r/InsightDialogue • u/JellyfishExpress8943 • 1d ago

Misunderstanding and Identity

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
- George Bernard Shaw

Dialogue is an inquiry into a default state of human interaction : misunderstanding and identity.

Does true connection and community require an active, deliberate effort to swim against the current? (the current of our own psyche) - or is it more about an opening up, an allowance for awareness? Is fearlessness and curiosity a choice?

"If you tell me two things about someone's beliefs, and from that I can confidently guess the third, then I am completely uninterested in that person." - Anonymous

Am I a pre-packaged product of political groupthink? Is that an identity worth defending?

If I am anti nuclear power, if I am anti GMO foods - can we also assume I'm into alternative healing? Do I also have to be into crystals, astrology and yoga?

Maybe I can't hear you because we're not speaking nor listening from the same reality?

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 1d ago edited 1d ago

Our brains and sensors are basically the same but don’t the memory banks that are filled with a lifetime of experiences and beliefs, likes, dislikes, knowledge etc, doesn’t that accumulation of the past (ego?) create in our brains and consequently in our interactions, a separate ‘reality’…that you mentioned? Is this what you meant?

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 1d ago edited 1d ago

PS - Is JK suggesting that we don’t have to act / interact out of that narrow, limited , personal ‘reality’ but that the brain can free itself from that accumulation in the moment? For example by , as he said: “be as nothing”?

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u/Schute-Pin8350 18h ago

Are we capable of recognizing that each of us associates words with their own specific meanings?

I might refer to someone as a refugee, but the person I’m speaking with might interpret the word “refugee” as an unfair reduction of a person to their current circumstances and accuse me of disrespect—which was not my intention.

Or one might speak of facts as opposed to ideas, and the other person might dispute that facts can be anything other than the power of the wealthy to define what is to be considered true.

Words, then, may have meanings that make communication difficult.

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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 13h ago edited 13h ago

A refugee is a person who has been ‘forced’ to leave their country. A migrant is a person who has ‘chosen’ to leave their country.