Decision Making 101
If you’ve ever thought “this is too divisive” while listening to arguments and comments in city politics, you have lots of company. There are tell-tale signs everywhere that we are not cooperating. Adults bully each other on community emails, road rage escalates while children are in the car, and the recent redistricting animosity took aggression to a new level.
As a result, in D3 and across San Jose as whole, we need to take a hard look at the city’s mental health — and start exploring the hope for cooperative problem-solving. Indulge me while I try to get this conversation going.
We have Conflict Entrepreneurs who benefit financially by raising the emotional aspects of any issue in order to gain attention and traction. They are not interested in problem solving or creativity. They are interested in polarization. They want a train wreck which derails our focus so that we stop and look at a crisis of their own making. They want an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ tribal emotion which can lead to trouble.
Name calling, which we left behind in kindergarten, is no longer taboo and in fact is encouraged to sustain a point of view. There are those who feel extreme conflict is an irresistible attraction, like watching a car accident in slow motion. There is a misperception of belonging to a moral high ground, of deep-seated personal belief at all costs, a sense of meaning with forceful purpose, and a feeling of belonging that enables a reaction to “defend at all costs”; especially when there is a fight between ‘us’ vs ‘them’. However, there is only us. The fight between good-us and evil-them is imaginary; there is only us. Extreme behavior does not get us closer to our goal. And the value tags of good vs evil do not help us solve problems. Isn’t that our true goal?
For example, redlining (which has come up a lot in our redistricting debates) was a travesty — it is illegal, unethical, and placed barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The banks which decided which neighborhoods to invest in, were not focused on people or on community. This practice divided us. Now is not the time to repeat any of the behavior which emotionally separates us from each other. To create positive solutions, we must be creative; and high conflict which involves an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ mentality will only make any difficulty, any problem or crossroad substantially worse and leave us drained, empty and without solutions.
If we continue to fight each other mercilessly then we can certainly make the” us” vs “them” divide much greater and our emotional lives much worse. With the viciousness, many moderate folks have checked out. They do not want to be a bystander to the fight and don’t want to participate. We are actually losing creative voices because we insist on the extreme conflict. We are losing innovative approaches because the conflict itself has become more important than a solution.
Problem solving requires creativity. Fear needs to loosen its hold and there can be a joy in flexibility and compromise, recognizing we share the planet. If we buckle down into the war zone trenches, we have two responses: flight or fight. And fight wins out each time.
Often it appears we only have two choices, two cataclysmic emotional cliffs but they have the same outcomes. On one side we disenfranchise people by refusing to hear their stories. On the other side, people are called racists, holding on to historical privilege that no longer moves with the current times. Two firm emotional, staunchly held camps. Within each group are ferocious and angry voices sounding alarms that something is being taken from them. And because no one feels that they are being heard, creativity is nowhere to be found. Only anger and name calling. Only more of the same human behavior that we fought against in redlining; we must still maintain our vigilance. We’ve worked hard to be neighbors and friends; color coding us into race boxes just makes more ‘us’ vs ‘them’. To progress, our society can no longer have space for ‘us’ vs ‘them’. We stand together or we fall apart.
Traditionally through law we have an adversarial model. It is not a great model for leadership nor for problem solving. Prosecution vs defense. Someone will win and someone will lose. Let’s change the dialogue and better emotionally support one another where we can all mostly win.
When I heard small claims cases I would strongly encourage opposing parties to go out in the hallway before I heard the case to discuss how they could solve their own problem. Was this easy? Did they really want to? Was it just easier to hand the problem over to someone else and have them decide?
I would encourage them with these last words. Once you turn your problem over to someone else to decide, it’s taken out of your hands. “As soon as I hear the case it will be my decision. You came here because you both believe you are right. But despite your strong belief that you are right, someone will win and someone will lose. Wouldn’t it be better to creatively solve your own problem; rather than having it addressed by a third party who must strictly apply the letter of the law and who does not know your situation as much as you.” The law is not creative, it’s a very narrow path applied strictly to unique human behaviors as a last resort. A compromise where you are slightly satisfied is better than someone deciding for you and being completely dissatisfied. And most importantly is the concept of empowerment. Once someone else makes a decision for you, you are no longer empowered, you are no longer the captain of your own ship; someone has told you what to do and how to do and you may not like it.
How we interact and our choice of words dictate outcomes. This begs the question of how will this struggle end? Do the teams work together? Do they listen, so each is carefully heard? Or for whatever decision is made, will people use the final decision to merely validate their position? We lost, so everyone is a racist. Or we lost, and no one cares about our opinion, our voice.
Or can we re-write our future? In 100 years when folks look back, how will they look at our decision-making process? Will they see us, as we now look back scornfully at decisions such as redlining and discrimination? Or will they look back and see that we pulled together; and instead of fighting each other we fought the “us” vs “them” mentality. That we found a way to listen, and also a way to be heard.
Irene Smith, JD, PhD
