Jan 07 2010
What to Do About Woo in the Family
I recently read a blog post, and listened to a podcast, about what to do when confronted with a family member or friend that . . . subscribes to patent nonsense. Call it woo, whether it be religious, paranormal or other. I got to thinking. I’d here like to share my two cents.
1. Responding to woo is not an all or nothing affair. There are more options than these two: either you go guns blazing and blast that b.s. out of the air or you remain politely silent — an act that could be misinterpreted as tacit agreement.
Instead, your response can be individually tailored according to a number of important factors: the what of the belief, the who of the believer, the how of your relationship to the believer.
2. It is my aspiration to get better at gently planting seeds of doubt in the minds of family members and friends when confronted by their woo. Rather than tearing down another person’s beliefs, the more effective approach for me might be to explain how I arrived at my own position, in effect building it up. Perhaps more importantly, beyond any specific issue I hope to generally model an fair-minded yet skeptical attitude through asking good questions and expressing the educational virtues of curiosity and rationality.
Of course, my thinking about confrontations over beliefs may merely reflect my own preference for how to be corrected when wrong. I rarely respond well to being publicly bitch-slapped by the truth. Instead, I appreciate having a breadcrumb-trail of clues placed before me so I may make the progress and then own the conclusion myself.
I lost a friend because she cried when I tried to calmly give her alternative perspectives on vaccination. It turned out that I touched a nerve when I used the phrase, “As a parent….” “Don’t use the ‘mom’ card with me!” she shouted as she left the room. The good thing about it was that I created a “Think Critically” bulletin board in my library to highlight controversial issues or stupid spam emails like the ones she used to send me when we were friends.
Jude -
The bulletin board sounds like a great idea.
Your comment made me think some more about the precarious issue of confronting family/friends over what we see as crazy and perhaps dangerous beliefs. I, too, have had some not-so-good outcomes in past confrontations. I wonder if in many cases a better tactic (in terms of the dual values of relationship and critical thinking) would be to simply express “I have my questions” (period) in the heat of the moment. And then to later direct the person to some third-party source(s) of information. “You seem very interested in this topic. You might find that this book/website provides good food for thought….”
Hmmm.