to admit when we are wrong, like running for office, losing, and not being able to accept the defeat. Should I ask them, “Why do you get angry talking about it?”