Seth Godin said something wise the other day:
“The hardest way to disagree with someone is to come to understand that they see the world differently than we do, to acknowledge that they have a different worldview, something baked in long before they ever encountered this situation.”
His suggestion for dealing with this kind of disagreement? To stop assuming the other person is ignorant or stupid or doesn’t get it, and instead focus on telling compelling stories. Stories, I’m assuming, that encourage empathy, that maybe crack open the door to give a glimpse of another worldview in a sympathetic way.
We’re telling stories all the time in our culture. We tell stories about the running of our government (politics). We tell stories to convince each other to buy something (advertising). We tell stories about how we do our jobs (annual reviews). We tell stories about how to live life (philosophy, child-rearing, religion). We tell stories about how the world works (mythology, pop science).
I was thinking about a question on OkCupid asking whether you have a problem with racist jokes. My answer was yes, I do; but plenty of people answer that racist jokes aren’t a big deal. I’ve never been a big fan of racist jokes; I don’t usually find them terribly funny. However, I might have once agreed that maybe they weren’t a big deal.
But then I read a lot of stories that showed me how racist jokes can cause harm, how they perpetuate the status quo of privilege and racism, and how they tangibly affect real people. And because of those stories and the empathy they caused me to feel, I notice these jokes and I feel uncomfortable. And yes, I do have a problem with them. My worldview changed. So now for me, those jokes ARE a big deal.
A worldview doesn’t always need to change dramatically. Sometimes it’s enough to recognize other experiences, even if you’ve never had them yourself. Even if you don’t agree. Even if you don’t think you’ll ever agree. The respect of recognition goes a long way to allowing a dialogue to take place.
The bedrock of empathy is the idea that however different our worldviews may be, we are all human beings. We all suffer, and we all want to be loved. Sometimes stories are the key to reminding each other of this truth.
The Practical Free Spirit 
I am curious as to what you consider a racist joke, and if that is a broad category to include gender or religion. I grew up in a melting pot island culture where we often made race jokes about ourselves and others. For the most part, it was not mean-spirited, but a way to laugh at ourselves.
As you know, I often joke about being asian – when it comes to my driving, the way I eat, my photo-taking needs. I also make jokes about someone being “white” (especially when it comes to food). Are those the sort of things that you consider racist and make you uncomfortable or do the jokes need to cross into a different territory to do so?
Well, I feel uncomfortable about sexist jokes as well, although I don’t think those fell under the scope of the racist joke OKCupid question. I think sometimes religion intersects with race in jokes.
If people want to make jokes about their own ethnicities, I don’t have a problem with that. That feels too much like trying to be the arbiter of other people’s experiences. I probably wouldn’t make a joke about Asians to you, though, even if you really wouldn’t care.
As for jokes about being “white,” those don’t bother me at all, as I don’t believe white people are being oppressed in our culture.
Hello ,
I heard about a great MOOC (free university online courses, for everybody) entitled “The future of storytelling”, and I wanted to share the good news with everybody interested in storytelling.
The MOOC will be about :
• storytelling basics,
• serial formats (on the TV, web and beyond),
• storytelling in role-playing games,
• interactive storytelling in video games,
• transmedia storytelling,
• alternate-reality gaming,
• augmented reality and location-based storytelling,
• the role of tools,
• interfaces and information architectures in current storytelling.
The course starts on October 25th, 2013, so enrol now and don’t forget to share the good news with your friends 🙂
You can follow this URL to to discover the course and/or enrol : https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling?r=14bd5
May be I’ll meet other readers of The Practical Free Spirit in the MOOC?! 🙂