CBC Asks: How do you have a meaningful conversation after someone offends you?
Q&A with Irshad Manji, who took part in CBC Asks town hall on Wednesday
A CBC Asks town hall posed tough questions to Manitobans: why do we take offence, and how do we then change the conversation?
On Wednesday evening, CBC hosts Nadia Kidwai, Marcy Markusa and Ismaila Alfa hosted a frank discussion about how to have a frank discussion — even when faced with offensive behaviour.
The hosts chatted from the Winnipeg studio with guests Irshad Manji, Ryan Beardy, Ellie Caslake, Gaylene Dempsey and Rick Koss.
Manitobans were invited to join the conversation, which was live-streamed on the CBC Manitoba website and on CBC Manitoba's Facebook page.
Manji is the New York Times bestselling author of Don't Label Me: How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars. She's also the founder of Moral Courage College, which equips people to have tough conversations.
Manji joined CBC Weekend Morning Show host Nadia Kidwai via Skype on Tuesday to talk about the upcoming town hall.
Her advice? Slow down, take a deep breath and get engaged — not enraged.
Nadia Kidwai: Why do we get offended in the first place?
Irshad Manji: The natural instinctive reaction is to lash back. Why? Because we are biologically wired as human beings to be seeking out threats everywhere. Thousands of years ago that would've been fine … anything that moved behind a bush could be a mortal danger.
But today, most of us live in societies in which most things are not mortal dangers. The problem is that the primal part of our brain cannot distinguish between mortal danger and mere discomfort. And that primal part of the brain is where the ego comes from.
The ego exists to protect us. In a life-and-death situation, our ego is our best friend.
But in most other circumstances ... when we are met with mere disagreement, when we are met with something that makes our blood rush, we don't know what to do, and so we lapse into instinct, and we become defensive and lash back.
There's a very simple solution to this on a one-on-one basis.
Take a deep breath. Slow the blood rush in your body. And when you do that, you are literally buying yourself the time to override the primal part of the brain.
What's wrong with responding in anger?
You have to be honest with yourself about what you're really trying to achieve. If you're trying to achieve a moment of feel-good chest thumping then there's nothing wrong with reacting angrily.
But if you're trying to achieve change, then you're actually defeating your own cause.
WATCH | Irshad Manji give an example of changing minds through empathy:
How can we turn the tables on malice by engaging rather than enraging?
It's so important that we begin to understand how to communicate across lines of disagreement. More important than ever, I would argue, because we are now at a point where much of the planet's population is facing existential problems… left and right.
If all one side is doing is imposing an answer on the other side, and the other side does not feel heard, then there is no solution. All they're doing is planting the seeds of backlash, so the needle doesn't move.
The only thing that moves is the hamster wheel of dogma, which goes round and round and round, with despair and cynicism intensifying, and the noise amplifying.
At what point should we disengage?
Our best efforts to come up with bulletproof — I mean that sometimes literally — strategies to deal with ugliness, verbal and physical, will not apply to every single situation. At a certain point, you need to walk away.
For example, if the other side is threatening physical violence or even if they have already inflicted some mental anguish and, for your sanity, for your integrity, you need to walk away, who am I to say don't?
But try not to walk away prematurely. In other words, don't judge on the basis of one or two remarks, or on the basis of somebody's appearance, that they're not worth your breath. You will only know if that's the case once you begin to engage.
What are your final words of advice?
Ask questions. Ask lots of questions of the people whom you are offended by.
But ask them not as gotcha questions. Ask them with the intention to understand rather than to win. When you sincerely are willing to understand, you will watch emotional defences go down and you will watch the willingness to engage rise.
And when that happens, I'm telling you, magic unfolds.
This is a principle that you can apply to every relationship in your life. And if you go first in the listening department, you'll be able to set the tone and create the culture for the conversation — far from giving up your power, it means that you are exercising and increasing your power.
Use it wisely. And congrats on your courage.
Watch the entire CBC Asks event here:
With files from CBC Weekend Morning Show's Nadia Kidwai