Textbook Tuesday (or Thursday, should I so deem it) is going to be a series on the things that make us who we are as human beings. The premise is that I will be reading textbooks on various sciences (biology, psychology, sociology, etc.) and breaking the information down into bite sized pieces. This week, I will be focusing on content from Chapter 1 of Counseling Diverse Clients by Jeanne M. Slattery.
Each and every person has their own unique story. They have had a series of events that are unique to them, with thoughts and perceptions that are their own. There is a degree of universality (in a sense) because of the shared bonds of language that tie together our understanding of aspects of the world, and yet as human beings we give our own spin to the meaning of words. Even something simple like "tree" can mean something completely different to those of us in the Upper Peninsula than it does to someone in the inner parts of Detroit.
The story of each of our lives can be defined as "context". It's who we are. It's where we live. It's who we hang out with. It's our families. It's our jobs. It's every part of our lives, and how those parts fit together to paint the complete portrait of who each of us is.
I started off with this particular book because of the importance of this concept. I have referred to it before, and I will refer to it again. It is extremely broad- something that I definitely won't tackle fully in this blog, and honestly will not be able to cover it in a million posts- because context is a shapeshifting ambiguity that is constantly changing. Of course, these changes impact each of us in different ways, and how we perceive the changes (both in ourselves and others) influences context as well.
Tying into this idea of change is a concept (I really need to get a thesaurus...I feel like I've used the word concept so much that it has lost its meaning as a word) that the book introduces is called the fundamental attribution error (page 2). According to Slattery, this basically means that "people recognize the external, unstable factors that contribute to their own behavior and attribute their problems to them" (page 2 again). So if we do something dumb, it's because God hates us (not a quote for theological debate, merely a hyperbole) and if someone else does something dumb, it is because they are, in fact, dumb.
Think about the last time that another driver did something stupid while the road. You probably thought all sorts of mean and nasty things about that person- maybe you even let lose with a 'Goll-darn-it!'. You probably didn't, as you did with the last time you did the exact same thing, try to justify their behavior as merely running late, or having to be someone very important...or having a lot on your mind. No, they forgot their turn signal because they are the stupidest driver on the face of the Earth.
That's why the idea of context is such an important one, and why understanding it (even a little bit) is absolutely essential if we are to really move into an ability to understand other people and start to solve problems on a broader scale. We have to be able (and willing) to think about other people in terms of the things that are a part of their story that might not be a part of ours. And we have to be willing to admit that we are not as good as we seem, and that others are not as bad.
Another part of context is the realization that the Earth is not populated by over 6 billion Jason Parks' (if it makes you feel better, you can insert your own name there instead. If that doesn't make you feel better, then you probably have some real problems- or you really really like me).
The human experience for me is completely different from that of every other person in the history of ever. I have to come to terms with the fact that not everyone grew up White, male, and Protestant- that some people are left handed, that there are people who grew up without siblings and even without parents. Not all of humanity did well in school. However many billions of people there are, that's how many unique combinations of biology, sociology, psychology, family, education, etc. that there are. So when I try to relate to another human being, I have to do so from a position that acknowledges that my own experiences can be (and often are) not going to help me understand this person- rather, they very well may hinder the process.
In my social work classes, Professor Simpson often talked to us about our clients being the experts of their lives, and this being one of the ideas that separated social work from other professions. It is this idea that I humbly submit to you. If you want to really get to know someone, or understand them, or even help them, you must first be willing to allow them to guide you. Because they are going to have parts of them that are completely foreign to you- even if the "Tale of the Tape" says you are the same.
A story that Slattery uses at the end of her first chapter (page 9) that really drives home this whole idea is the story about the three blind men who stumbled upon an elephant. The gist of the story is that each man fondles a different part of the elephant and comes away with a completely different idea about what the elephant really is. One man finds the leg- thinks it's a huge tree. Second man finds the ear, and determines it to be a palm tree. Third man finds the tail, and says it's a rope. Obviously they were all wrong- but even if they had called out the appropriate anatomy (leg, ear, tail), they would have still been wrong! All of the individual parts fit together to create a whole.
So if you take nothing else away from this, remember that every person you are interacting with is really a mish-mashed composite of intersecting components- and respond accordingly.
Tune in next....oh heck...I don't know...time? Yeah, time. Time works. Tune in next time as I dig deeper into the notion of context.
No comments:
Post a Comment