How does the way you think affect the way you speak? And the things you speak the way you think? Sylvia introduces the core ideas of Why This Way and shares how her efforts to shed even the subtle false bits and pieces in communication has allowed for true things to come into her thoughts and words. -Editor.
I remember being at Bryn Athyn College and regularly being involved in intellectually stimulating theological discussions, both in class and in social contexts among friends. There I learned to communicate about deep issues, and to discuss ideas on their own merits. One thing I love about New Church culture in Bryn Athyn is the emphasis on truth seeking – not just truth, but the constant, humble search for it. And I didn't realize how important that was to me until a couple of years ago, when I started looking more closely at communication patterns.
In January of 2012, some of my friends and I founded a group called Why This Way. The first thing we established were the rules of communication, to be followed during meetings. The purpose of the rules was to communicate respectfully and effectively, and not to cross personal boundaries. I think they also encourage people to speak more truthfully. The rules include “Do not exaggerate,” “Do not attach negative labels to people or groups of people,” and “Do not make any statements about another person's thoughts, intentions, or motivations.” An example of a statement that breaks all of these rules would be, “Men are idiots and the only reason they do anything is to impress women.”
This all seemed pretty basic and logical to me when we were coming up with the rules, I think partly because they were based on the way I naturally communicated with my friends at the time. However, once we put them into practice, I started thinking differently. During meetings, we enforce the rules thoroughly, and even those of us who have been participating since the beginning still slip up sometimes. Some speech patterns are so ingrained and automatic, that we have to start paying attention to them in ways that we haven't had to before. After having these rules enforced for an hour or two every week, I started becoming more acutely aware of my own communication patterns, and my thinking.
I started noticing whenever the rules were broken in my normal conversations or if I was reading something. I found that it became easier for me to gauge the truthfulness of any given statement, and point out why it wasn't true or how the statement conflicted with my own system of thinking and values. For example, I sometimes hear people say things like “Catholics believe in transubstantiation and Protestants don't.” This statement may sound true if you're familiar with the churches' doctrine, but if you ask individuals, you may find some Catholics who don't believe in it, and some Protestants who do. A more accurate statement would be that the official stance of the Catholic Church is that transubstantiation is true. The first statement glosses over ways in which people's personal beliefs may differ from the official doctrines or stances of the denomination they identify with.
I used to accept statements like that more easily, because I wouldn't think much about them, but now I often catch possible over-generalizations instantly, from my experience of actively paying attention to them in meetings. One thing I've noticed is that the false ideas that people tend to believe are not so much the blatant falsities, but the ideas that sound true, and even have a lot of truth in them, but are not quite entirely true. Yet failing to distinguish the untruth can be detrimental. Drawing on the previous example about Catholicism, similar reasoning can apply to any labelled group, such as a political party. The idea that all members of a group believe a certain thing can convey a false impression of how many people actually believe something, and it can facilitate mentalities that exclude and attack people for having different stances. I believe these ways of thinking fuel ideas like “Republicans don't care about the poor,” or “Democrats want to ruin the economy,” both of which make a negative claim about the motives of a group of people, and make it easier to antagonize that group. So I think making subtle distinctions in truthfulness is more important than it may seem at first.
I've noticed that the Writings say a lot about truth on a spiritual and abstract level, but I haven't found as much in them about how to recognize the truth about any given subject or situation, like the examples I mentioned earlier. In the past this has been a disconnect for me, when it comes to applying the ideas from the Writings to my life directly. Being involved in Why This Way has helped me bridge that gap. I have noticed a new level of clarity in my thoughts and the way I communicate with other people. I also find that I am thinking more consistently about the alignment of my values and priorities, and how they relate to everything I do.
Why This Way is not just a group about communication, it is a belief system and organization with goals and policies that govern its growth and change. You can find out more at our website, whythisway.org.