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Often, when we talk past each other, it's because we're talking from different sides of the aspirational gap, the gap between what we are and what we aspire to be, or more generally, between what really is and what we think ought to be.
There’s what’s true and then there’s what we hope is true, the likely story and our liked stories. We quest for both – reality checks vs. affirming, hopeful, encouraging accounts. We seek intimacy with what’s true but also intimacy with ourselves. You can hear it in the ambivalence we have when telling friends what we’re up to. We’d love a second opinion, so long as it's not disappointing. We want the truth but it better be good.
There are huge advantages to both realism and encouragement. When we focus on what we hope is true, we motivate ourselves to make it true, but often we go overboard into magical thinking.
Every few years magical thinking resurfaces, rebranded as a psychological breakthrough. Psycho-cybernetics, EST, and The Secret all argued that if you hope hard enough you can make things come true. That’s false. Hope can motivate us to work for what we want, but it’s not as though hope magically can change reality. One can’t simply hope back a dead loved one. Hope has its limits.
Imagine a conversation in which one party, “Issy,” focuses on what is, and the other party, “Audie,” focuses on what ought to be (what Audie aspires to make true). Here’s them talking past each other:
Issy: Were you maybe a little racist back there?
Audie: I hope not! Racism is bad. I call people on their racism all the time.
Issy: I wasn’t asking whether you hope you weren’t racist. I was asking whether you acted in a racially prejudiced way just now.
Audie: I hate racism. I favor racial diversity.
Underlying Issy and Audie’s perspectives is a strategic difference, two ways to close the aspirational gap.
Issy: If you don’t admit to shortcomings, you can’t improve.
Audie: Fake it till you make it: To encourage yourself to change, act as though you already have changed.
Who’s right? They both are, depending on the situation. Focusing on what ought to be can motivate change, but it can also convince you that you’ve already changed.
Issy: Were you racist there?
Audie: I shouldn’t see color, therefore, I don’t see color.
Conversely, focusing on what is, can demotivate.
Audie: Were you racist back there?
Issy: Face it, everyone is. There’s been no progress toward racial equality.
Is and ought apply to self-talk but also to how we encourage and discourage others. Each can both motivate and demotivate. Sometimes encouragement motivates people to be what they’re perceived to be (the Cinderella effect) and sometimes it makes people complacent (like giving all students As on the first day of class). Sometimes discouragement goads us to improve (hitting rock bottom, the dark before dawn) and sometimes it makes us resistant, resentful, and unwilling to change (the backfire effect).
When people say that you shouldn’t be judgmental, they focus on half of this equation as though, if you confront people with their shortcomings, it will always backfire. You’ll always catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Always? Not really. Honey tastes better at first but is easily forgotten. Vinegar is so sour is people spit it out, but the residue sometimes motivates them to work to improve.
We talk past each other in social science research too, where a distinction is made between naturalistic (what people really do) and moralistic (what people ought to do) approaches. There’s a fallacy one can fall into with either approach:
The naturalist fallacy is that what is, should be.
The moralistic fallacy is that what should be, is.
At the extreme we get blind optimism and blind pessimism:
Audie: I just hold tight to the vision of everyone trusting everyone. Visualize it and it becomes real.
Issy: That’s just wishful thinking, so it’s bound to be wrong. Look around you. Nothing ever works. We're screwed. Murphy's law. You just can’t stand the truth.
Issy falls for the naturalistic fallacy and what could be called dreadful thinking. It must be true because you dread it. Hoping makes it false.
Audie falls for the moralistic fallacy and wishful thinking. Hoping makes it so.
In fact, there's little correlation between our hopes and fears and what is. We hope for some things that are true and some things that aren’t true. We fear some things that are true and some things that aren’t true.
Plato and Aristotle were interesting on this. Plato was an idealist, prone to the moralistic fallacy. For example, he dreamed of a wise philosopher-king who would run the republic selflessly. Basically, he could sit back and say, “Well, if I were in charge of the world, I’d design it this way,” sometimes with a failure to recognize the realities.
Aristotle was more realistic, and thus sometimes prone to the naturalist fallacy. For example, he assumed that women could never be leaders because they hadn't been so far. They both were wrong at times, which I summarize in this limerick.
Aristotle said "Plato, get real,
your republic is far too ideal.
You must work with what's given
for instance that women
as leaders can never appeal."
The Trump cult oscillates between the two fallacies, saying anything to feign infallibility.
The moralistic fallacy: Because we preach a vision of how we all should be we're the good guys and everyone should do what we say even though we're the minority.
This moralistic fallacy sentiment is expressed, for example, in a quote attributed to Karl Rove, a pre-Trump pioneer in the cult’s formation: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
And the naturalistic fallacy, as in this exchange in February 2017:
Bill O'Reilly “He’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.”
Trump: “There are a lot of killers. We got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”
The cult hops from moralistic to the naturalistic fallacy, wishful and dreadful thinking in order to always appear infallible. The outcome is rationalized self-affirmation at every turn: "We're on a crusade for virtue, so for us, any vice is fair game.
The cult is not alone in this mixed strategy. It speaks to a strong human appetite to merge what is and ought to be into one happy resolution. We’re all wishful thinkers drawn to the liked story, deflecting with selective cynicism.
Politics aside, when you notice yourself talking past someone, consider your relative position on the aspirational gap. One of you might be trying to get at what is. The other might be focused on what they think ought to be.
The alternative to blind optimism and blind pessimism is strategic optimism and strategic pessimism. Set aside your gut optimism or pessimism, your hopes and fears, and assess what in your current situation will yield you the best results. Make a strategic bet. Are you more likely to affect improvement with a little hopeful encouragement or a little vinegar? There’s no sure-fire answer.
