As we go through our days we are always in contact with the actions and words of others. At home, work, in national and world news. From the very subtle body language of people we walk past on the street, to the strong and unfiltered and sometimes extreme perspectives on social media.
Consciously or subconsciously, we’ll evaluate countless the words and actions made by others against our own particular lens of the world, we’ll reason the expectations we’ve placed on individuals and how they fit in our lives. You may notice statements like ‘yeah I knew he would say something like that’, or ‘typical Karen’, ‘ Is it a safe neighbourhood?’ or ‘they are always such a good parent’, and ‘ I wouldn’t want my kids to go to that school’. Sometimes we get triggered by what people say and do, other times it’s comfortable and natural and we probably don’t even notice what was said or done.
I consider myself quite flexible when it comes to shifting between objective and empathetic thinking and relating. I have the ability to move between objectivity and empathy as I need, and focus as best I can on being balanced, accepting and compassionate. Though, under stress I tend to shift to being objective focused as I close down to protect myself – facts are safer than feelings, right? Being aware of my triggers helps me stay out of patterns of quick judgement, and I know that I can remain open if I choose it. But I think I have been off the mark on the weight of context.
Objective thinking seeks to remove context. It looks to evaluate things (people) in general up against our socially constructed beliefs (beliefs usually uncriticized in current times), against our lived experience, or against very well thought through and chosen beliefs and values which may contradict social norms. Objective thinking can lead to decisions based on assumptions and very little background or by using alternate contexts as reasoning, e.g. ‘If it was a man then it wouldn’t be ok, therefore it shouldn’t be ok for anyone’. In objective thinking we are removing a lot of the reasons for the choice of words, the actions and the people themselves are coming from to try and determine if what they are doing or saying is right or wrong.
When we include context we open doors to more possibilities. It allows us to be more flexible, empathetic and accepting of people. This is more than just trying to be aware that we don’t know everything that is happening in others’ lives, often times when we say that we are making some temporary allowance for what we may not know is going on recently, we think about life events that may come and go; a bad day, money pressures, relationship issues etc. While that is also a very important part of context, I am talking about greater contexts that create life altering effects like gender, race and trauma.
How this shows has shown up for me: I was in a discussion with someone about their experience applying for a grant. It was the first time they had called out the importance of their cultural heritage in the application, which was also key to their purpose and approach of storytelling in a public forum, and they were angry and upset. They felt stuck between not wanting to use their cultural heritage as a rational for a grant evaluated by mostly privileged white people – but also that it was so significant for who they are, the visibility for people with similar lived experience to access if awarded, and was in fact the honest space their work and purpose came from regardless of the grant. They were struggling because they felt up against others for the spot to be chosen by unknown process and people and feared once welcomed into the space would feel isolated on a relational level. We focused on structures of these organisations and who tends to sit on the boards and committees. I hoped signs and attempts to focus support for minority groups was at least the start of equality. We shifted to discussing ways to keep pushing against structures and thinking, and this is where context really came through.
Because of who I am in society, I am able to try and take a considered, open and collaborative style when I negotiate for anything. I am afforded air-time and sharing my views in a meeting, to getting served in a queue, and usually given personal physical space. The context this person comes from is a constant battle from as early as they remember for equality. They are often being judged for who they are (stereotyped), who they should be, for air-time, for basic respect. Why wouldn’t this process be upsetting and anger them? And that’s the bit I have kept coming back to – they have a right to be angry when what’s happening now is mostly from a stance of “it’s the right thing to do” or “what else can we do?”. Are we painting the perception of change without recognizing historical and current culture in working spaces? Applicants are encouraged to apply themselves before significant cultural workplace shifts happen and we can guess what happens when not the “right kind of feedback is given”.
Let’s zoom out a little. Quite often when people are angry, they are told to calm down, they are being emotional etc. But in context I think we can understand why people are angry, and I think that should be understood and accepted. Just because I have always been afforded the ability to engage with people from a strong position in our societal constructs doesn’t mean I can judge others for asserting change the way they choose/need.
Another space is patriarchy. A large part of our society is viewing the anger from women and female identifying people as the big issue. What is our context to be evaluating women as extreme when they are fed up with not being safe; fed up with verbal, physical, sexual, emotional, financial abuse and lives at stake? To remove their context is to ask women to forget all that is not afforded to basic human necessities. Why do we continue to ask them to remain calm and speak unemotionally? When safety, equality, and respect is not afforded, we should be stopping the violence instead of being focused on how the message is delivered. Sitting in a space where we can hear the emotion AND continue to work in the problem spaces is where we need to be. Thinking through context helps us do that.
When we remove context, we try to find standards and measures that fit everyone for fairness. Unfortunately, our world is far too complex for that to be possible. Our ability to work with context and still forge forward to where we want to be as individuals and society is the key. We are capable.
As always – interested in thoughts and perspectives!
Warmest
Jason
Jason Waddell 