Getting Close to Someone, Part II

Hi everyone,

This has been finished for a while, but I lost confidence that it was interesting or funny.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out. If you like it, great. If you don’t, well, that confirmed my suspicion that is still needs work. But I hope you enjoy it.

 

When a Good Quality Goes Bad

 

Being open and transparent is usually a good thing. Of course giving too much information, especially about body fluids or other sticky subjects, can be annoying. This post is about how some folks cross boundaries, not in what they share, but how. I’m talking about people who speak so loudly that everyone nearby can hear them, whether they want to or not. It’s almost the opposite of eavesdropping.

I’ve never heard anyone report hearing an interesting idea or good joke from some loud-talking stranger next to her. Have you? If that happened I’d probably raise my voice a lot more because I’m full of interesting ideas and good jokes. No, most would describe this intrusive experience as ranging from uncomfortable all the way to very irritating.

There’s no real problem here unless the person is irritating. That’s bad, because it makes you feel, well, irritated. But before you jump to an unpleasant reaction, I recommend trying to learn some about the person. They are obviously offering up free information so you might as well see if there’s anything to interest you. If the loud neighbor is making it difficult to hear your companion, maybe you and your companion can both listen for a while. Not only would that make for an interesting first date, but maybe you’ll both hear a valuable stock tip or a warning about some impending threat.

While picking up some actionable financial advice is unlikely, there is a good chance you’ll gain something even more worthwhile – insight about fellow humans. You may learn what interests them, what they like and dislike, what they know and don’t know. Why should you care? There are probably many reasons, but one of the most important is because, let’s face it, you are going to judge that person. Maybe you think, I don’t judge others, or at least I try not to. But a judgment is just an opinion. We all have them and we form them all the time to make sense of the world around us. People shouldn’t say ‘don’t judge me’, they should say, ‘judge me accurately and please give me feedback about areas I might need to correct, but don’t treat me poorly’. That’s one of the guiding values of Participastory – don’t treat other people badly. But I digress.

What should you focus in on to make an accurate judgment? To form a detailed opinion, you’ll need more than can be learned from listening in to excessively loud conversation. So I recommend focusing on two important criteria: How much is the person aware of the volume? How much do they care? Understanding this can guide how to respond, both internally and outwardly.

People who knowingly speak loud enough to be heard by others outside their circle might not acknowledge it, but they want to be heard. Think of them as audio posers. They are trying to craft an image or perception for others. Such people are often seen in coffee shops, restaurants, or busy public lines, speaking loudly into their phones, or talking in an animated way to a group of acquaintances who seem to be looking for a way to escape. That’s one of the signs of an audio poser– the people who know him often look like they wish they didn’t. Why does this person want others to hear everything he says? You may have to engage in conversation to find out. And, of course, that might be part of the reason. By spewing out his thoughts and ideas he may be weaving a conversational fishing net.

There is a decent chance, though, that the person may be unaware due to poor hearing, excessive caffeine consumption, or both. I’ve been excessively loud for those reasons before, and I’m glad my family and friends let me know. If this person’s acquaintances informed him and he’s made no effort to tone it down, he may not care. But maybe his friends haven’t told him, and that says a lot about how much they care.

In just a short time, in an unexpected encounter with an intrusive voice, we’ve explored crucial dynamics of human interaction. You’ve formed an opinion about how much the person is aware of their behavior, and perhaps on how much they care about its affect on others. Now it’s time to see if you’re right by asking that person some questions directly. And that’s the subject of my next post.

Applying the Ware Care Continuum Part 2: Care

The previous post provided a basic template for evaluating a person’s awareness. Accurately judging how much a person cares about other people is more difficult. A history of often getting it wrong, sometimes with very painful consequences, has given the judging process a bad name. It’s easy to be wrong. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. After all, knowing how much a person cares about others is important. Some might say the most important thing.

So how do we do it? First we must establish what care means. You can care about another person in many ways, not all good. For practitioners of the Ware Care Continuum, caring shall be considered as wanting the best for another person, even if you don’t wish to be part of that person’s life. A better definition is that caring means seeking mutually satisfactory outcomes. This only works, though, if both sides have some knowledge of what the other wants. In other words, they must have some awareness of each other. And to evaluate another’s level of care, you must need to know how much that person is aware.

For an example, let’s evaluate the care level of someone you watch interact with another person. How a person treats someone else should have a strong affect on you, even though they are not doing something directly to you. Imagine seeing someone spit in another person’s face. It’s tempting to think that the spitter doesn’t care about the spittee. Or that she cares very much about that person and wants to inflict humiliation and indignity. Since humiliation clashes with a mutually satisfaction (except in certain sado masochistic relationships), that kind of powerful caring is considered low- care.

But, what if the spitter perceived a wound on the recipient’s face, and, with no first aid kit available, and having just learned that there are antibacterial properties in saliva, thought she was doing the right thing for the person? This knowledge changes the care assessment. Would licking the wound be the more caring response? Perhaps, but again, it is possible the spitter was aware of the wounded person’s aversion to tongue contact or some other overall need for personal space.

Okay, so this is an extreme example, but one that illustrates how easy it is to misunderstand another’s level of care. A more common instance might be a man ignoring his child’s cries. It may appear that he doesn’t care, but what if he is trying to teach the child to self soothe?

So, what does an actual low care status look like? A hearing, fully capable person, who walks past someone in obvious distress without stopping is an obvious example. But it is probably less common, and might not be so useful. How about this – a person who appears to be listening to another individual express a point of view, but who just smiles, nods his head, and walks off. That would be a sign of not caring about the other person’s issue.   We will continue to look for other examples, and post them here to aid in developing this process. Your help puts the “participate” in participastory.

The easiest way to assess if a person cares is to determine if they have the ability to do something, fix a problem, make a change, and yet fail to act on it. The affect we have on others often starts with how we care for ourselves. If you see a person with poor personal hygiene who also has obvious material advantages such as a nice home, car, job, it may seem obvious the person doesn’t care about his appearance. While this person may be a slob, before quickly assuming he is a low care, remember that our assessments are about interactions with others, not an individual’s personal habits. But this example begins with basic actions and expressions of existence. If he smells bad, and his body odors creep into your nostrils, that does reflect a lack of caring about the experience of others near him. Even if there is an allergy to deodorant, the person might use some sort of oil or scent to mitigate the smell. Similar examples can be made of those who don’t try to control anxiety, fear, or anger. These emotions directly affect other people. Anxiety can be as infectious as the flu. But how do you know if someone’s anxiety is controllable or run amok by abnormal neurochemical balances?

Making these assessments will be complicated. Difficulty in figuring others out may be one of the main reasons people give up and decide they don’t care. Indifference is easier than the difficult work of properly assessing others.

Staying in the same subject as hygiene, just because a person is very clean, does not mean that he cares about others. He might conceal his body odor due to fear of embarrassment and vanity. However, everyone who doesn’t have to smell him will probably be grateful, whatever the motivation. So how do you evaluate people who commit thoughtful, considerate acts for others, but don’t really care about them? Those who help others only to advance themselves socially or position themselves to exploit others? We will explore these questions and more going forward. One goal of practicing the Ware Care Continuum, though, is to understand and read people better. But in order for that to happen, we must do more than just think their assessments, we must share them.

Feedback is only useful if you share it. Please feel free to share feedback with me about this blog below.

Where to Start

The Care Aware Index is meant to focus your thoughts about other people in ways that can easily be expressed as feedback to start valuable dialogues. It might seem ideal to apply these assessments to everyone you meet, but that’s probably not a good place to start. Our schedules won’t allow it and the human brain may not have that much processing power. And even once we can augment our mental abilities technologically, do we want to assess everyone we see on the street? It is possible to care too much and we’ll discuss that later.

It’s tempting to think that the first people we should assess are our friends and family. Aren’t your odds of success better with people Continue reading “Where to Start”

Judge and Be Judged

Before certain misguided individuals take my call to start judging people too seriously, here are some important caveats. In order to judge someone, you must be willing to be judged. That just reflects a condition of our existence, because people are often judged for their judgments. But it is my intention that no one use this system who doesn’t wish to participate in being evaluated by it. No one can stop you from using the Care/Aware Index if you intend to avoid being assessed by it, but your deceitful behaviors will be obvious, especially to trained practitioners. Since using the CAI requires you to assert your opinion of another, the more you use it, the more exposed your thoughts become.

The ultimate goal of making these assessments of others is to understand oneself and each other. Some seek this information for Continue reading “Judge and Be Judged”