Monday, January 24, 2011

Indirect communication

In the front page of an Iris Murdoch book I got from library is a little list, written in cramped cursive.
pray
brush teeth/floss
wash face
pee
ear drop

I find this quite funny. And when I was listening to the CBC on Sunday, I heard a suggestion on why this may be so.

Apparently, we are hard wired to put more weight in things we overhear than in things we are told directly. I didn’t catch much of the interview in which this was discussed, but it was talked about in the context of gossip and Twitter – such that we get great pleasure out of listening in on others. We also tend to take more seriously things we overhear said about ourselves than the things people say to our faces.

Surely the mass appeal of Facebook must be based on this same principle. Because really, why should I care what an old high school friend writes on the wall of someone I don’t even know? Why should it matter what my friends say to each other or what comments they attach to their profiles?

Well, the success of Facebook proves that to most of us, these things do matter in some way – or at least we pay a significant level of interest in them.

It’s all quite strange when you think about this with regard to the relationship mantras of always communicating openly and directly with people we care about. Perhaps we’ve been doing it all wrong. It seems that if I tell you directly either the good (I love you, I value you, I respect you) – or the bad (I feel neglected, betrayed, hurt), these things are less likely to be heard than if you ‘accidentally’ overhear me telling someone else that I feel these things about you.

So maybe what we should be doing is allowing others to overhear us talk about them. To talk a little too loud on the phone or forget to close the computer after drafting a tell-all email to a friend.

This could utterly turn relationship counselling on its head.

Maybe I’ll start a new school – the indirect communicators – beginning with a list in a library book.

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