Engaging Emotions

ENGAGING EMOTIONS

Analogies can help us to engage our emotions, if we can find an analogous situation that resonates more closely with us. This is an important way that we can find an emotional connection to back up a logical argument, if the logic by itself has not convinced us or someone else. This can help us understand other people’s points of view, or help us explain our points of view to other people.

For example, sometimes men get exasperated about sweeping statements made about men, calling them privileged, aggressive, insensitive, or if we say that there is a “pervasive culture of sexual harassment by men against women”. My initial instinct is to argue that we are not actually saying that every man is like that, and also, that when it is the oppressed group (women) calling out the dominant group (men) it is more excusable.

However, I see this with more empathy if I think of an analogous situation in which I am privileged. For example, some people generally regard graduates of Oxford and Cambridge as snobs who were just born to posh families and who are handed success on a plate without having to work hard. I take issue with that, personally, as I think I have worked very hard to achieve what success I have achieved, but I have to be circumspect and realise that I am privileged to have studied at Cambridge and that those who did not have such an opportunity may have reason to feel hard done by in general, by comparison.

The analogy between the situations both helps me understand why men are frustrated, and also helps me understand why people feel animosity towards Oxbridge graduates. This analogy uses the abstract concept of a power relationship. The diagrams below are represented by filename placeholders in this excerpt. The symbol is (image1834.jpg):

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I can then use this to pivot between a situation in which I am in the top group and a situation in which I am in the bottom group (shown in bold in each case), and thus understand both better.

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Similarly as an Asian person I can pivot between being in the oppressed group (see over):

(image1847.jpg)

and being in a privileged group in the context of non-white people (as Asian people are arguably more privileged than others among non-white people)

(image1852.jpg)

I can use this analogy to perform a pivot:

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and understand racial discrimination from opposite points of view. To abstract from this further, it comes down to the fact that everyone is less privileged than someone, and more privileged than someone else:

(image1861.jpg)

So everyone could perform a pivot to see things from both ways:

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As discussed in Chapter 6, sometimes people are liable to see themselves only in the less privileged situation, and see other people in the more privileged. It is offputtingly hypocritical when someone complains about their treatment at the hands of their group A while simultaneously inflicting analogous treatment on group Z. This happens when white women complain about sexism but exclude or neglect women of colour, or when white gay men complain about homophobia but exclude gay men of colour.

It is understandable to be more aware of people more privileged than you as they are the ones most likely to be a threat to you or prevent your progress, but we need to learn to perform more of the above pivots and become more aware of those less privileged than us without feeling that it contradicts or invalidates whatever lack of privilege we also experience.