LET'S GET CURIOUS: A CALL FOR DISCUSSION, DISCOURSE, AND DIALOGUE

If we want to get better information, we need to ask better questions.

If we want to have better conversations, we need to ask better questions.

And if we want to understand each other as human beings, we need to ask better questions. 

Unfortunately, right now in our country, we are seeing anything but that. 

Opinions are being spewed. 

Snap judgments are being made. 

We are rushing in to join the mob of people like us with opinions like ours. 

We are hopping on bandwagons before we know where the bandwagon is going or what it fully stands for. 

Comments are being answered with simply, “fuck you.” 

People who say something that we deem wrong are being attacked through public shaming,  public take-downs, and even death threats. People are being called out and “canceled” if they don’t say something soon enough, don’t say the right thing when they do speak up, or don’t apologize correctly after they do. With very little information, we are making assumptions about what others think and believe - and taking swift action as a result - often with no direct conversation in between. 

We send friends and colleagues a YouTube video that supports our own opinion rather than engaging in a conversation to share our perspective and understand other people’s points of view. We jump in on internet comments to pile on, to scold, to express our displeasure. To say, simply “unfollowing.” Or “bye,” when we see or hear something that we disagree with. 

This is not new. The internet, and as a result, dialogue and discourse online, have been broken for a long time. 

The first time I realized how incredibly broken the internet is was the moment that Heather from The Minimalist Baker started receiving death threats when she shared...get ready for it... a recipe with meat...on her own instagram account. Due to a health condition (which she had talked about openly and vulnerably), she had uncovered that her vegan diet was no longer serving her. As a result, she would integrate a small amount of meat into her diet, and periodically share recipes with meat on her instagram account and her blog. Both of which she shares for free with two million people. Her followers were outraged - spewing vitriol and hatred about the fact that she was a horrible person and that she, too, should die, since now she is promoting the killing of animals. Comfortably from behind their screens, in tiny comment boxes, people of the internet scolded, shamed, and bullied her. 

We are seeing something similar right now - where rather than engaging in conversation, it’s easier to scold, shame, scorn, and bully others online who think differently than we do. We can do this comfortably with just a few tiny movements of our thumbs and a quick click to post. It requires very little effort. We can continue living our lives however we chose - safe in our little bubble of our own reality, behind the screen. 

An important note: this is not to diminish the importance of the issues we are facing as a country right now. This is not an attempt to minimize the central issues that we so desperately need to solve, by instead focusing on tactics. It is, however, an invitation to engage with these issues from a place where we seek to understand - and where we seek to engage with each other as human beings, so that we can have conversations, grow, and learn together - in service of a better path forward. 

While we are so busy finding opinions that align with our own, we are missing an opportunity to be curious. To ask questions. To engage in dialogue with people who may be different than we are, who have different views, who see the situation in a different light. We are missing opportunities to ask better questions to get better information to create better dialogue and ultimately to create a more conscious world. 

We can start today. And we can start by asking questions. 

Powerful questions have three simple components:

• They are concise. 

• They are open ended. 

• They begin with “what,” or “how.”

We can more effectively engage with others, and with the world around us by getting curious. Powerful questions help us to be more curious. 

If you try out these questions, I promise you that you will have better conversations and that you will learn more about others than you have in the past. 

Next time you’re tempted to share an opinion or give someone advice, I invite you to pause. To take a breath. To get curious. And instead, to ask a powerful question that begins with “what” or “how.”

Give it a try. 

See how it goes. 

And let me know what you think. 

In many ways, we are in a terrifying place as a country - where discourse, dialogue, and discussion no longer exist online. And, since we have collectively created this reality, we can now create something different. 

This opportunity to create something different must start with us. Let’s start today. 

Yours in curiosity, discussion, discourse, and dialogue, 

Sarah 

Resources for Additional Reading and Learning: 

• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg 

• Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott 

• Getting Real by Susan Campbell 

• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo 

• The Work by Byron Katie