Are you adding to clarity or compounding the noise? How do you know?

“The trouble with a great many of us is we know so many things that ain’t so.” -Josh Billings

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” -attributed to Mark Twain.

“It’s not that they don’t know the truth (they might, if they stopped to think about it.) It’s not that they want to know the truth, either. Information is available if they looked for it. No, they fear the truth. And being part of a mob is a good way to hide from that fear.” –Seth Godin

Photo by Steve Piscitelli.

As the call-out-culture escalates, it has become cliché to say civility has become a rare commodity in public (and even private) discourse. The changing rules of engagement seem to dictate that presenting evidence and “winning” an argument is no longer enough. The victor must destroy the adversary. Debate gives way to harangues, collective monologues, and questionable sources and conclusions.

Noise bombards us. On this blog a few years ago, I asked, “Are we listening to others or just adding to the noise?”

If, as famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright claimed, “An expert is a man who stops thinking because he knows,” then can we say the same for a person who claims one source of information as the fount of all legitimacy and contrary accounts to be illegitimate or “fake”? Has she stopped discerning because she “knows” what is legitimate and what is fake?

Are you adding to clarity or compounding the noise? How do you know?

 Video Recommendation for the Week

“You are what you see…you are what you listen to all the time….” Says author and researcher Shawn Achor.  In this clip, he suggests strategies for decreasing negative noise and increasing the positive.

My book,
Community as a Safe Place to Land,
has been released! At this point, you can purchase it on Amazon.
More information at www.stevepiscitelli.com.

Make it an inspiring and grateful week and H.T.R.B. as needed.

You can still order my book Stories about Teaching, Learning, and Resilience: No Need to be an Island (2017). Another university recently (February 2019) adopted it for training and coaching purposes. Contact me if you and your team are interested in doing the same.

Consider it for a faculty orientation or a mentoring program. The accompanying videos would serve to stimulate community-building conversations at the beginning of a meeting.

My podcasts can be found at The Growth and Resilience Network® (http://stevepiscitelli.com/media-broadcast/podcast).

You will find more about what I do at www.stevepiscitelli.com.

©2019. Steve Piscitelli
The Growth and Resilience Network®