Category: Echo chambers

1. I know I am right.
2. I think that I am right.

Who are we?

Are we #1 or #2?

The truth is that we are both. Each of us has the inclination to protect our rightness and because we are “right”,we have permission to use any and all tools at our disposal to protect the “truth”. We believe we will do so in a civil manner, but sheltered by our echo chamber we are released from any constraints  of civility.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.    Eric Hoffer

Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness.     Erwin McManus

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.    Thales

The following citation, in reference to a recent Starbucks incident, further illustrates the importance of self awareness.

Starbucks has an ambitious plan to try to address discrimination and unconscious bias by training nearly 175,000 of its workers one afternoon later this month. According to David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, eliminating bias would require people to become completely self-aware and objective about their own thoughts, and Rock says no one’s found a way to do that.

“Any strategy that essentially relies on people to try not to be biased is doomed to fail; that’s the heart of the problem,” he says.

A prerequisite of self awareness is the greatest challenge to surviving and thriving in echo chambers. To see and truly understand ourselves is the only antidote to the self-deceiving nature of echo chambers. Self-deception is a path of least resistance. The lure self-deception is so consuming that any thought that we can will ourselves into self awareness is, ironically, self-deceiving.

Self-awareness occurs when we are exposed by light from external sources which strip away the shadows of self-deception and leave us profoundly naked and humiliated. It is in those moments that we cannot only see who we truly are, we are also able discern who we should be and what changes are needed to transform us.

Three examples of dramatic events of self-awareness from the Bible illustrate the power of such events to change lives. 

Apostle Peter

“Even if everyone else falls to pieces on account of you, I won’t.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Jesus said. “This very night, before the rooster crows up the dawn, you will deny me three times.”

Peter protested, “Even if I had to die with you, I would never deny you.” All the others said the same thing.

All this time, Peter was sitting out in the courtyard. One servant girl came up to him and said, “You were with Jesus the Galilean.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I swear, I never laid eyes on the man.”

“I don’t know the man!”

Just then a rooster crowed. Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” He went out and cried and cried and cried.

King David

The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,  but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!  

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Saul of Tarsus

Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest  and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.  As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.  “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

It is my opinion that humans are incapable of  truthful self-awareness without external influence. Those influences can range from serendipitous, confrontational, coincidental to self-imposed. They maybe characterized as spiritual, dramatic, tragic, unjust, prophetic and/or mystical.

Every one of us, in the course of our lives will encounter many and varied external influences which can give us, at least, a glimpse if not an indelible view of ourselves. When we recognize those encounters and become more truly self-aware, the trajectory of our lives will bend toward virtue.

The following are two examples from my own experience.

A significant part of my career at Ford Motor Company included working as an internal consultant for organizational change, specifically training and development in participative  management. Effective communication skills were a critical factor to any success. Accordingly, I had the opportunity for my communication skills to be assessed and improved. I must admit that, at that time, my opinion of my communication skills was very high. In fact, I felt the assessments were unnecessary. A part of the assessment was to participate in a role play exercise which involved conflict and required skillful communication for resolution. The exercise was video taped.

After completing the exercise, I was pleased with my performance and was looking forward to reviewing the video.

The video was shocking. In my mind I had been polished and convincing, skillfully controlling the situation and reaching a satisfactory  resolution.  What the video revealed was angry, intimidating facial expressions and body language. My demeanor was controlling and  arrogant.

For the first time, I recognized what others had known all a long. I  was not the person I believed I was. With that realization, I began to understand why many prior difficult interpersonal circumstances had puzzled and frustrated me and defied resolution. That occasion of truthful self-awareness was a turning point which changed me profoundly.

The second example also relates to my communication skills, but in a different context. My confidence (arrogance) regarding my communications skills displayed itself in my role as a father. Five children were a convenient opportunity to utilize my gift. I seemed to be doing reasonably well with our first three children, all boys. The arrival of two girls was a game changer. Thankfully, I was able to translate my professional skills into may role as father. I was pleased with my ability to communicate with our oldest girl who, at the time, was in her early teens.  It was on the occasion of Father’s Day that I received a card from her.

Appreciative, but a bit puzzled, I opened the card.  I can   only describe my reaction as stunned. It was a moment of self-awareness that I have not forgotten. My image as  a “great communicator” was revealed for what it really was, self delusion.

The peril of unmitigated echo chambers is their inherent character to impede, if not block, external influences which would otherwise provide opportunity for truthful self-awareness. We become blind and deaf to anything other than that which affirms our self-deception. As a result, progress toward thriving healthily in an echo chamber requires at least two personal responses:

1. …intentionally develop a sensitivity to the routine external influences that we encounter in our daily lives. (Essentially, “stop and smell the roses”).
2. … make intentional choices that will expose ourselves to external influences i.e. social relationships, community, neighborhood, family, friends et al.

Motivated Reasoning

The processes of motivated reasoning are a type of inferred justification strategy which is used to mitigate cognitive dissonance. When people form and cling to false beliefs despite overwhelming evidence, the phenomenon is labeled “motivated reasoning”. In other words, “rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe”.^[2] This is “a form of implicit emotion regulation in which the brain converges on judgments that minimize negative and maximize positive affect states associated with threat to or attainment of motives”

Some time around 1970, Ford Motor Company in Louisville, Ky initiated a program to hire hard core unemployable people to work as assembly operators. At that time I was a General Foreman in production assembly. Because of the dramatic challenges of integrating the hard core unemployable into the existing culture, a series of training sessions were conducted to better equip management employees. It was in one of those sessions that I encountered a life altering experience.

There were approximately 40-50 salaried employees participating in the training session. We were subjected to a variety of lectures and exercises designed to help us understand and deal with the cultural differences we would face as we managed what seemed to be unmanageable people. One particular exercise was life-altering for me.

The instructor told us we would be doing a problem solving exercise. We could not take notes but were to listen carefully to the problem and determine individually the correct answer. The problem was simple enough. It involved the sale of a mule between two farmers. There were three or four purchases and repurchases for different prices.  The problem to be solved was who finally owned the mule and how much did the seller profit?

Given a few moments to think about our answers, the instructor asked us to share our answers. I thought that was unnecessary since it was such simple problem and I had determined the correct answer almost immediately. Expecting that everyone else would have the same answer, I was surprised that there were four or five different answers. At that point I was feeling some satisfaction in having the correct answer.

Next we were instructed to form groups based on our answers. Four or five groups emerged. The number of people in the groups varied from 10-12, 7-8, etc and my group with 4. Again, I was a bit surprised how few had gotten the answer correct. Once we were grouped, the instructor told us to discuss our answer within our group. Following that discussion, we were told that we could change groups if we so desired.  The largest group gained some members, one of whom was from my group.

The next step involved each group sending a representative to the other groups to convince them that their answer was correct.  Following some passionate argument and pleas, once again we were given the opportunity to change our answer and join the agreeing group. I was pleased that none of my group departed but mystified that none joined us.

The final step involved each group sending a representative to work out their answer in writing on the white board. I represented our  group and was pleased at how clearly I was able illustrated the correct answer. Confident that people would finally realize how mistaken they were, I welcomed the final opportunity for people to change their minds and join my group.

I watched with disappointment as another of my group departed for the largest group. No one joined my group. There were now three groups. My group with myself and one other, a second group with 4-5 people and the large group with everyone else.  At this point, it is important to understand how invested I had become in the exercise. My mind was racing and my emotions were deepening. I was truly flabbergasted at the results of the exercise.  It had become personal.

To conclude the exercise, the instructor chose two people to represent the farmers and provided money for the transaction. I should not have been surprised that he chose me to be one of the farmers. To assure that there would be no question about the outcome, we methodically acted out the transactions. Carefully we passed the money with each exchange. At the conclusion, I possessed the money and was asked to count it for everyone to see. Convinced I had calculated the answer correctly, I gladly complied.

WRONG! I was wrong. There was no doubt.

The impact of that moment for me cannot be overstated. I was embarrassed and shamed. My arrogance and self-righteousness were exposed. How could I have been so deaf and blind? Any thought of humble acceptance escaped me. Thankfully the obvious outcome spared me the unfamiliar words: “I was wrong”. Almost immediately, the thought crossed my mind, “If I was wrong about this, what else am I wrong about? 

Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I came to grips with the possibility that I could be wrong. That experience altered the lens through which I view myself and the world around me for the rest of my life. For that reason the subject of echo chambers has attracted my attention. It is within the confines of echo chambers that we are shielded from the possibility of being wrong and subject to all the perils of such.