#we literally JUST had a discussion a few days ago not related to the genocide but

[ryuichirou]

I saw one very stupid post on my dash about how snk is OBVIOUSLY nazi propaganda and trying to convert all of us into imperialists and white supremacists. tbh it’s not the first time I’ve seen that kind of stuff and probably won't be the last, but for some reason this time it gave me a lot of anxiety (I got wordy, I'mma need to send another ask, sorry)

(part 2) It's been more than half and hour and I still feel this awful sensation in my chest. It's just overall pretty fucked how to have something you hold dear being misinterpreted in the worst way possible, and I was just wondering what are your thoughts on this situation or how you deal with people claiming all sorts of awful shit.

(part 3) I imagine that as an artist some people probably direct their issues with snk towards you, 'cause I don't even post that much fanart and I've gotten anons "trying to educate me" on why this series is so wrong, after posting drawings. Of course, you don't have to reply, maybe the topic makes you anxious too and I don't want to bother you, so sorry for the depressing topic (｡•́︿•̀｡)

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Tiiish, I want to hug you, I’m really sorry that this happened to you. I hope you’re feeling a little bit better now.

Like we already mentioned a while ago, when we were talking about that darn article, after we read through it and did a little fact checking (and I mean it when I say a little, because there weren’t many facts to check), we stopped caring about it. It’s not research at all, just a manipulatively written speculation on Yam’s motives and worldview, but sadly, people easily believe these accusations because they hate SnK and want to find a valid reason to hate it and shit on its fanbase. Because “I hate it because it’s nazi propaganda” sounds much cooler than “I hate it because it’s popular”, doesn’t it?

It’s easier to ignore the article itself though, and it’s much harder not to think about tumblr posts or those Twitter threads that get very popular (although there are a lot of bots on twitter, trust me…), and it’s especially difficult to ignore it when it’s specifically directed at you. But the only thing that these people deserve is a good ol’ block and (if they’re getting too offensive and abusive) a report for harassment. The thing is, their opinion doesn’t matter: it won’t change SnK’s story, it won’t affect its success and popularity, it doesn’t affect anything other than our mood (temporarily lol). Because they aren’t critics who actually give a flying fuck about the subject matter, they’re just random assholes with a hateboner for SnK, who sit in their echochamber and discuss the same shit over and over again. And if they’re “fans” of the SnK, it’s just them “consuming it critically” 🙄 such a convenient phrase and so easy to abuse.

If we think about these accusations again… they’re so damn nonsensical, it’s almost amazing. I’m not going to reread it or to make a proper counterpoint article out of this ask, so this is just based on how we remember these accusations.

Like, what part of SnK approves and pushes the idea of imperialism in any way? When the entire idea of the story is that war is bad? When people like Onyankopon, whose homeland was invaded by Marley, exist? And it’s never portrayed as a good thing? Having only one country dominating the world’s situation is literally the main reason why everyone’s suffering??

And come to think of it, Isayama is one of the few manga artists to kind of sort of openly critique Japan: he literally drew Kiyomi losing her cool and drooling while thinking about all the profit and wealth she would get from the deal with Paradis. Why do people never talk about that? What is it, if not a critique of greedy and two-faced nature of people from Azumabito clan, who are heavily implied to represent Japan? I don’t read a lot of manga in general, but do you know how many mangakas I’ve seen who directly talked shit about Japan while being Japanese? Two. Excluding Isayama.

Isayama is clearly invested in the Western culture and he understands the World’s History. He understands that political relationships are complex and that there are no “bad” or “good” countries. I don’t want to make assumptions about how much perspective of the world’s relationships the average person from Japan has, but I still feel like Yams has a pretty good understanding of it. He did his research for the subject matter, and while it’s obviously not perfect, it’s clearly there.

These people also claim that SnK is anti-Korean and anti-Semitic, but if Hetalia had taught me anything, it is that if the story has or used to have any anti-Korean undertones, the Korean readers wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it. They would be the first people to ditch the manga, they would be the first people to critique SnK, and rightfully so. They burnt Uniqlo clothes, their overall domestic policy is pretty anti-Japanese, so there’re literally zero reasons for them not to destroy SnK if they see it as anti-Korean. But the size of the Korean SnK fandom suggests otherwise, doesn’t it.

And the “big noses = Jewish caricature” argument, seriously? How anti-Semitic can you get? Who the fuck looks at people and goes “oh, those have big noses, bet they’re caricature of Jews”?? Sorry I’m getting heated lol The argument about “Asian artists portray Westerners with prominent noses because that’s what we look like to them” has been done a lot of times, I’m not going to go over than again.

And god forbid Isayama to use Germany and Europe to draw a story where his characters are (approximately) Germans and Europeans! Let’s go fetch our pitchforks to punish Isayama for using their aesthetic to make his story look more believable and authentic, right? “Oh, those areas where they hold Eldians resemble places from real life”, like no shit???? Ofc they would??? That’s what references for making the story more grounded are used for??? If I were to write a story about a fictional place based on a real one that I don’t live in, I’d use some visual references to help me to make it more believable??? Why do I even need to explain that?

In my previous post I talked about the armbands and ghetto and stuff, but I’ll reiterate: even if there are thematic similarities, it doesn’t mean that the story mirrors our history. And it doesn’t mean that there is an analogy, since Eldian’s situation is quiiiite different than what Jewish people had to go through. It’s just thematic similarities. And it still doesn’t plant any specific idea in the reader’s head, other than “having people shoved into ghettos with 0 civil rights is a horrible thing”, and I can’t comprehend what’s anti-Semitic or imperialistic about it. Also I’m sorry, but nazis are not the only people who genocided a bunch of people, breaking news. Nor did they invent armbands. Same goes for Japan in WWII.

And now for my favourite argument: Erwin is nazi because his name is Erwin and he was born on the same day than some nazi guy died… I won’t even talk about why this idea is hilariously stupid, I just want to appreciate the level of nitpicking that’s going on here.

So… yeah. People who have nothing else to do but to complain about the show they hate don’t matter. And people who consider themselves a part of the SnK fandom and still say this bs (yep, there are people who do that) are huge hypocrites. The heck are they doing in this fandom then?? Of course, any story is up to interpretation, but this is so backwards?

Sorry for rambling so much… anyways. We’re happy enough not to encounter any hate related to this topic, but we think it’s because we ship Ereri and people already hate us for that, so the majority of shit we get is related to that, I guess we’re a lost cause for them. We’ll see if anything happens after this post though.

But once again, I’m very sorry that you had to go through this. Please remember that this isn’t personal at all, and people who harass strangers on the internet just want to flex their high moral ground while acting like complete assholes. You don’t have to explain anything to them, you don’t have to talk to them, you don’t have to listen to them or give them any attention. I hope you’ll never stumble upon anything like this; but if you ever do, please block them, don’t even bother reading their attempts at “educate” you. Isn’t worth it.

Please have a good day, Tish. And everyone who’s reading this reply.

[paraclete0407]

Pretty sure I'm going to become Catholic if I don't die from Delta tonight - I've been thinking about it my whole life and I feel awful contemplating how much time and how many people I've lost.  Recently I concluded what might have been my last intimate love-relationship with someone - the last person I feel I ever wanted to marry, it's just  over now. I have a lot of flaws like sensualism, aestheticism, expectation of unending maternal unconditional love.  Ever since 18 I relied on the same few pieces of music to hold me, Franz Biebl's 'Ave Maria,' Praetorius' 'Es It Ein Rosentsprungen.'  Biebl only wrote a few pieces of music in his life. I don't know why in the past decade I went to war with the world when meekness had seen me through for a long time and kept me surprising everyone who said I wasn't doing enough or getting with the times.  I'm really dumb, blind.  I also accumulated various cupidities and preciosities.  It's pathetic.  Today there are race-wars, class-wars, gender-wars, identity-wars, age-wars.  Covid I still feel is just anti-Asian racism though - I can't see it any other way and I always, always lose my motivation for studying or reading about anything but the history of Western imperialism.  I don't want to speak ill of Protestants b/c I read Metaxas' Luther bioraphy at least in part and the cynicism of that priesthood... but 'Heil Hitler point 1' in Milwaukee is like 'Joshua and genocide' every day, showing no mercy.  I love John Piper, John MacArthur, RC Sproul I only wish I'd listened more like 35 years ago.  But.  Chest-beating.  However the fault is mine for I'd be more masculine if I simply abided with probity by the rules of Scripture and subjected myself to wholesome discipline.  I don't know why I'm so skittish of everything. Honestly I'm a Satanist - in the Baudelarean sense and otherwise.  There was a student I worked with in KR who reminded me of the poem 'Benediction' which is 'bad sauce' but poems like that and K-Pop stuff like Aespa or 'Lamborghini Angels' by Lupe fiasco is kind of 'advanced, ultramodern' religious contents.  I can't say more than that b/c those are real people and also part of my 'patrimony' or simply my experience as a man / human; specific responsibilities. One thing I really regret is in past I always tried to blow my family off with cheap gifts which was 'pozzed' b/c cheap gifts and fake gifts and twisted as opposed to linear gifts is part of what's wrong with all of Europe Germany Netherlands et cetera.  Like, 'I have a perfect idea- nah, let me f--- it up to personalize it or sth.'  Milwaukee's obsessed with ethnography like 'Wales has mining and its own language' but they never ethnographize German culture which is all about hiding your virtue and doing less than you can - 'be more than you seem.'  But why?  It's completely diametrically anti-biblical to hide your light.  Anyway criticizing the Church when 4 million people died and my own DNA (Dutch) just got an 800% spike in Delta infections might seem kind of idle / academic but lit-crit is sth I've been doing all my life.  Why wait? I keep thinking of 'Lincoln' lately which is not a great movie and Kushner says a lot of dumb stuff.  But the 'now now now' and 'millions unborn' is absolutely epic and it's what is going on right now all the time.  Today I got lost in Chicago while trying to report to the ROK Consul General literally to discuss matters fro mthe past as well as literally to tell them to evacuate Koreans from Milwaukee (most of the ones I knew in past are already gone).  Right now I wish I could make myself as little but perfect a box / chamber as possible in which to exist like a prison-cell just to I stop wrecking my own chances.  I also remembered a Sowon hyper-fanfic called 'My Brother's Type' about someone I knew who used to like these leggy lissome slightly remote types but decided to trash their own taste in women (nothing wrong with changing mind per se but) and deciding B-52's and gangster / clan / tribal conspiracy is better than being open and honest.  Ironically 'B-52' was a nickname given to Chairman Mao by I think [I forget]'s son since he had a huge stomach that dropped out all kinds of murderous ideas which again I can't see any other way but that's the origin of Covid.  I was thinking of all these snice things to say about my carpet-bombing-philc family but thta's pozzed too at this point I just need to get baptized and hopefully plenary indulgence(?) before  Iget flamethrowered in my containment-zone.  I remember this picture of a Vietnamese woman with a crashed B in the background; I read 'Fire Road' and 'Ru' with that boy named Pascal and I read 'Pensees' over and over and over again like, 'Finally my friend.'  if I live to be even 51 or 52 I really want to go back to Asia or even just K-Town LA; I miss all my friends; I hear them, Protestants don't need me, Milwaukee doesn't need me, I'm just a 'little flower' or something.   I remembered today the face of the person I most wanted ot marry and the day we went on this kind of 'communication session' with a chaperone(?); went home and started reading Proust feeling 'everlasting gratitude.'  Never finished Proust nearly.  I bought a Korean language version of 'The Remains of the Day' which was the other novel I read that year and remembered trying to interpret 'South of the Border West of the Sun' in terms of a geographic-anagogic sort of Dantean-Northrop-Fryian system that would turn the title in to 'Before the Beginning and After the End.'  Sitting in the meditation-garden of the Church of Peter and Paul and just thinking of sailed ships and corners turned but that too was years ago.  I don't even know how to work gas-station pumps anymore.  Remebering the last words of someone from a vanished era, the 1990s when we thought that every little people could have their own republic and now the passive resistance people in Myanmar etc. are all getting jailed by dictators.  Richard Holbrooke with his arterial dissection, 'I love so many people.'  Maybe I should just wait outside the local church gate all night; little kids from Syria in France and such are sleeping in parks.  IDK why I stopped letting myself be acted on b/c my typical 'seizure of agency, self-coup' modus operandi is to headbutt immoveable objects and feast the obese.  I should've been a Jesuit or Cistercian, love Bernard of Clairvaux, 'Honey and Salt.' I am only sad that HH.1 et al. talk so much about saints from like 500 years ago in this 'winter of peril' era.  Where is Francis Chan?   Llove Augustine who seems to be watching over the whole world right now, 'an intellectual giant,' hoping we will all remember Original Sin and the 'curse in hope' instead of thinking of C19 as somebody's technical error / lack of being a smart Democrat... I also liked 'Humana Vitae' to say the least; Koreans always talk about love of life and I realize death and evil and the Devil are things I should've taken more seriously in the past but... Anyway I also noticed how people are scrambling to conceptualize everything in terms of 'oxygenation' nowadays.  Concept of 'holiness' related to separateness but what can that mean if not integrity when we're all part of the metabolism of the Earth.  I'm saying too much now I always do too much or too little.  The future appears to be cereal-grains and the consciousness of chains. I ate some 'rice-salad' and remembered 'The Last of Hanako' just to hopefully teach myself once and for all that my mother's body is a graveyard of her best dreams b/c women in the end [cynical I-read-Nabokov] - 'Abolition of Woman' Gen-Alph; 'town bike.'   A few weeks ago I had the 'Stepfather' idea about reading the Episcopalian newspaper with Minju b/c Scripture says don't talk with daddy-daughter 'extend my love to the unfinished woman' ppl but I talked to them again and got R. Kelly'd.   I remember watching 'I Miss You' and almost breaking my hand (Minah looks like s1) but now I'm more trained.  

[cassandraclare]

prejudice in fantasy lit and the use of metaphor

reallybigshadowhunterstvfan said:

what can you say about making Simon a shadowhunter, Mrs Clare? it seemed odd to me that after a whole series of battling for equality between species/races, the downworlder had to become a shadowhunter. not only he basically ceased being a minority, he also became a part of a privileged community, and it just didn't sit well with me.

 Just for the record — I’m not Mrs. Clare; there is no Mr. Clare. I am married, but my pen name is not my husband’s property. :-) 

I think this is a very interesting question that brings up a ton of issues, but there are some aspects of it I’d love to clarify — for instance, I am puzzled at calling Simon “the Downworlder.” Is he more a Downworlder than Magnus? Things like that actually are really important when discussing stories — if he were the only Downworlder in the story, that would be one discussion, but he isn’t, and therefore his story does not speak for the experience of all Downworlders or even a small fraction. 

I am sorry you were surprised negatively by Simon’s story in TMI. Simon never wanted to be a vampire — he always hated it, and unlike Raphael and Lily, he never joined the community of vampires but instead spent all his time with Shadowhunters. Being a Daylighter had already changed him from being any kind of regular Downworlder, as did bearing the Mark of Cain: both made him even less “the Downworlder” and more of an anomaly. It also separated him from the other Downworlders, who treated him with distrust. In my experience, very few readers expected Simon to remain a vampire, given that it was something he never wanted or got used to, and that it was not his dream. More on that in a bit.

As to the question, to me the suggestion that Shadowhunters are “the privileged” and Dowworlders are as a block “the marginalized” — instead of being a complicated metaphor in which they sometimes but not always stand in for people who have had their rights curtailed —  overly simplifies the situation. It is an argument seems to ignore the fact that in fact, humans exist along axes of privilege and marginalization: that people can be privileged in one way and marginalized in another and that when Simon becomes first a Downworlder and then a mundane and then a Shadowhunter, he is not moving clearly from marginalization to privilege, but rather exchanging some types of privilege for others (he remains white as a Downworlder, and is a Daylighter), and exchanging some types of marginalization for others (the marginalization of being a Downworlder for the marginalization of being a mundane-born Shadowhunter and a Jew in a world where Shadowhunters are meant to have one religion). 

Because the argument disclaims spectrums of privilege and marginalization, it also suggests that the world of the Shadowhunter Chronicles is one in which there are no gay or POC or trans people in existence; one in which there is no racism, homophobia, ableism, cis privilege, or bigotry against the neuroatypical. But that is both problematic erasure, and also not true of these books. Downworlders don’t stand in for people of color or LGBTQ+ people because people of color and LGBTQ+ people are in the books; they have not been subsumed into metaphor. (I know the showrunners said there was no homophobia in the Shadowhunter world, only warlock-phobia, but that’s the show, not the books, and it has a different world and world-building. I notice this is a question I get since the show came out, and I sometimes wonder if it’s a question of confusion between the two different universes? It’s easy for that to happen.)

Fantasy prejudice metaphors are complex and confusing and they rarely work as a one to one comparison (in other words, there is a difference between saying that this fantasy situation is reminiscent of this real world thing and saying this fantasy situation is exactly the same as this real world thing. For instance, one of the really interesting things about True Blood is that it made many deliberate parallels between “vampire rights” and GLBT+ rights — referring to vampires “coming out of the coffin” and “God Hates Fangs” on church signs. However, its vampires were also often violent predators who killed and ate people. The argument that Simon “basically ceased being a minority” (while, somehow, remaining Jewish) is similar to making an argument that True Blood was saying that gay people kill and eat their neighbors; I’m fairly sure in fact, they weren’t. They were reaching for a resonance — the echo of a real world situation that would give a layer of relatability and meaning to their points about difference. But they were not creating a literal “these things are the same” comparison or they wouldn’t have had vampires chewing off people’s heads.

So: are Downworlders discriminated against? Yes, sometimes, by Shadowhunters, who are a small specific group. Do they “stand in” for a specific minority group? No, they cannot, because they are accessible as a metaphor to any marginalized group or groups whose rights have been abridged. Also: the world at large does not discriminate against Downworlders because they do not know they exist, nor do they privilege Shadowhunters because they don’t know they exist either. It would be one thing if this was a high fantasy and Shadowhunters and Downworlders were all there was, but these books are set in our world, and the characters experience real-world bigotry, racism, homophobia etc. because of it.

Alec sighed. “Sorry to wreck your vision of our happy family. I know you want to think Dad’s fine with me being gay, but he’s not.” 

“But if you don’t tell  me when people say things like that to you, or do things to hurt you, then how can I help you?” Simon could feel Isabelle’s agitation vibrating through her body. “How can I—” 

“Iz,” Alec said tiredly. “It’s not like it’s one big bad thing. It’s a lot of little invisible things. When Magnus and I were traveling, and I’d call from the road, Dad never asked how he was. When I get up to talk in Clave meetings, no one listens, and I don’t know if that’s because I’m young or if it’s because of something else. I saw Mom talking to a friend about her grandchildren and the second I walked into the room they shut up. Irina Cartwright told me it was a pity no one would ever inherit my blue eyes now.” He shrugged and looked toward Magnus, who took a hand off the wheel for a moment to place it on Alec’s. “It’s not like a stab wound you can protect me from. It’s a million little paper cuts every day.”

 *** 

“He hurt you. It was a long time ago, and I know he tried to make up for it, but—” Bat shrugged. “Maybe I’m not so forgiving.” 

Maia exhaled. “Maybe I’m not either,” she said. “The town I grew up in, all these spoiled thin rich white girls, they made me feel like crap because I didn’t look like them. When I was six, my mom tried to throw me a Barbie-themed birthday party. They make a black Barbie, you know, but they don’t make any of the stuff that goes with her—party supplies and cake toppers and all that. So we had a party for me with a blonde doll as the theme, and all these blonde girls came, and they all giggled at me behind their hands.”

***

If we carry the theory through (Shadowhunters are THE privileged, Downworlders are THE marginalized) that means that Alec, as a gay Shadowhunter, is more privileged than Simon, a straight vampire. That Ty, who would be locked in a mental institution if the Clave discovered his autism, is privileged beyond white, rich, immortal and powerful Malcolm Fade. It’s saying that when Cristina encounters a wealthy, white, straight, misogynist male werewolf in Lady Midnight who tries to force sexual attention on her, she, a Latina woman, is the one who is the privileged character because she is a Shadowhunter and he is a Downworlder (though Sterling has arguably, given that he lives outside the supernatural world, never experienced a whit of prejudice because of it.) So I’m sure you can see where the problem lies.

It also erases Simon’s Judaism entirely. Stating without caveat that Simon has become “part of a privileged community” means ignoring the fact that Simon is Jewish; that he decides in Tales that he will continue to practice, and that he was the only Jewish protag written by two Jewish authors that I’m aware of having been on the bestseller lists last year. He didn’t think about being a vampire as he was preparing to transform — he never wanted to be one or consented to be one, nor was he part of the community, as Raphael constantly pointed out — though he does later think of having previously been a Downworlder when interacting with vampires and Shadowhunter prejudices. He thought of the important thing to him: his Judaism, which he both couldn’t and wouldn’t give up. To me it is personally painful to think that for any reader, Simon’s status as a vampire is more significant than his status as a practicing Jew.

I think sometimes it is possible to invest yourself so heavily in a metaphor that you forget the real world that surrounds the metaphor and the flexibility of metaphors in general. The Shadowhunter/Downworlder situation could stand in for the systemically privileged and marginalized of our world: sometimes it does. However it also can stand in for the way totalitarian governments abuse their own people: there are echoes in Shadowhunter history and current events of the Cambodian genocide, of Stalinist violence against intellectuals and resistors. There are also echoes of police brutality — what Shadowhunters have is the privilege of the Law, specifically: the Law is what allows them to enact bigotry in the name of justice, and when they abuse their jobs, it has resonances of the way police can abuse their jobs and use the privilege conferred on them by their authority to murder and abuse the helpless and marginalized. There are also echoes of the way soldiers carry out immoral orders given by superiors: the Shadowhunters are taught to be obedient to the Clave, and one of the ways we know who our Team Good is in any TSC series that they question that obedience. All of these are echoes and resonances: they are not saying that the Shadowhunters are the police, or the US military, or the Khmer Rouge; the resonances provide context and hopefully add a sense of realism to a situation that is fantastical in its nature.

 (It’s also a wise idea not to so totally buy what the Shadowhunters are selling about themselves. They think they’re special and better and awesome, but the books constantly question and problematize that. Shadowhunters also pay a high high price for their runes and their sense of superiority: they die young and often and experience brutal constant violence and the pressures of a repressive society that allows for little divergence from an idealized norm.)

There are reasons that the Downworlders were never constructed to be a specific marginalized group and their situation was never meant to be limited in its relatability to one situation— for instance, it’s very hard to not look askance at the argument that Downworlders are meant to be specific “race” when you can become a Downworlder and then stop being one: when you can, as Simon does, change what kind of magical creature you are, because there is absolutely no correlation between that and what race or ethnicity means in our world. 

 So yes, Simon becomes a Shadowhunter: however, what I don’t see acknowledged here is not just his ethnicity and religion, but the fact that he becomes a Shadowhunter partly because he is aware of the prejudice of Shadowhunters, and fights against the bigotry they show not just to Downworlders but also to their own. He is part of Magnus and Alec’s Shadowhunter-Downworlder Alliance. He continues to work for change from within the system, arguably something almost no one else could do, because there are almost no other Downworlders who have become Shadowhunters. It is odd to me to consider Simon as simply ascending to a height of blithe privilege when he is fact much more like someone who has become a police officer in order to root out corruption and racism in the police, and brings his own knowledge of marginalization (which he still experiences) with him.

That is why Simon in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy is constantly fighting and bending the rules in the name of his evolving social conscience, though I understand if you haven’t read TfTSA. One of the things about having had a flood of new readers enter fandom because of the TV show is that I’ve seen a lot of arguments based on the idea that TMI is the entire story of Downworlders and Shadowhunters, or the entire story of these characters. I see people talking about characters getting a happy or sad ending in TMI even when those characters go on to feature heavily in the sequel books and could by no reasonable account be considered to have any ending, happy or sad — unless you thought TMI were the only Shadowhunters books that existed rather than a chunk of a larger ongoing mythology. In no sense has Simon’s story ended: you have no idea if he will remain a Shadowhunter or not. Perhaps if you consider the fact that TMI is not a story that has ended for Simon, but rather one that continues, the fact that he has now been two magical species and might well move on to become another will sit less poorly with you? After all, this is not “after a whole series of battling for equality between species/races” this is “in the middle of a whole series of battling for equality between species/races.” Usually the middle of a story isn’t the place it’s best to draw all your conclusions from. :-) 

[healthnotion]

The 7 Habits: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Welcome back to our monthly series that summarizes, expands, and riffs on each of the seven habits laid out in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Last time, we discussed the first of what Stephen Covey calls the “public habits” — Habit 4: Think Win/Win. The gist of that habit is to seek to allow everyone involved in a conflict or negotiation to feel as if they’ve “won.” This requires balancing consideration for the needs of others, with the assertiveness to stand up for your own. For Covey, this combination of consideration and assertiveness is what gives rise to maturity.

Habit 5 — “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood” — helps us develop the consideration side of the equation.

We humans are actually pretty dang good at this habit — at grasping what’s going on in the minds of others. In fact, our ability to process a host of obvious and subtle cues in order to attribute mental states (like thoughts, feelings, and beliefs) to others, and thus predict and explain what they are thinking, is one of the things that separates us from other animals. Cognitive scientists call this ability “theory of mind” because when we interact with others, it’s impossible for us to know exactly what they’re thinking/feeling/perceiving, so that we have to construct a theory of what’s going through their heads. Without theory of mind, social interaction would be awkward, clumsy, and nearly impossible.

Think about all the instances in your daily life in which you have to construct a theory on what’s going through the mind of someone else. You do so when you ask your wife how her day was and she exasperatedly says “Fine.” You guess that her day actually wasn’t fine, and so respond by saying: “It sounds like you had a rough day. Tell me what happened.”

You use your theory of mind when you make a sales pitch to a potential client. You watch how they react to certain talking points, and postulate as to what’s holding them back from pulling the trigger.

Theory of mind is what allows humans to cooperate so effectively that we’ve become the dominate species on Earth and have even stepped foot on the moon. Take that chimpanzees!

So if we’re pretty good at understanding others, why did Covey think it was necessary to devote an entire habit to the subject?

Well, while we’ve been endowed with a fairly deft ability to understand the minds of our fellow human beings, that ability is still subject to some innate biases that sometimes muddle our perception. And when there’s a failure of understanding, a whole host of problems pop-up: couples argue and bicker, children feel estranged from parents, toxic cultures develop inside companies, and countries go to war. 

So while we’re generally good at understanding others, we can’t take that ability for granted. We have to be mindful of the ways our theory of mind can go astray.

Why We Fail to Understand Others & How to Rectify These Mistakes

Social psychologist Nick Epley has spent his career trying to figure out why we misunderstand others. He highlighted his research in a reader-friendly book entitled Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.  (I interviewed Juliana Schroeder, one of Nick’s research assistants, on the podcast a few years ago. Take a listen if you haven’t already. It’s a good rundown of his findings.)

According to Nick, our mistakes about what others are thinking “come from the two most basic questions that underlie any social interaction. First, does ‘it’ have a mind? And second, what state is that mind in?”

I Have a Rational, Human Mind, But That Idiot Doesn’t

As to the first question, you’re probably thinking “When would I ever think that someone else I’m interacting with doesn’t have a mind?” According to Nick’s research, however, you engage in a form of this thinking quite a bit. He calls this failure to fully recognize the human mind of another “dehumanization.” The most extreme form of dehumanization, of course, would be genocide. Instead of seeing victims as fellow human beings, the executioners see them as dirty animals or pests that need exterminating.

While the vast majority of us will never take part in mass genocide, we all fall prey to dehumanizing others in more subtle, everyday ways. The most common way we do this is by assuming others’ minds are less sophisticated than our own. For example, Nick’s research has shown that affluent people tend to think that poor people lack self-control, free will, and initiative. On the flipside, poor people have a tendency to believe that rich people are unfeeling, callous, money-grubbing robots. In both cases, each group assumes the minds of the other group aren’t as human as theirs.

Other research has shown that while business managers say they work for intrinsic motivations like improving the lives of their customers, these same managers often assume their employees are solely working for the money. Employees on the other hand, often think their managers are heartless taskmasters. Again, you’ve got one group assuming that the other isn’t as human.

Our current political climate is partly the result of members of different political parties dehumanizing each other. People subconsciously assume that those on the opposite side of the aisle are stupid, immoral, and out of touch with reality.

Or take driving. As George Carlin famously mused, “Have you ever noticed that everyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” In both instances, you assume you’re the rational human, while everyone else on the road is a mindless dolt or an inconsiderate jagweed. And the funny thing is, those jagweeds are probably thinking the same thing about you.

Why do we do this? Our brains are just wired to react this way when we think that someone seems different from us — either physically or psychologically. The part of our brain that lights up when we engage in theory of mind — called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) — lights up particularly strongly when we’re “reading” the mind of someone close to us (again, either physically or psychologically). Conversely, the more literally or metaphorically distant someone seems, the less the MPFC engages, which results in us thinking that person is less than fully human. When a boss interacts with an employee or an employee interacts with a boss, they recognize a difference between themselves, so both will tend to dehumanize the other, ever so slightly.

Our tendency to dehumanize others who aren’t “close” to us contributes to the dismal state of online discourse. When you tweet at someone, they’re likely hundreds or thousands of miles away from you; you can’t look them in the eyes or read their facial expressions. Instead of a human, they’re just some online avatar. So you don’t think twice about telling them how despicable they are.

Failing to see the full humanity of someone would obviously get in the way of understanding them; if you begin the interaction assuming there’s no mind there to understand (or that it’s quite impoverished compared to yours), you’ll just blow them off entirely.

How to Overcome the Tendency to Dehumanize

Overcoming our natural tendency to “other” others is pretty straightforward. Instead of focusing on what makes you different from them, focus on what you have in common. As soon as you start seeing the similarities between you and another person, your MPFC will begin lighting up more, and you’ll find yourself increasingly understanding them as fellow human beings.

The thing that really lights up our MPFC is when we’re in close physical proximity to others and interact with them in face-to-face conversations; doing a physical activity together helps build interpersonal cohesion as well.

So if you’re a boss and you catch yourself thinking your employee is just doing enough work to get paid, remind yourself that he likely got into this field for the same reason you did and has an interest in it outside a paycheck. To really light up that MPFC, go have lunch together, or play a round of golf.

Or when you’re out driving in rush-hour traffic, and you catch yourself thinking you’re surrounded by idiots and maniacs, practice your humanizing ability by reminding yourself that your fellow drivers are probably trying to get home to their families — just like you are. You’d want others to cut you some slack, so cut them some slack too.

If you’re tired of the rancor of online discourse, spend less time in digital space interacting with avatars, and more time in “meat space,” interacting with other minds, the cogs of which you can see working in real time.

On a related note, don’t have serious arguments with your significant other over text message — the distance created by this abstract form of communication will gin up the animosity.

Find common ground and preferably talk and do things with other people face-to-face.

It’s that simple.

These Glasses Work Great for Me; They’ll Work Great for You Too

All of us gaze out at the world through the eyeholes of our own personal perspective — a filter so fixed and all-pervasive that we hardly realize it exists. We no more notice it than a fish notices it’s swimming in water.

Author David Foster Wallace explained this fact well in his “This Is Water” speech:

“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.”

The fact that we see ourselves as the center of the universe gets at the second question we subconsciously ask ourselves when interacting with another person: “What state is that mind in?”

The answer we give this question — subconsciously but quite assuredly — is, “A similar state to my own.”

Because most of our thoughts are about ourselves and we spend every waking minute marinating in these literally self-centered thoughts, we have a tendency to assume that other people perceive and process the world the same way that we do. We typically don’t consciously realize this until we have a super salient epiphany moment that unveils the fact that someone else thinks in a fundamentally different way. Even once you’ve had such an experience, you still sometimes slip into assuming that other people’s minds are very much like your own. Epley calls this “the lens problem.”

One problem with our egocentric lens, is that it can get in the way of our ability to communicate; you may think that someone should naturally understand something, because you can understand it quite well in your own mind.

To grasp this issue, think of the “tapping” game you may have played as a kid. You tap out a song and have your friend guess what it is. When you do the tapping, the taps sound just like the song—melody and all—that you can “hear” in your head, so that you feel your buddy should be able to easily recognize it. But your friend just hears a bunch of taps that all sound the same. So he guesses wrong, and you’re baffled, because the fact you were tapping out “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News was so very obvious.

Another issue with our inability to recognize that we view the world through a personal lens, is that instead of seeking to understand how someone else is seeing things, we try to solve their unique issues by applying our own framework to them.

Covey gives a metaphor for this lens problem, by using the example of literal lenses:

“Suppose you’ve been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to you.

‘Put these on,’ he says. ‘I’ve worn this pair of glasses for ten years now, and they’ve really helped me.’

‘This is terrible! I can’t see a thing!’ you exclaim.

‘Well, what’s wrong?’ he asks. ‘They work great for me. Try harder.’

‘I am trying,’ you insist. ‘Everything is a blur.’

‘Well, what’s the matter with you? Think positively.’

‘Okay. I positively can’t see a thing.’

‘Boy, are you ungrateful!’ he chides. ‘And after all I’ve done to help you!’”

Would you go back to such an optometrist? Certainly not. He didn’t even try to understand how you saw the world and just assumed what worked for him would work for you; as Covey puts it, he prescribed before he diagnosed.

You wouldn’t want that kind of guy for an optometrist, and people don’t want that kind of guy as a friend, co-worker, or husband either. If you really want to understand people, you can’t assume they see things through the same lens you do, and you can’t solve their problem by trying to make them look through it too; you have to get a grasp of how they see things, and then tailor your approach accordingly.

How to Overcome the Lens Problem

Overcoming the lens problem takes a lot of self-awareness and a lot of intentionality.

First, recognize that you have a tendency to understand people through your own egocentric lens. Instead of assuming that you’ve got a good handle on someone, because they think pretty much like you do, assume that they’re seeing the world differently.

Second, instead of trying to fit their perspective into your own, try to understand it the way they themselves do.

How do you do that?

You ask questions.

So simple, yet we often don’t do it because we’re overly confident in our ability to understand what others are thinking and what they need. We want to tell, when we really need to listen.

Avoid asking “why” questions, though. Why? Because most people don’t actually know why they do the things they do or like the things they like. They think they do, but they’re likely speculating or following some narrative that’s become distorted and embellished. At the same time, asking “why” questions can make people feel defensive, since, no matter how well-intended, they tend to come off as criticism, as relationship expert Dr. John Gottman observes:

“When you ask, ‘Why do you think like that?’ the other person is likely to hear, ‘Stop thinking that, you’re wrong!’ A more successful approach would be, ‘What leads you to think that?’ or, ‘Help me understand how you decided that.’”

So focus on who, what, when, where, and how instead. Those questions will likely give you some great information to help you better understand the mind of another person.

After you’ve asked a question, shut up and really listen. We’ve published an entire series on how to listen better. Go read those articles and implement the insights there.

Still don’t understand the person? Ask more questions.

Perspective getting takes work and time. But it’s well worth the effort.

By seeking first to understand, you’ll be in a better position to find Win-Win solutions to interpersonal problems, the trust in your relationships will increase significantly, and your circle of influence will expand in turn.

See how all these habits work synergistically? Which is a nice segue to the next habit in the series . . . Synergize.

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