Install Positive Beliefs - by Matthew Wingett

A friend told me some time ago how one of the things that she strongly remembered from her university days were discussions of equality issues during an exchange year she'd taken in Seattle from the UK.

"The culture was so oppressive," she said.  "Over there we had these weekly classes in Social Policy that discussed all the ways that I, as a woman was discriminated against in society."

"What was funny about it," she explained, "was that I had never then, and still do not to this day feel discriminated against because I am a woman. Yet, every week, I was schooled in all the reasons that I should feel slighted, injured, downtrodden and undermined. It was really depressing!" 

My friend is an independent-minded sort of a woman, with a clear sense of what she wants in life, and has never considered herself to be held back by men, by women - or by animals, come to that.  She is essentially a naturally content and bubbly individual, at her heart both pragmatic and optimistic.

Yet there it was: week after week in Seattle, she kept being told that she was a victim. 

"To be honest with you, it really started to annoy me," she told me.  "It annoyed me because from my persepective the whole thing about whether I'm being discriminated against is whether I perceive there's a problem.  I really did not have a problem.  I just don't process the world in the way that they wanted me to in the classes."

She replied to her tutor that she didn't recognise the story she was told of being conspired against by men and society.  But her tutor insisted that she was as much a victim of male oppression as any other woman in society.  It was just a fact.  That was it and there could be no discussion.  Period.

For my friend it cast for a few days a shadow over her time at the Uni.  But after a while, she started to evaluate her interactions with men and women, to watch closely what was going on - and still couldn't find the sense of indignation, anger and abuse that she had been promised by her tutor.

If the tutor had been trying to install a sense of righteous indignation she had summarily failed.  And I have to admit I'm glad of that.  Being around someone who is pretty content with their life is much more fun than being around someone who is looking to be slighted all the time, that's for sure.

However, something else did stick in her mind for longer.  Also in those discussions of social policy, another area that was up for scrutiny was racial equality.  Her tutor thus told her all about the terrible job prospects of African-Americans, the high incidence of violence in African-American families, the level of drug taking in certain areas and the higher likelihood of a mugger, a murderer or a rapist being African-American.

Once again, week after week, the same message came out of the tutor.  It was like an obsession for her.  None of these facts could be argued with, my friend felt.  They all seemed pretty accurate from the data the tutor presented.  But they didn't give her a feeling of righteous indignation on behalf of the disadvantaged, just as the discussion of the oppression of women didn't make her feel indignant herself.  Instead, what she told me was that for months after she left the courses, every time she saw a black person, she felt concerned that they were going to murder, rape or mug her.  It was something that she had never previously considered, and, she told me, it took her months to get rid of the feeling.

Now, the intention of the Social Policy tutor at Seattle University was a good one, I am sure of it.  But it seems to me that she genuinely hadn't considered that she might actually be installing exactly the attitudes that she was warning against.  It reminded me of a friend's comment a few years ago who said to:  "You know, Matt, I had no idea there was an international male conspiracy against women until I got to University.  And by then it was too late for me to say I hadn't been told about it.  No-one believed me - especially my girlfriend!"

I'm not saying that my female friend's tutor shouldn't have discussed the issues she felt so strongly about, just as I am not ignoring the terrible inequality and race issues that exist in the world.  They are real and they need to be dealt with.  What I am saying is this: be sure of what you are installing.  Be aware of who you are talking to - and be certain that whatever your good intention, your words are carefully chosen to reflect that good intention, and make that reality happen.  Is it helpful to the person you are talking with to install in them indignation, fear or anger?  If it isn't working for them, what else could you install instead?

Test, and test again.  And remember: the meaning of your communication is in the feedback you get.

So listening as well as lecturing is a really good idea!

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