CHAPTER
The Benefit and Manner of
Asking the Right Questions
THE NOISY, CONFUSED WORLD WE LIVE IN
This book encourages you to learn something we think can change your life
for the better. That something is "critical thinking." But there is an imaginary
world that some of us inhabit where there is no need at all for critical think-
ing. In this imaginary world several conditions prevail:
1. We are each allowed the independence to make decisions about reli-
gion, politics, and what we will and will not buy or believe. Advertisers,
marketers, public relations specialists, campaign managers, and advo-
cates of various worldviews will provide us only the information that we
need to make decisions that result in building a life that we choose.
2. Anyone trying to persuade us of anything will always explain the disad-
vantages of what he or she wants us to do.
3. Any time we are confused about one of life's important questions, we
can quickly find a dependable expert, authority, or wise person. Fur-
thermore, these voices of knowledge will all agree with one another. In
short, we need not be anxious about what to do or believe because the
wise ones will have the answer. Our task is simply to locate and listen to
them.
4. Our minds are calm, engaged, reflective, and curious whenever faced
with an important choice.
We hope you realize that the world we actually live in is nothing like the
Never-Never Land, we just described.
1
2 Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right Questions
In the real world, we are assaulted on all sides by others who insist that
we must do what they tell us we should do. They know best. They know
what we should wear, eat, buy, and believe. They claim to possess a truth
that we must accept. They say they want to help us. They will not leave us
alone to form our own understanding of who we should become.
As an illustration, in a 5-minute Internet search we found the following
advice with respect to the relatively simple question: Should we use more tea?
These were all found on web sites urging you to buy more tea.
• Use green tea to ease itching and swelling.
• Use strong tea as a disinfectant on cuts and bruises.
• Use strong tea to treat athlete's foot. Bathe the foot twice a day for ten
minutes for up to several weeks.
• Press rehydrated tealeaves on teeth to reduce the pain of toothache.
• Chewing rehydrated tealeaves cleanses the breath.
• Soak a towel in warm tea, and place the towel on tired eyes to refresh
them.
• Wash the face with warm tea to reduce skin rashes and pimples.
• Rinse washed hair with strong tea for shine and softness.
The people making these claims want us to change our behavior. Planning to
buy more tea?
To make matters worse, those trying to persuade us do not play fair as
they try to shape us. They tell us half-truths at best. The socialist does not
explain the dangers of a large government. The conservative does not explain
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1. CHAPTER
The Benefit and Manner of
Asking the Right Questions
THE NOISY, CONFUSED WORLD WE LIVE IN
This book encourages you to learn something we think can
change your life
for the better. That something is "critical thinking." But there is
an imaginary
world that some of us inhabit where there is no need at all for
critical think-
ing. In this imaginary world several conditions prevail:
1. We are each allowed the independence to make decisions
about reli-
gion, politics, and what we will and will not buy or believe.
Advertisers,
marketers, public relations specialists, campaign managers, and
advo-
cates of various worldviews will provide us only the
information that we
need to make decisions that result in building a life that we
choose.
2. Anyone trying to persuade us of anything will always explain
the disad-
vantages of what he or she wants us to do.
3. Any time we are confused about one of life's important
questions, we
2. can quickly find a dependable expert, authority, or wise person.
Fur-
thermore, these voices of knowledge will all agree with one
another. In
short, we need not be anxious about what to do or believe
because the
wise ones will have the answer. Our task is simply to locate and
listen to
them.
4. Our minds are calm, engaged, reflective, and curious
whenever faced
with an important choice.
We hope you realize that the world we actually live in is
nothing like the
Never-Never Land, we just described.
1
2 Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions
In the real world, we are assaulted on all sides by others who
insist that
we must do what they tell us we should do. They know best.
They know
what we should wear, eat, buy, and believe. They claim to
possess a truth
that we must accept. They say they want to help us. They will
not leave us
alone to form our own understanding of who we should become.
As an illustration, in a 5-minute Internet search we found the
3. following
advice with respect to the relatively simple question: Should we
use more tea?
These were all found on web sites urging you to buy more tea.
• Use green tea to ease itching and swelling.
• Use strong tea as a disinfectant on cuts and bruises.
• Use strong tea to treat athlete's foot. Bathe the foot twice a
day for ten
minutes for up to several weeks.
• Press rehydrated tealeaves on teeth to reduce the pain of
toothache.
• Chewing rehydrated tealeaves cleanses the breath.
• Soak a towel in warm tea, and place the towel on tired eyes to
refresh
them.
• Wash the face with warm tea to reduce skin rashes and
pimples.
• Rinse washed hair with strong tea for shine and softness.
The people making these claims want us to change our behavior.
Planning to
buy more tea?
To make matters worse, those trying to persuade us do not play
fair as
they try to shape us. They tell us half-truths at best. The
socialist does not
explain the dangers of a large government. The conservative
does not explain
to us the severe inequality in our country that makes it very
difficult for many
of us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. The people selling
us the latest
4. jeans do not explain to us that the low prices they claim to
charge are pos-
sible only because they exploit workers in Asia. The drug
companies who tell
us we need the yellow or blue pill to solve our problems do not
explain to
us that much of the research that supports the effectiveness of
the drugs was
paid for by the very companies selling you the drugs. We think
you get the
picture.
But the scenario we are sketching here would not be much of a
prob-
lem if we could depend on the wise people, the experts, to have
the answers
we need. If they could give us the right answers we could resist
the noisy
persuaders. But when we need those who claim to have the
answers, they are
not there for us. They are often wrong, and they disagree among
themselves.
The next section emphasizes the significance of this reality for
you and how
you think.
Chapter 2 will focus on ways in which our brains often fail us
as we try
to handle our messy, confusing world. Sometimes our brains
perform amaz-
ing imaginative and complex tasks. But the human brain is
frequently guided
by what Daniel Kahneman calls "fast thinking" or "System 1
thinking." Our
5. Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions 3
brains often rely on patterns of thinking that get us into trouble.
Fast thinking
is automatic, immediate and typically controlled by our
emotions. Jonathan
Haidt has described our reliance on emotion as a raging
elephant tearing
through lhe countryside with our rational tendencies taking the
form of a tiny
rider trying desperately to control the elephant's passionate
rampage.
EXPERTS CANNOT RESCUE US, DESPITE WHAT THEY
SAY
We already made the point that if you expect to lean on experts
as the tool
with which to wade through the multitude of people wishing to
own your
mind, you are in for a big disappointment. They often sound as
if they know
far more than they do. They probably understand at some level
that you are
much more likely to listen to them when they sound certain
about what they
claim to be true. So, they give you what you want to hear.
But we want to drive this point home to you by 3 examples from
David
Freedman's important 2010 book, Wrong: Wby Bcperts Keep
Failing Us
1. Should you stay out of the sun? The U.S. Center for Disease
6. Control
and Prevention says that exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays
may be
the most important factor influencing the development of skin
cancer.
In short, stay out of the sun. But wait. The World Health
Organization
says exposure to ultraviolet light is a minor contributor to
disease in the
world. Then to confuse us all the more they add that too little
exposure
to the sun may cause more disease in the world than does
exposure to
the sun.
2. Does it make sense to buy a pet as a means of having better
health? The
American Heart Association says that many studies have
demonstrated
the positive effect of pet ownership on the owner's health.
However,
a reliable study in Finland found that pet ownership is linked to
poor
health.
3. Do cell phones emit harmful radiation? The Director of the
Interna-
tional Epidemiology Institute says there is no basis for
believing that cell
phones produce harmful emissions. But an expert linked to a
South Car-
olina Hospital has a quite different response to this question. He
claims
there is sufficient evidence to justify a health advisory warning
about the
link between cell phones and cancer.
7. Respected experts disagree about how to create a prosperous
middle class,
whether there will be future jobs available for college students
who major
in particular areas of study, whether the knee you injured
requires surgery,
whether Obama is a strong leader, how to lose weight and keep
it off, and
when an immigrant should be granted citizenship. Experts
provide us more or
less reasonable assertions. They give us the materials for a
thoughtful decision.
But we are the craftsperson who must measure and construct
those assertions
into a decision that is ours.
4 Chapter l • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions
We nee<l to be very careful here. We are definitely not saying
that
experts cannot be helpful. Indeed, we cannot function without
depending
on people who we think might have knowledge we can use. In a
sense, we
are encouraging you to pay even more attention to experts than
you might
already give them. But, as will be clear soon, we need to listen
to expe1ts of
many different kinds, sorting and discarding as we listen and
evaluate. We lis-
ten to them to construct our answer. We do not listen to them to
follow their
8. advice, as if we were but a helpless lamb or a puppet on the
expert's string.
THE NECESSITY OF REL YING ON OUR MIND
Once we have a clear grasp of where we live in the sense of the
environment
in which we make decisions, we come face to face with a heavy
responsibility:
WE MUST ASSERT RATIONAL CONTROL OF OUR BELIEFS
AND CONCLU-
SIONS. THE ALTERNATIVE IS BEING THE MENTAL
SLAVE OF WHOEVER
IMPRESSES OUR SYSTEM 1 BRAIN.
Critical Thinking teaches you skills and attitudes that make you
proud
to have rationally discovered answers that make sense to you.
Critical think-
ing encourages you to listen to and learn from others, while at
the same time
weighing the quality of what others say. In this regard, you are
learning that
we must depend on others, but only selectively. Critical
thinking thereby lib-
erates you, empowering you to be the supervisor of who you are
becoming.
CRITICAL THINKING TO THE RESCUE
Listening and reading critically-that is, reacting with systematic
evaluation to
what you have heard and read-requires a set of skills and
attitudes. These
skills and attitudes are built around a series of related critical
questions. While
9. we will learn them one by one, our goal is to be able to use
them as a unit
to identify the best decision available. Ideally, asking these
questions will
become part of who you are, not just something you studied in a
book.
Critical thinking, as we will use the term, refers to the
following:
1. awareness of a set of interrelated critical questions;
2. ability to ask and answer these critical questions in an
appropriate
manner; and
3. desire to actively use the critical questions.
The goal of this book is to encourage you in all three of these
dimensions.
Questions require the person being asked the question to do
something
in response. By our questions, we are saying to the person: "I
am curious";
"I want to know more"; "help me." This request shows respect
for the other
person. Critical questions exist to inform and provide direction
for all who
hear them. In that respect, critical thinking begins with the
desire to improve
what we think. The critical questions are also useful in
improving your own
writing and speaking because they will assist you when you:
10. Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions 5
I. react critically to an essay or to evidence presented in a
textbook, in a
periodical, or on a Web site;
2. judge the quality of a lecture or a speech;
Three Dimensions of Critical Thinking
3. form an argument;
Desire to actively
use the cnt1cal
questions
4. write an essay based on a reading assignment; or
5 . participate in class.
A. Attention: Critical thinking consists of an awareness of a set
of
interrelated critical questions, plus the ability and willingness
to
ask and answer them at appropriate times.
THE SPONGE AND PANNING FOR GOLD:
ALTERNATIVE THINKING STYLES
One common approach to thinking is similar to the way in
which a sponge
reacts to water: by absorbing. This popular approach has some
clear
advantages.
11. First, the more information you absorb about the world, the
more capa-
ble you are of understanding its complexities. Knowledge you
have acquired
provides a foundation for more complicated thinking later.
6 Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner o f Asking the Right
Questions
A second advantage of the sponge approach is that it is
relatively pas-
sive. Rather than requiring strenuous mental effort, it tends to
be rather quick
and easy, especially when the material is presented in a clear
and interest-
ing fashion. Though absorbing information provides a
productive start toward
becoming a thoughtful person, the sponge approach also has a
serious and
devastating disadvantage: It provides no method for deciding
which informa-
tion and opinions to believe and which to reject. If a reader
relied on the
sponge approach all the time, he would believe whatever he
read last.
We think you would rather choose for yourself what to absorb
and what to
ignore. To make this choice, you must read with a special
attitude-a question-
asking attitude. Such a thinking style requires active
participation. The writer is
trying to speak to you, and you should try to talk back to him,
even though he
12. is not physically present.
We call this interactive approach the panning-for-gold style of
think-
ing. The process of panning for gold provides a model for active
readers
and listeners as they try to determine the worth of what they
read and hear.
Distinguishing the gold from the gravel in a conversation
requires you to ask
frequent questions and to reflect on the answers.
The sponge approach emphasizes knowledge acquisition; the
panning-
for-gold approach stresses active interaction with knowledge as
it is being
acquired. Thus, the two approaches complement each other. To
pan for intel-
lectual gold, there must be something in your pan to evaluate. In
addition, to
evaluate arguments, we must possess knowledge, that is,
dependable opinions.
Let us examine more closely how the two approaches lead to
different
behavior. What does the individual who takes the sponge
approach do when
he reads material? He reads sentences carefully, trying to
remember as much
as he can. He may underline or highlight key words and
sentences. He may·
take notes summarizing the major topics and major points. He
checks his
underlining or notes to be sure that he is not forgetting anything
important.
His mission is to find and understand what the author has to
13. say. He memo-
rizes the reasoning, but doesn't evaluate it.
What does the reader who takes the panning-for-gold approach
do? Like
the person using the sponge approach, she approaches her
reading with the
hope that she will acquire new knowledge. There the similarity
ends. The
panning-for-gold approach requires that the reader ask herself a
number of
questions designed to uncover the best available decisions or
beliefs.
The reader who uses the panning-for-gold approach frequently
ques-
tions why the author makes various claims. She writes notes to
herself in the
margins indicating problems with the reasoning. She continually
interacts with
the material. Her intent is to critically evaluate the material and
formulate per-
sonal conclusions based on the evaluation.
The most important characteristic of the panning-for-gold
approach is
interactive involvement-a dialogue between the writer and the
reader, or the
speaker and the listener. As a critical thinker, you are willing to
agree with
others, but first you need some convincing answers to your
questions.
Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
14. Questions 7
someone me to eve someth ng?
Did eval ate
Mental Checklist for Panning for Gold
The inadequacies in what someone says will not always leap out
at you.
You must be an active reader and listener. You can do this by
asking ques-
tions. The best search strategy is a critical-questioning strategy.
A powerful
advantage of these questions is that they permit you to ask
probing questions
even when you know very little about the topic being discussed.
For exam-
ple, you do not need to be an expert on child care to ask critical
questions
about the adequacy of day-care centers.
WEAK-SENSE AND STRONG-SENSE CRITICAL THINKING
Previous sections mentioned that you already have opinions
about many per-
sonal and social issues. You are willing right now to take a
position on such
questions as: Should prostitution be legalized? Is alcoholism a
disease or will-
ful misconduct? Was George W. Bush a successful president?
You bring these
initial opinions to what you hear and read.
15. 8 Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions
Critical thinking can be used to either (1) defend or (2) evaluate
and
revise your initial beliefs. Professor Richard Paul's distinction
between weak-
sense and strong-sense critical thinking helps us appreciate
these two antago-
nistic uses of critical thinking.
A Attention: Weak-sense critical thinking is the use of critical
think-
ing to defend your current beliefs. Strong-sense critical thinking
is
the use of the same skills to evaluate all claims and beliefs,
especially
your own.
If you approach critical thinking as a method for defending your
present
beliefs, you are engaged in weak-sense critical thinking. Why is
it weak7 To
use critical-thinking skills in this manner is to be unconcerned
with moving
toward truth or virtue. The purpose of weak-sense critical
thinking is to resist
and annihilate opinions and reasoning different from yours. To
see domina-
tion and victory over those who disagree with you as the
objective of critical
thinking is to ruin the potentially humane and progressive
aspects of critical
thinking.
In contrast, strong-sense critical thinking requires us to apply
16. the critical
questions to all claims, including our own. By forcing ourselves
to look criti-
cally at our initial beliefs, we help protect ourselves against
self-deception and
conformity. It is easy to just stick with current beliefs,
particularly when many
people share them. But when we take this easy road, we run the
strong risk
of making mistakes we could otherwise avoid.
Strong-sense critical thinking does not necessarily force us to
give up
our initial beliefs. It can provide a basis for strengthening them
because criti-
cal examination of those beliefs will sometimes reinforce our
original com-
mitment to them. Another way of thinking about this distinction
is to contrast
open- and closed-mindedness. When my mind is open, it
welcomes criticism
of my own beliefs. But when my mind is closed, the beliefs I
have are going
to be the ones I keep.
To feel proud of a particular opinion, it should be one we have
selected-
selected from alternative opinions that we have understood and
evaluated.
The Importance of Pradice
Our goal is to make your learning as simple as possible.
However, the habit
of critical thinking will initially take a lot of practice.
17. The practice exercises and sample responses at the end of each
chap-
ter, except this introductory chapter, are an important part of
this text. Our
answers are not necessarily the only correct ones, but they do
provide
illustrations of how to apply the definitions and question-asking
skills. We
intentionally failed to provide sample answers for the third
passage at the
end of each chapter. Our objective is to give you the
opportunity to strug-
gle with the answer using your knowledge of the chapter we
have just
Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions 9
studied. For additional practice opportunities and for online
help, go to
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/browne, where we have placed
many
helpful hints and practice materials.
CRITICAL THINKING AND OTHER PEOPLE
Values and Other People
Think of other people as your most valuable resource, the basis
for the facts,
opinions, and conclusions that you will eventually have. In an
important and
ongoing manner, other people are part of your extended family,
those who
18. nurture your conclusions. The theme here is connectedness.
How these interactions work is shaped by your values and the
values
you perceive in those with whom you interact. Before you can
discover the
importance of values in shaping conclusions, you must have
some under-
standing of what a value is. Values, as we will use the term, are
ideas that
someone thinks are worthwhile. You will find that it is the
importance one
assigns to abstract ideas that has the major influence on one's
choices and
behavior.
Usually objects, experiences, and actions are desired because of
some
idea we value. For example, we may choose to do things that
provide us with
contacts with important people. We value "important people"
(concrete idea)
because we value "status" (abstract idea). When we use the
word value in this
chapter, we will be referring to an (abstract) idea representing
what someone
thinks is important and good .
.A Attention: Values are unstated ideas that people see as
worthwhile.
'Ibey provide standards of conduct by which we measure the
qual-
ity of human behavior.
To better familiarize yourself with values, write down some of
your own
19. values. Try to avoid writing down the names of people, tangible
objects, or
actions. Pizza and tennis may be important to you, but it is the
importance
you assign to abstract ideas that most influences your choices
and behav-
ior concerning controversial public issues. Your willingness to
argue for or
against assisted suicide, for instance, is strongly related to the
importance you
assign to the sanctity of human life-an abstract idea. As you
create your list
of values, focus on those that are so significant that they affect
your opinions
and behavior in many ways.
Do you have problems making your list? We can provide some
help.
Values are standards of conduct that we endorse and expect
people to meet.
When we expect our political representatives to "tell the truth,"
we are indi-
cating to them and to ourselves that honesty is one of our most
cherished
values. Ask yourself how you expect your friends to be. What
standards of
10 Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions
conduct would you want your children to develop? Answers to
these ques-
tions should help you enlarge your understanding of values.
20. Let's remind ourselves how knowledge about values relates to
the social
nature of critic::il thinking. While we must require ourselves to
listen carefully
to those who have different value priorities than our own, the
most obvious
social link established by values is similarity. Those of us who
see individual
responsibility as an extremely important value tend to be
comfortable with
and to seek out those who similarly believe that improved
personal choices
are the solution to most human problems. Hence, many of our
most valuable
social interactions or learning experiences start with
communications with
those who have similar value priorities. Our huge challenge in
this regard
is to make ourselves work hard to understand the reasoning of
those whose
value priorities differ from ours.
While adventure, ambition, autonomy, comfort, excellence,
justice, ratio-
nality, tolerance, and spontaneity may be important values to
us, it is quite
likely that other reasonable people will have important values
that conflict
with many of these. Our normal tendency to listen to only those
with simi-
lar value priorities needs our active resistance. We have to fight
against the
tendency.
Primary Values of a Critical Thinker
21. This book is dedicated to help you become a critical thinker. As
a critical
thinker, you will be pursuing better conclusions, better beliefs,
and better deci-
sions. Certain values advance your effort to do so; others do
not. By knowing
and appreciating the primary values of a critical thinker, you
have some men-
tal muscle that you can use to remind yourself of the necessity
of your paying
close attention to those who do not share your value priorities.
Let's examine
these primary values.
1. Autonomy. At first this value may seem as if it has little to
do with
encouraging people to pay attention to those with different
perspec-
tives. How does a drive to form one's own conclusions
encourage us in
any fashion to seek and listen to views that are not our own?
Aha! And
what raw material should you use in pursuing this autonomy?
Surely, we
all want to pick and choose from the widest possible array of
possibili-
ties; otherwise, we may miss the one decision or option that we
would
have chosen if only we had paid attention to those who did not
share
our value priorities. For example, Democrats make a huge
mistake if
they listen only to other Democrats.
2. Curiosity. To take advantage of the panning-for-gold method
of living
22. your life, you need to listen and read, really listen and read.
Other peo-
ple have the power to move you forward, to liberate you from
your cur-
rent condition of partial knowledge. To be a critical thinker
requires you
to then ask questions about what you have encountered. Part of
what
you gain from other people is their insights and understanding,
when
" I
Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions 11 !
i
what they have to offer meets the standards of good reasoning
that you will learn in Asking the Right Questions.
3. Humility. Recognizing that even the smartest person in the
world makes
many mistakes each week provides the ideal platform for
engaging
actively with other people. Certainly some of us have insights
that others
do not have, but each of us is very limited in what we can do,
and at
honest moments, we echo Socrates when he said that he knew
that
he did not know. Once we accept this reality, we can better
recognize
that our experiences with other people can fill in at least a few
of the
23. gaps in our present understanding. Also, a sense of humility
keeps us
from avoiding a very common obstacle to critical thinking, the
belief
that "those who disagree with me are biased, but I am not."
4. Respect for good reasoning wherever you find it. While we
want to
respect and listen to other voices, all conclusions or opinions
are not
equally worthwhile. The critical questions you will learn as you
study
this book will provide a framework to assist you in picking and
choos-
ing from among all the people trying to influence you. When
you find
strong reasoning, regardless of the race, age, political party,
wealth, or
citizenship of the speaker or writer, rely on it until a better set
of reason-
ing comes along.
By all means, act with confidence based on your beliefs, but
hold your
conclusions with only that degree of firmness that permits you
to still wonder
to yourself, "Might I be wrong?"
They are your opinions, and you quite understandably feel
protective
of them. Listen as political satirist Stephen Colbert mocks this
attitude of ours:
'Tm not a fan of facts . You see, the facts can change, but my
opinion will
never change, no matter what the facts are."
24. Anyone determined to keep the conclusions he already has may
well
use reasons to justify his opinion. However, this kind of
reasoning is called
"managed reasoning," meaning that the reasoning is being
selected so as to
reach a particular conclusion.
KEEPING THE CONVERSATION GOING
Because critical thinking is a social activity, we need to
consider how other
people are likely to react to us when we ask them questions
about their
beliefs and conclusions. As long as we are interacting with
others who share
the primary values of critical thinking, our questions will be
received as evi-
dence that we are a partner in the search for better answers to
the questions
we share. But that terrific opportunity to grow together is not
going to be the
only kind of social interaction you will have.
Many people are not eager to have their thinking questioned;
often,
they experience questioning as annoying and unfriendly. Some
may wonder,
"Why is she asking me all these challenging questions? Why
does she not just
agree with me?" Don't be surprised if someone reacts to your
quest to learn
I
I
26. to other people that you want to learn. Furthermore, give them
assurances
that you wish them well and that any disagreement you have
with them, as
serious and important as that disagreement might be, need not
result in a
verbal bloodbath. What follows are a few verbal strategies that
you can use to
keep the conversation going:
1. Try to clarify your understanding of what the other person
intends by
asking, "Did I hear you say?"
2. Ask the other person whether there is any evidence that
would cause
him to change his mind.
Chapter 1 • The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right
Questions 13
3. Suggest a time-out in which each of you will try to find the
very best
evidence for the conclusion you hold.
4. Ask why the person thinks the evidence on which you are
relying is so
weak.
S. Try to come together. If you take that person's best reasons
and put
them together with your best reasons, is there some conclusion
that
both of you could embrace?
27. 6. Search for common values or other shared conclusions to
serve as a
basis for determining where the disagreement first appeared in
your
conversation.
7. Try to present a model of caring and calm curiosity; as soon
as the ver-
bal heat turns up, try to remind yourselves that you are learners,
not
warriors.
8. Make certain that your face and body suggest humility, rather
than the
demeanor of a know-it-all.
Creating a Friendly Environment for Communication
As a writer or speaker, you are faced with an important choice.
You have
to decide the type of environment you'll create for your
audience. Will you
choose one that is hostile to people who disagree with your
conclusions? In
the current polarized climate, the temptation is great. Just look
at the tactics
employed during the American election season-the tactics the
Daily Show's
Jon Stewart mocked when he said, "I disagree with you, but I
am pretty sure
you're not Hitler."
In the spirit of this Jon Stewart quote, you could choose to
create an
environment in which reasonable people can productively and
28. respectfully
disagree-an environment that welcomes discussion and
question-asking. Of
course we prefer this approach, but let's be honest: There are
some com-
pelling reasons to write in a tone that excludes, even shoots
down, critical
thinkers.
First, it's easier to shoot down a hard question than to consider
and
respond to it. Plus, you'll surely sound authoritative, daring
your audience
to challenge your expert judgment. Not to mention that this
writing style can
even be fun. Have you ever read and enjoyed a vicious review
of a movie,
book, album, or video game?
Take a look at the tone and word choice in this review of the
2009 box
office success Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Popular
film critic Roger
Ebert suggested:
If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen,
cue up a
male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start
banging pots and
pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
Just t1y to convince him that he should calm down and
reconsider.