This past year I’ve been trying to do more dialectical thinking. For those of you who haven’t been through intensive therapy or its predecessor, a college philosophy seminar, dialectical thinking is essentially this: when faced with a world full of good and bad and other opposites, you simple acknowledge everything is a mix of both. Instead of saying to yourself, “Ugh, this bowl of grapes is going to be disgusting,” you say, “There’s a chance this bowl of grapes will have some nasty grapes in it, and it’ll probably also have some pretty good grapes in it, so it’s worth eating.” Dialectal thinking is just like this except the world is the bowl of grapes and if you stop eating the grapes you die.
Sometimes I worry deeply about taking a stand in this world. I think we all do. Everyone has, in even a short lifetime, witnessed unforgivable atrocities and all the same must move on from them. Sometimes I wake up and am immediately pressed down by the weight of the bad. My alarm sounds on a device invented for communication but bastardized to create addicted consumers for massive corporations. I brush my teeth with a toothbrush that will take 500 years to biodegrade. I drink tap water that is known to contain PFAs. I don’t think this experience is unique. I think this is one of the most common feelings in the world.
At the same time, though, I don’t think I am inherently a pessimist. I look at my life and I am struck by my luck and my joy, a joy that wiggles into every seam. I meet new people who grew up hundreds of miles away but still want to collect Petoskey stones with me. I pick apples off the tree and eat them right there in the field. I feel sun on my face on the first day of spring.
I wish I could tell you to be the joyful optimist in every scenario, but that’s just not how life works and it’s an exhausting role in which to cast oneself. I think we see this in the current political climate—how many of us have known hopeful progressives who suddenly “can’t even bare to read the news” or worse, get radicalized in an entirely different direction? I’ve seen so many people spun down dangerous pipelines that capitalize (often literally) on their fears and minimize their hopes. In a world where it’s cheap and easy to make populist propaganda, my most valuable commodity is my attention and my most dangerous weapon is my critical thinking. I want to hold onto these things. I want to pull myself and others out of the sinkhole of radicalization. I want communities that trust each other and to do that I know we need to acknowledge the complexities of the other people in our communities.
And so, I’m working on dialectical thinking. I need it. Without it, I can spend weeks devoting all my attention to a single moral failing, or a far-flung fantasy, or a hypothetical doomscape future. When I’m in my head, I’m not in community.
So here’s three (therapist-approved) ways you can get more dialectical and have more fun: 1. Be vigilant of “black and white” thinking; try to avoid extremes and absolutes. 2. Say “and” instead of “but.” This one can create sentences that sound funny AND it is a simple rhetorical tip; it paints a picture of intricacy rather than contradiction. 3. Imagine other people lead lives that are just as multifaceted as your own (because they do).
I know these recommendations aren’t sexy. I know I sound like the most wishy-washy moderate right now. But these aren’t recommendations for changing your values, these are recommendations for confronting your dilemmas and acknowledging your own cognitive dissonance in a sane way. If you don’t believe in plastic use, I encourage you to continue evangelizing the good word of the bamboo toothbrush. I just fundamentally believe that understanding the other side of the argument—and the people on that other side—is crucial to being a good communicator and ultimately a good community member. We’re all part of One Big Thing at the end of the day, anyway.
So, yeah. That’s gonna be the tone of this blog, I guess. If you’ve made it this far, here’s a song that encapsulates this vibe, as a little reward: The Experiment by Daffo
My didgeridoo thinking is not just thinking I don't like fruit, but thinking that my girlfriend can probably pick some tasty fruit I'll enjoy.