Читать книгу The Art of Waging Peace - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 19

In all of human history, I don’t think anyone has ever seriously said, “I hate it when people listen to me! I can’t stand it when people listen to me!” Everyone likes to be listened to, and in the army I learned that listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give to people.

When I was promoted to captain I was transferred to a new unit, and things started to go badly during the first week. Because I had just joined the unit, they had not added me to their phone roster. As a result, when they called everyone in the unit at 4:00 a.m., ordering us to come in immediately for a surprise drug test, I never received the call. I did not find out about the drug test until I showed up to work later that morning.

When I came to work and started walking down the hall, I heard a colonel screaming and cursing as he told my supervisor what I had done. “I know Captain Chappell just showed up to the unit, but I can already tell he’s a bad officer! He doesn’t think he needs to show up to a drug test, and he just wants to do whatever he wants to do!” I tried to walk into the office to explain that I did not receive a phone call notifying me about the drug test, but the colonel yelled at me, ordering me to get out and wait in the hallway. The screaming and cursing seemed to go on for a long time as I waited. I felt helpless because I was unable to defend myself by explaining what had really happened.

I had just met my supervisor, only working with him for a couple of days. He knew almost nothing about me, and now a colonel was telling him all these bad things about me that were untrue. Soon after the colonel left, my supervisor asked to speak with me. I was nervous, because the colonel not only outranked me, but my supervisor had known him a lot longer than he had known me. Realizing that my supervisor probably had a bad impression of me based on what he had just heard, I tried to defend myself by saying that the colonel’s anger had resulted from a misunderstanding.

But my supervisor interrupted me, saying, “I don’t care what he said. He can yell all he wants, and I will just sit quietly and listen until he is done. I let him yell for so long because I know that if you let people vent and listen to them, they will eventually run out of steam and usually feel better. As for you, I won’t make any judgments about you until I have heard your side of the story. As your supervisor I have a responsibility to at least hear your side of the story and give you the benefit of the doubt before condemning you.”

I explained what happened and he completely understood, and I cannot express in words how wonderful it felt to be listened to and given the benefit of the doubt. Since then I have thought about the many conflicts that could be prevented and resolved if people simply learned how to listen. This is not easy, because listening is a challenging art form. Just as people work hard to become masters in the art of painting, music, or sculpting, it takes effort and commitment to become masters in the art of listening.

How can we listen deeply? How can we absorb what people say as soil absorbs the rain? To truly listen we must develop empathy. If we do not empathize with people we cannot really hear what they are saying. When we do not listen with empathy we hear only their words. But when we listen with empathy we also hear their emotions, hopes, and fears. We hear their humanity.

When we do not listen with empathy our conversations often become barriers that alienate us from the humanity of others. But when we listen with empathy our conversations become bridges that connect their humanity to ours. The art of listening is an essential life skill that can improve our friendships, relationships, and daily interactions with all kinds of people. Listening is also vital for effectively waging peace. Take a moment to think about a controversial issue that matters a lot to you. Now imagine discussing that issue with someone who passionately disagrees with you. Would you feel comfortable having a conversation with that person? Most people would feel uncomfortable and worry about the conversation devolving into a shouting match, but the art of listening transforms the blank canvas of a potentially hostile conversation into a masterpiece of possibilities.

Leslee Goodman, who interviewed me in the Sun magazine, explains how I was able to change the attitude of an adamant pro-war supporter:

Chappell teaches through example. I met him at a weekly peace vigil on a downtown Santa Barbara, California, street corner, where he demonstrated how to engage even strident opponents with empathy and respect. I had lost patience with one such person after ten minutes of unproductive dialogue. Then Chappell showed up. He respectfully engaged my critic for a full forty-five minutes. Their conversation ended with the man thanking Chappell for listening to him and accepting a copy of [his book] The End of War. A few weeks later Chappell ran into the man and learned that he had read the book and had changed his mind about war as a means of ending terrorism.

Martial arts taught me that even the best techniques are never 100 percent effective. In ideal circumstances the best techniques would succeed every time, but the circumstances we must work in are usually less than ideal. In a similar way, listening is an important technique that makes genuine dialogue possible, but sometimes a person is so stubborn and has so many biases that our best efforts do not succeed.

Singer Harry Belafonte, a friend of Martin Luther King Jr., describes how King was unable to convince a group of young African Americans to embrace the nonviolent methods of the civil rights movement. Noticing King’s sadness, Belafonte asked him, “What troubles you, Martin?” King replied, “Well, I just came from that meeting with the young people in Newark and they said much that challenged me. They made great justification for why they saw violence as an important tool to their liberation. My task was to take the truths that they were experiencing, the pain they were experiencing, and say there is another way. When I left, I felt that I had not convinced them, that I had not gotten to them in the way which I would have loved to have gotten to them.”¹

Not even Martin Luther King Jr.—a black belt in waging peace—succeeded in persuading people 100 percent of the time. Although martial arts taught me that even the best techniques do not work every single time, I also learned that we can dramatically improve the success rate of our techniques. When I first tried to speak about peace in my early twenties, all I knew was how to preach to the choir. When I spoke to ten people who opposed my views on peace, I communicated in such a counterproductive way that I only persuaded one out of ten if I was lucky, and I probably alienated and offended the other nine due to the careless way I interacted with them.

As I learned the art of listening and grew more skilled at the other techniques of waging peace, I became empowered to do more than preach to the choir. This allowed me to persuade perhaps three out of ten who opposed my views on peace, and although the other seven might not agree with me, I was doing less to alienate and offend them. Today I think I can persuade perhaps six or seven out of ten, and I now speak in such a way that I alienate and offend far fewer people than I did before.

It is impossible to persuade or please everyone. At West Point I had a roommate who did not like chocolate. If chocolate cannot please everyone, how can any of us? Even Martin Luther King Jr. was hated by many despite his best efforts. But unlike some activists I have met, King did not want to just preach to the choir or alienate those who disagreed with him. He wanted to go beyond the choir by persuading as many as possible and alienating as few as possible. All social problems come from how people think, and all progress comes from transforming how people think. In a later chapter I will explain why we don’t have to convince every single person for progress to happen. We just have to convince enough people, and the techniques of waging peace can help us persuade more and alienate less.

The first step is listening. If all you do is listen deeply when people passionately disagree with you about a controversial issue, that can be an important victory. Listening allows you to connect with their humanity, better understand where they are coming from and why they think the way they do, and gain insights into how you can more effectively reach them.

Listening also has the potential to make a strong impression on the people you are listening to. We live in a society where people seldom listen to each other, and when I watch television I see countless pundits and politicians who are disrespectful to each other and unwilling to listen. When you possess the rare ability to listen deeply, someone might walk away from a conversation with you, thinking, “I don’t see eye to eye with those peace activists, but they sure are kind and really good listeners. I can’t remember the last time someone really listened to me. My boss doesn’t listen to me. My coworkers don’t listen to me. I often feel like my wife (or husband) isn’t even listening to me.”

By listening deeply we plant a seed of change. Perhaps the seed will sprout long after the conversation has ended, causing the person to think about what you said and allowing your ideas to sink in. This might help the person develop a more positive attitude toward peace activists and become more open to future discussions about peace. Or maybe the seed will lie dormant and never significantly impact the person’s way of thinking. People must choose to let peace bloom within them. But the more seeds of change we plant in people from all walks of life, the larger the potential harvest.