Empathy Is Fundamental To Communication
A small rant on the importance of talking to one another
I am passionate about people learning how to speak to one another. It’s cliche at this point to say communication is fundamental to organizing, but it cannot be underscored enough how little people do this. When conflict often arises in situations where it is possible to go “no contact,” many people merely stop engaging.
No communication — just absence.
For people you must be around for reasons of employment, family, or community, communication is still quite difficult because many prefer not to do the difficult work of learning how to address and repair harm. That work involves humility as you introspect on your own imperfections and the ones of those around you.
Instead of communication, many prefer to make problems a dichotomy between good and evil. You become a folk devil, an example of everything that is wrong with your family, your work, or your community — a bad thing, and good people do not have to talk to evil. They merely need to banish it, shame it, and tell all the world that evil exists and that it is you.
As we can see, without communication, there can be no community. All attempts will lead to fracture as interpersonal conflicts transmute into either prolonged silences or battles between good and evil.
