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We Can Misunderstand One Another…If We Intend to Do So
My college football team was known for running the ball. But one year we had a quarterback who couldn’t run the ball, although he had a rifle arm. I remember one practice as clearly as if it were yesterday – our rifle-armed quarterback threw an absolute missile on a drag route. The tight end was maybe 8-10 yards downfield, just behind the line of scrimmage, he turned his head on time, and the missile just bounced off his chest – the pass was just too hot, and he couldn’t catch it, even though he was an exceptional receiver.
Our coach yelled at the quarterback. The QB yelled back that it was a good pass – he hit him right between the numbers. And then our coach, who was not known as a deep thinker, said something which has stuck with me ever since: “The idea of throwing a pass is for somebody else to catch it. If he doesn’t catch it, then it is a bad pass. No matter how perfect it is. And that’s it.”
Paul Grice once wrote a paper in which he imagined a professor asking another professor for a recommendation for student “A” for a Ph.D. philosophy program. The response was, “Student ‘A’ has beautiful handwriting.’” Mr. Grice points out that that response is clearly intended to say, “Student A doesn’t know crap about philosophy, and you don’t want him in your Ph.D. program, although I’m too polite to say this directly.” And that is clearly how it would be interpreted. Obviously. But why? That’s not at all what he said. So why is his meaning so clear?
Because both the writer and the reader are making an honest effort to understand one another. If that were not the case, then who knows what might be made of such an off-topic comment? The professor might think that the student has beautiful handwriting or something. The intended message was lost, simply because one side in the conversation intentionally ignored the intended meaning of the writer.
Bob Thompson recently reminded us that Moliere said, “A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.” Moliere is clearly contemptuous of those who misunderstand because they intend to misunderstand.
American leftists are forced to ignore history, as well as present-day realities, so they can pretend to believe in things that are clearly not true. This seems odd to many of us. But our leftist friends feel they are throwing perfect passes, which is ok even though the rest of us simply cannot catch them. They don’t work, and we lose whenever such passes are thrown.
While the rest of us feel that if the pass is uncatchable, it is simply a bad pass, and we should try something else instead. It’s difficult to try other approaches. But it beats losing.
The only way this Kabuki Theater is maintained is by one side making an active effort to misunderstand the other side.
Throwing better passes won’t help. Not until our quarterback cares more about completed passes than he does about beautiful passes.
And as long as our society is comfortable and wealthy, I don’t think this can be fixed. We need to lose a few games, to remind us of why we throw passes to begin with.
The whole idea of throwing a pass is for someone else to catch it. So we all need to have the same goals. Which is why Critical Race Theory, etc., is such poison. They care about perfect passes. But the rest of us care about completed passes.
And that’s it.
If Americans ignore Martin Luther King and instead consider ourselves to be on different teams, then we will lose. A house divided cannot stand. No matter how beautiful the pass is.
And that’s it.
I won’t post this essay on Twitter or Facebook, because it would be censored, fact-checked, and erased. So why bother to engage my political adversaries? I’ll just throw perfect passes, in practice, and if they’re not completed passes, then I can still feel good about myself.
And that’s it.
Wow. That was awesome. What a beautiful pass…
Published in General
I disagree. As with writing military and civilian evaluations, there is a defensive and instructional value to this focus on subtext.
First, you don’t want the young bucks to get a head full of “that guy screwed me, he always had it in for me, I’m lodging a complaint/taking him to court/grieving to the diversity/human rights commissars.” You should always write the best evaluation that you can (a lot more to say there, much of integrity and long-term outlook required), given the circumstances, and then smile when you deliver it, knowing that you have given the best that the person has a right to.
Second, this sort of writing is not limited to evaluations. Subtext is everywhere, and without a nose for it, you’ll go nowhere. It’s how the “hidden elite” communicate. If you catch on to it ahead of schedule, great — you may have a bright future here. If you never figured it out, you probably have wound up happy somewhere else. And if you puzzle it in the context of honestly reviewing your own performance in the light of your intermediate results, then you are receiving the guidance contained just when it will do you some good.
Except you are screwing the guy. Students have to go and ask professors to give them letters of recommendations. If you can’t recommend the kid, then tell him you can’t recommend him so he can go find a professor who can. By promising him a recommendation and then giving the opposite you’re also denying him the chance to ask a professor who can make a better case.
I don’t have a problem with subtext per se, but any time you find that the text of the message is meaningless and that all the real communication is being done in subtext you should ask yourself why. It’s easier to lie in subtext, especially to yourself.
Agree about the opportunity cost for this sort of thing, as opposed to mandatory evals and such.
I’m not talking about steganography (interesting, though), and I don’t wonder why the subtext remains unspoken. I know why, and I agree.
The catch and receive analogy is a good one, but as others have stated – if the receiver isn’t ready to receive the ball, that’s not on the quarterback, in the moment. I think of this as communication, as others have stated. I have leadership at several levels above me that seem to be unwilling to seek to understand what they’re being told, meaning they keep asking questions of things already communicated, for the last year or two.
Responsibility in any transaction falls to two or more parties. It can’t all be on one. There’s a responsibility to communicate effectively, but if the recipient is unwilling to listen, or work to understand what’s being shared, then the miss (or dropped ball) falls on both parties.
Particularly if the pass is thrown on a specific route that they’ve practiced, time and again. That the ball appears in the receiver’s chest should not be a surprise to a competent receiver.
Exactly. I don’t remember what the commercial was for, but I remember this line from the commercial: “ You practice until you get it right. Then you keep practicing until you CAN’T get it wrong.”.
Still, as one-liner motivational pitches for the staff, it’s hard to beat ownership of both ends of the problem.
Split ownership may be closer to the truth, but group punishment avoids “his-end-of-the-boat” excuse-making and moto drop-off.
IMHO the coach is exactly right, because his job is to coach, not to judge.