Communication
Communication is possibly the human species most powerful tool. Its power lies in so many facets of social interaction, relationships, sharing of ideas, even control. It can be used positively as well as negatively. It can be used to convey simple concepts all the way up to to most complex. It encompasses music and art, love and death, survival and giving up. Communication is also integral to emotion. I could sit here and write an encyclopaedia on how communication touches every aspect of the human experience. Yet I won’t. For now I’m happy to explore the simple basics and mechanisms of this profound subject and to wonder why mankind doesn’t spend the trillions of dollars that it spends on war on the simple task of educating us humans on how to improve our communication skills and our understanding of it’s component parts.
Back in the autumn of 1975 I came across a subject called Scientology. I no longer consider myself to be an adherent of Scientology although some of it’s basic tenets form the basis of the way I conduct my day to day life. These days I like to explore life through my own eyes without the constraining “certainty” of other people clouding my willingness to remain open to new ideas, observations and discoveries.
Having said that the basic concepts of communication that I learned about back then have served me well.
I’m going to start with Ron Hubbard’s definition of communication. It sounds a bit cold and scientific but when you break it down into it’s component parts and work out how it all fits together it is really quite profound in it’s simplicity.
Communication is the consideration and action of impelling an impulse or particle from source-point across a distance to receipt-point, with the intention of bringing into being at the receipt-point a duplication and understanding of that which emanated from the source-point.
Duplication is the act of reproducing something exactly. Emanated means “came forth.”
The formula of communication is cause, distance, effect, with intention, attention and duplication with understanding.
I remember the first time that I ever heard avant garde jazz. I was perplexed. It sounded like noise. I hated it. There was certainly a huge amount of “intention” emanating from the musicians but there was no way in hell that I was going to “duplicate” what was being communicated musically. I turned my back on this form of music for a long time but I now have the ability to be a “receipt point” and “duplicate” what is being communicated. Like anything new that you experience there has to be some understanding of the words, the symbols, the sounds, the basic concepts being communicated.
But for now I want to explore the subject of communication on a more day to day level between 2 or more people.
This is my understanding and does not reflect anything apart from my own observation and experience.
Firstly you need at least couple of people. One of them has to adopt the role of “Cause Point”, a bit like a tennis player who is willing and able to hit the ball to another player who could be called “Receipt Point”. Some sort of distance must exist between our protagonists for the ball to travel from one to the other. If you adopt this same principle to a simple conversation then it’s easy to see that these roles change as the words and concepts make their way back and forth across whatever distance exists. Anyone who has watched an exciting tennis match can see that if the rules in the above definition are followed then the chances of a very rewarding game of tennis are enhanced considerably.
What I learned back in 1975 was that the first important point in any communication was that I had to be “there”, comfortable, consciously available and ready to give and receive communications and that I also needed to be willing to receive any sort of communication without getting all emotional, disagreeable and convoluted. I admire two people who can debate two completely different viewpoints while respecting each others beliefs even if they don’t believe a word of what is being said.
In order to communicate well you’ve got to be in the present, aware of what is going on around you and not wafting off with the pixies or thinking about some completely different thing or even worse, attempting to be interesting to somebody else as opposed to being interested.
As the “cause point” the next thing that you need to put your “attention” on is your “intention” to propel your words, concepts and ideas across the distance to the person who you intend to receive them. We’ve all probably experienced the frustration of receiving a communication that lacked this intention, it is generally sloppy and so bloody uninteresting that you don’t really want to partake in any further conversation.
In order to achieve this, my viewpoint is that we are responsible to put our attention on the other person and to perceive whether they have a) received your communication and b) duplicated or understood it. This is a simple sign of respect for the guy you are sharing your viewpoints with. If you perceive that what you have said sounds like gibberish to them then it’s your responsibility to work out a way to say it so it makes sense. Otherwise you may as well be looking in a mirror and talking to yourself. At least you won’t bore the shit out of somebody else.
Then once you feel satisfied that your viewpoint, idea or words have been duplicated and understood it’s time to shut up and relinquish the role of “Cause Point” to become a willing and interested “Receipt Point”.
This is all very simplistic but if you really think about it herein lies the basic fundamentals of having a decent and rewarding communication with another living human being.
Another point that I believe to be pretty important to keep things on track is that if you ask a question then it’s also your responsibility to do whatever you can, within the bounds of civility, to get an answer that is relevant to the question.
During all of this backwards and forwards stuff my belief is that you have to stay in control of your emotions. I don’t mean that you can’t be passionate, loud, emotive. What I think is that you can’t afford to get apathetic and give up or irrational and launch into recriminations or become overly argumentative or to start throwing accusations and evaluations at your protagonist. All this will do is to shut down the communication.
To have a fulfilling communication you also have to be very aware of the difference between when the person makes a comment at you or about you like “you are just a right wing fascist” or “ you are an egotistical bastard” or some such thing and when the person is expressing some point about their own feelings, reactions or viewpoints like “when you talk to me like that I feel inferior” or “I’m feeling sad that you don’t understand my viewpoints”. We all have a tendency to start talking about ourselves in these situations but if you look at your own experiences the last thing they want to hear about at this point is you and your reactions and experiences. Just listen, duplicate, understand and acknowledge.
In this case you ultimately have a profound responsibility to understand what they are saying and to let them know that you have listened and have taken what they say on board. In other words you need to acknowledge them. To make certain that they feel you have understood what they have told you.
But unfortunately or fortunately, like any simple but powerful concept there are many nuances. This is a good thing though because it’s what will make for an interesting discussion.
There are so many things that can go right with communication and so many things that can go wrong. The formula that I learned all those years ago when I got involved in Scientology is simply a set of rules, a recipe . Your own intelligence, passion, charisma, warmth, ability to have compassion and tolerance will play a huge role in the overall quality of your communication skills. Your overall knowledge will also play a huge role because if you start talking shit that means nothing or is unfounded you’ll lose the interest of the person you are talking to.
You can give some musical notes and rules to 100 different people and they will all create a unique piece of music. Some more interesting and passionate than others. Some that can bring people to tears of joy and others reads of anquish.
