Communication

Honest PostDoc Ad

Posted by yseult on Jan 16, 2012 in Communication

If you’ve ever had anything to do with Academia, this will make you smile.

Sources:

http://upmic.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/honest-postdoc-ad-2/

The post-feminism fallacy

Posted by yseult on Dec 3, 2011 in Communication, Issues

After months of intense preparation to finish big projects that mean a lot to other people and thus by extension mean a lot to me (… another topic, for another time…), the time is finally here.
That moment when I finally start realising that in all truth: you cannot have it all.

I’ve been raised in a post-fervent feminism age, where women’s rights are a comfortable blanket you wrap yourself in and where the reality of the disadvantage of being a woman is always somewhere hidden behind the surface. True female discrimination, the open kind, is something that is barely visible today. (Not unlike the Covert racism my friend and writer Nicki Lisa Cole has written about).
The real problem is twofold: you’ll always be put down by people. Does it really matter what’s the reason? Sex, gender, nation, skin color? The biggest stepping stone for this problem to grow is us getting used to it. As human beings one of our most important evolutionary achievement is the capacity to forget. Forget and move on.
Based on this, is the second part of the ‘twofold’. We women have grown up to feminists and womens right’s acitivists telling us that we can have it all. Have your career, because your grandmother and mother couldn’t have one. Make your decisions for yourself. And once you’re ready, you can have your relationship with the best man in the world, get pregnant and share all your mental and intellectual wealth with your child. Have it all and lose nothing.

It’s been said more than once, and yet, everytime a woman says it people look away as if they’re witnessing a train wreck. (Or a dirty secret, which might not be all that far off from the truth.)
While I specifically will not negate a woman’s God given capacity to handle 100 things at one moment, that undeniable possibility for their brain attention to completely split off into a multitasking frenzy (I am a pro at that), I will argue that something always gets lost. Falls into the cracks of attention and is forgotten.
The same goes of career and family.

And now comes the caveat our mothers only knew too well. Because family in my case is composed of two people. Because a relationship asks for compromise and building something together. And while I am no one to doubt that some women can achieve their dream of a career and a full family life, I would however doubt that they’ve achieved this simultaneously and that they have achieved this with a partner engaged in their own career.

No, today we have this bipolar approach of you can have it all, as long as no man asks you to do it all together. Then women are all up for it and woe to them if in the small hours of the morning they confess to themselves that indeed, they can’t.

Come to think of it, why should we? Why does it seem that for the new generation of women, feminism has in fact raised the pressure to be perfect and have it all, instead of valorising our choices for what they are: a celebration of our liberty to choose.

Be happy

Posted by yseult on Jan 28, 2011 in Communication

There is a popular saying – usually attributed to Abraham Lincoln – that states a simple truth: People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be

While this might seem overly simplistic, like with any cliché, there is a fundamental truth wrapped into these few words. There are people in this world that decide for themselves to not be happy. Be it intentionally or not, be it consciously or not, be it circumstantial or assured, the decision is there. At one point or another, maybe at several ones, in their lives, they decide that happiness is not something that is for them and that the world cannot possibly hold anything that will be able to satisfy their idea of a happy state of fulfillment.
This platonic stance, besides leading to miserable moments, reveals a contrary truth: if you can decide to be unhappy, the decision to be happy must be that much easier and that much more possible. Because, if you can decide something that is unhealthy for you, how much less energy do you need to decide to be happy? To will yourself to optimism? To see lent hands rather than manipulation? To see genuine emotion rather than future lies?

Like anything it takes getting used to. In our world that is geared towards success and where happiness in small things is suspicious of not aiming high enough, deciding about your own happiness is not the easiest thing to accomplish. It takes habitual programming. It takes time. And it takes effort.
Unlearning the almost puritan reflex of associating success with merit and hard, thus tiring and unhappy work might be a challenge, but if happiness could found be found this easily, what’s to loose?

A case of transference: being too intelligent for this world

Posted by yseult on Sep 5, 2010 in Communication, Issues

When flattery becomes an excuse and our responsibility in annoying people around us is transferred to the angered one… silence ensues.

Sometimes we run headlong into these infuriating situations where someones careless incompetence, or neglicence, or pure boredom ends causing more work for us. If you are of the conviction that there is a right attitude to all things and that doing your job right, no matter how small and insignificant it might seem to you, can be a source of pride and satisfaction, then such situations probably tend to annoy you according to their corresponsing level of incompetence, negligence or boredom.

On several occasions I have been witness to an interesting explanation: “Well, face it, love, you’re just way too good (intelligent, genius, efficient etc. etc.) for this job (function, work, us, them, etc. etc.). If only you would accept that, then you could spare yourself a lot of heartache (anger management lessons, chocolate-relieved-frustration induced pounds on your hips).”

The interesting element in this little (freely invented) scene isn’t so much what is being said, but what is not being said, as is often the case in any kind of human interaction. What is said is analysed easily enough: a transfer of fault is executed, away from the person causing the frustration, ot the person being frustrated. It’s a thing we often do (sometimes even without noticing it) in order to deal with emotions that are not our own.
The problem however is, since they are not our emotions, we don’t have to deal with them. Leaving people to their own emotions is something that takes maturity, letting them have their little moment of weakness without feeling compelled to alleviate it by offering a string of solutions that would work for us (that’s what good advice is after all), or trying to reason away their source of frustration or even anger.
Veiling that reasoning into a flattery or into positive words is only meant to pass the bitter pill easier. It’s another form of avoidance. And avoidance of emotions today is what people are so good at. It’s also the reason why there are so many problems of human interaction and social tensions in our western society today. So many resources are geared towards helping people to deal with their own emotions, but rarely are psychologist or therapist working on people’s skills to accept someone else’s emotions that they are faced with.
Here we come to the second element of flattery… not only does it coat and disguise the act of transference of responsibility, but also it’s a pretty good excuse to not take a good look at other people’s (or our own) actions. It’s just another version of the apprentice stating that he can’t possibly do that job, because he’s just not intelligent enough. Or the on from your daughter (after breaking three dishes in as many weeks) that informs you that she can’t set the table anymore, she’ll only break something again.

However, manning/womanning up to your deficiencies, mistakes, our weaknesses and our incapacity to deal with certain people is an integral part of life and accepting them is also part of what usually is called ‘growing up’.

So, just as the stupid person has a right to their stupidity, the intelligent one has a right to be outraged by stupidity being used as an excuse for bullshit.

Why silence and creativity go together

Posted by yseult on Feb 20, 2010 in Communication

Silence and creativity are linked and if we manage to free the one with the aid of the other, we might not just become better artists or better ‘creators’, but also we might achieve better understanding of ourselves and the people we are hoping to reach.

One of my twitter contacts – Masafumi Matsumoto – is following the Artist’s Way at the moment and his insights on his blog on this experience are pretty revealing and a great read.
This week, he has issued a challenge to everyone who’s reading him and following him, to simply ‘not read’. One of the exercises of The Artist’s Way is to abstain yourself from reading for a week and observe the effect on your own creativity.
Now, the Artist’s Way is something that has become very popular in the mid-80ies and the synthesiser of this method Julia Cameron has opened the creative pathways for a lot of people with her method (which incidentally came from years and years of teaching courses with the same aim. In that the book differs a lot from other ’self-help’ or ’self-teaching’ books on writing, creativity, and artistic expression.) and with the rise of chatter of our everyday online and social life oversounding our creative selves from our, is as relevant as ever.

When I came across the Artist’s Way a couple of years ago, I struggled greatly with the ‘reading abstinence’ as an assignment. This was before the internet became more a means of communication and exchange, and still was a tool for research and the occasional replacement for a physical written letter.
Reading is an integral step in the construction of our shared social and personal realities. The universe we construct around ourselves and within us are made up of various kinds of building stones: reading is an integral part of the cement that link those stones. It’s not just the dialogical nature – explained best in Gadamer’s method in Wahrheit und Methode – of every text, but much more the witnessing a thought outside the confines of our own mind that hold these said building stones together. Without it, they become a wall that keeps us within our own reality and soon cannot be overcome by any argument or realisation. Or to say it differently: instead of stepping onto those building stones and looking ahead, we step down and dig ourselves into the ground and the building stones just become a wall keeping our gaze from the horizon.

While I still hold the above, coming back to the Artist’s Way – thanks to mma323 – and that famous week of reading abstinence I see the profound truth in Cameron’s exercise that I failed to before.
Because today I deeply feel that the overall chatter that surrounds us today has increased and continues to increase still. It’s suggested to us by a whole set of social pressures that we need to be efficient, constantly online, constantly reachable and constantly ’there’ or something is wrong with us. That pressure of efficiency then pushes us to fill every little minute between greater actions such as work or shopping etc. will said chatter. A quick check on your email here, a quick read through the latest headlines there and the small moment that could have served in silence to recollect ourselves and our thoughts is gone. This immediateness and the contraction of distances between people make for a rise in stress that can be remedied fairly easily. (Fairly easily, because recent studies concerning the peer pressure through Facebook et al. suggest that leaving the chatter for a while can actually harm your social contacts.)

But for what? In the Artist’s way, the goal is clear: to free your creative spirits and pathways, free yourself to write, draw, paint, express and in the end find yourself again. Web 2.0, where the emphasis lies on the exchange and the us, makes this even more important. Whereas our exchange on the web is based on the basic structure of ‘I transmit’ – ‘You comment’ – ‘We discuss/exchange etc.’, the Artist’s Way emphasieses a return to the ‘I do’ – ‘I create’.
In a way it goes back to the first step, before you share. Redefining ‘what’ you transmit on the Web and through the new media. Without that the content of what you want to share becomes vacant, empty and we then immediately start to fill it up with nonsensical self-production. We all do it. All the time.

So, maybe the lesson here isn’t just: stop reading, stop using this or that service, but rather: think about what you share and don’t lose yourself in it.

A reading abstinence certainly helps to get a clear idea of what we all consume on a regular basis. It also serves to give value back to what we really end up reading rather than being intellectually bulimic with our everyday intake of the written word. Because in the same way bulimia is disproportionate and leaves you without healthy nutrition, so is and overuse of the new means of the transmission of knowledge and opinion in the digital age.

Creating patches of silence in our lives will not only open up creative influences, but it will also give back value to our interactions and that in turn will lead us to a better understanding of each other, because only when we have the feeling that people are actually listening to what we have to say and not just quickly taking notice of it, can we assume the true basis of exchange and mutual understanding.

Talk it out.

Posted by yseult on Aug 11, 2009 in Communication

It’s funny how sometimes current topics and themes occur either in everyday life, in your lectures or thoughts. It’s like when someone gets a new car and suddenly you see that type of car everywhere because before you simply didn’t pay proper attention.
The same thing works for topics and thoughts. Recurring themes is probably our brain and subconscious’ way of organising our days and realisations to get things done. Or we could just say that it’s karma’s way of telling you that now is the time to finally get that particular lesson.

Whichever way we want to put it or analyse it, my current topic is communication. And in fact it has been for a while. Out of some silly idea of ‘I don’t always want to write about the same thing’ I’ve waited until I would have something more interesting to write about… but again, no such luck. The last four writing ideas on the back burner have been about communication. So instead of putting this one here as well on a list where it can wait, I am dragging it all out now. Because the wait for a new post is way too long and because I need to get back into some sort of stable writing in general.

Ever since I got married, I’ve been on the receiving end of some of the weirdest questions in existence: relationship advice. While certainly my relationship is one of the most amazing things that just works in my life (yes, mentally, psychologically and physically), I’ve never been particularly comfortable with talking about it. As if it was something out of time or I would jinx it by using it as an example. With the years that changed, simply because I saw how people in other relationships really use a system of powers and pressure that is completely absent from my marriage. It goes to show that when you really don’t want to be an example, you end up being one even more so. Or in other words I really had to say something about the usual relationship mistakes. What a shocker. The girl that waited until the age of 28 to get some action, actually had something to say about relationships. Who knows, I might just make a series out of this.

One thing that always seems to be a present bystander of any relationships are annoyances. The small things that the other does that keep upsetting you, that suddenly are the only thing that you see, hear, smell and yourself can think about. Does your spouse love rearranging the towels in your bathroom once you’re just out of the shower and actually have just finished putting them on the rack? Seriously, as if your way of folding them was so wrong and he needs to be cleaning up behind you. How insulting. How infuriating. How utterly useless and what a loss of time…!

Stop.

That’s right. Stop. That’s the right moment to stop the thoughts that start gathering momentum at the first occurrence, at the second have gained the physical force of an avalanche and at the 10th are reason enough to kick the other out of your home, life and future will.

Our minds and worlds are not permeable to everything and our thoughts and motivations aren’t visible to the outside. All the outside sees are actions. And with the wish to understand that should be infusing every relationship (lover or not), we start conjecturing, constructing and analyzing. And since we already are upset, the only explanation is tainted by annoyance. Only in rare occasions could we think that there was a good explanation to these actions. After all what possible GOOD explanation can there be to the fact of my husband rearranging the towels in our bathroom that were already stowed on a rack and thus per definition the bathroom cleaned up?

Asking would help. Talking about it would help. Breaking the cycle of ‘he’s just not happy with the way I do things. Tough.’ would certainly help. Because if you do, you’d be able to realise that there is no mean thought behind it, but that he likes doing it, that he’s not even realising that he’s doing it and that the way he does it, they DO use less space and dry faster.

Just like our motivations are not painted onto our actions, our partner doesn’t have a priviledged way into our mind or suddenly doted with the gift of telepathy to see what upsets us and what doesn’t. The debt of communication lies always on both sides of the couple. It’s the most important step any relationship can take. And one I’ve not lastly understood thanks to living my relationship over Skype for two years.

Not communicating even the upsetting things is not in any possible way something that ‘spares’ your partner. (Even though you can wait to spill it all until a difficult moment has passed for instance.) Not stating what goes wrong only suffocates your relationship under the silence and eventually the annoyance will grow so strong, the cover of silence can’t cover it anymore. Because the key to annoyance is: it can’t be evacuated other than by addressing it.

NB. In case you were wondering… yes, my love does rearrange our towels and it took me a while to realise the level of absent thought behind it and that it was just a way of neatly putting things in our apartment. Doesn’t mean hubby doesn’t like the way I clean or the way I hold our house together OR the way I fold the towels. I still love him. He’s a quirk. But so am I.