I found my way into to a degree program in college where I actually got my BA degree in Argumentation and Rhetoric. As part of that course of study, I become fascinated by this thinker named Kenneth Burke. Many of his works sit on my bookshelf. I did not realize it then, but I certainly do now, how much of an influence he had on my way of thinking. The way I view communications between people, especially. The motives behind the rhetoric that people use was a consistent theme in his writings.
One of the more fascinating causality behind a motive that one person might have to enter into an argument, or to assign blame, or other negativity to another person is what Burke calls, identification. Now this is a really interesting concept, and a definite topic for some serious self reflection. Here is the thought. When we communicate with someone, we cannot help but identify them in some way. We put that person into a classification. Oh, this person is one of those, or one of them, or that type. We all do it, and it is actually rooted in our core survival instinct.
Humans have this really powerful ability to discriminate. I am not talking about racism, I am talking about the ability to quickly decide if it is safe to interact with the people and things surrounding you. You have this incredible ability to discern very rapidly, you would be amazed at how many queues that you can process in just a few seconds. I think it is like 30,000 different simultaneous inputs, many of them on a subconscious level. You may think you are above judging people, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you are human you are are an automatic expert in rapidly determining a judgement on another person.
As a consequence we tend to identify people with things we know in order to take shortcuts in how we work with and deal with others. As a consequence we are constantly making judgement, presuppositions, predeterminations, on what we think people are thinking, what their motives are and why they behave the way they do. A vast majority of our difficulty in talking with others, or arguments we get into is because of this issue of identification.
The solution is awareness. Awareness that we are doing it and who we are comparing that person to and why were are doing that. Sometimes we are correct, at least based on the context, but often times we are not. As a consequence we need to be vigilant in looking for queues or anomalies that prove that our identification was incorrect.
Guy Reams
