Are You Threatening Me?

The husband of a sister-in-law wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a vintage political “pairing” to the most recent family Christmas gathering: “Reagan/Bush 84.” This fellow and I were standing in the kitchen, where the conversation was lagging. Therefore, I decided I’d play one of my little games, maybe poke the bear a bit. I pointed to his shirt and asked, “Do you like both of them?”

He replied, “Of course I do. Why?”

I said, “Well, I still haven’t made up my mind on Reagan, but I think that Bush was one of the biggest criminals of the 20^th century.”

I poked the bear, alright. He immediately came back, in his most sarcastic tone, “Oh, why? Because he was head of the CIA?”

I replied, “That’s part of it, but I never knew much about the Agency until I caught a Joe Rogan interview with the author of Chaos, a book about Charles Manson. Like the author, I had never had a thing for Manson—”

“Had a thing?!?” my listener burst out. “Who has a thing for Manson?” (See what he was doing here? By latching onto my poor word choice, he could immediately throw me off balance, which can be an effective and important tactic in a boxing match but does not exactly pave the way to an enriching and enjoyable conversation.)

“That’s not what I meant,” I replied. “I meant that I was never interested in him or his crimes. Anyway, reading the book shed a lot of light on the workings of the CIA, which was involved with Manson and—”

“Manson worked for the CIA?!? Yeah, right. Like the government would want Sharon Tate dead! What are you a conspiracy theorist?” And he walked away with a chuckle and a shake of the head.

I thought to myself something like this: Well, that answered a few questions about what he knows and believes. I thought he might be sort of a Rogan fan, but I guess not. Oh! And I never said that the CIA would have wanted Sharon Tate dead. Not even close, but I couldn’t get close, could I?

Where am I going with this? Backwards, actually. I want to expand upon what I shared from Jordan Peterson in my last post, “Daring Despite the Danger.” In that excerpt, Peterson is saying that what we know (the overarching Story by which we have structured our lives) protects us from chaos, or the unknown. Why do we need protection from the unknown? Because we fear what we don’t know. For instance, the first day at a new job can unsettle someone who’s been in the workforce for decades, because he’s likely never spent a day with these people, doing those tasks in this building. Give him a few weeks or a month, though, and he likely won’t even notice walking through the front door each morning.

In the anecdote I began this post with, my sister-in-law’s husband reacted quickly, negatively, and forcefully when I threatened his Story, which, apparently, includes such themes as, “I can almost always trust people wearing the label “Republican” (and distrust those sporting a “Democrat” tag)” and “Law enforcement agencies exist to protect the public, which includes me.”

In the past, I might have tried to continue the conversation with this man, working hard to ensure that he does not misunderstand me (whether he ends up agreeing with me or not) and think me a fool. Now, however, I know that I cannot control whether or not someone understands me, so I probably shouldn’t waste time being concerned about what they think of me. Perhaps more importantly, I can easily see that I was threatening the Story that protects this man, thereby forcing him to counterattack in order to keep my words from getting a toehold in his consciousness.

Given all that, though, wouldn’t it be nice if more of us could let down our guards—perhaps by working to understand the hold these Stories have on us—and become open to genuine, honest communication?