Debate and Communicaton Club Meetings

Touro Communication Club Notes #28

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The week in Presidential campaign brought new attention to the impact of the choice of words in our communication. The word in question was “assassinated.” In a speech this past week, Senator Hillary Clinton was defending her continued Presidential campaign through the June Democratic nominating convention in Denver. She pointed out that her husband, Bill Clinton, did not win the Democratic nomination until June 1992. She made a reference to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his Presidential campaign in June 1968.

Many people took offense to her using the word. Several factors conflate to produce the reaction. Senator Edward Kennedy was in the news for his brain cancer. We certainly know of the assassinations of Kennedy’s two brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. Senator Barack Obama has been endorsed by Senator Kennedy. Senator Obama has been traveling with increased Secret Service protection recently because of concerns for his safety.

Despite Senator Clinton’s apology in which she mentioned RFK’s assassination as a matter of historical record and did not intend anything negative, many people were still upset as to why she brought up the event at all. On Friday night, May 23^rd, MSNBC host Keith Olberman blew a gasket over the insensitivity of Clinton’s use of the word “assassination in one of the longest (easily 15 minutes) emotional rants I’ve ever watched him deliver. Olberman delivers these rants frequently, but with President George W. Bush as his usual target.

Words have been frequently controversial in this campaign. In addition to Clinton’s use of “assassinated,” last week, Clinton raised a few eyebrows with her comment about “white voters,” highlighting the ever sensitive race issue. Earlier, Obama was criticized by using “bitter” His wife, Michelle, has been taken to task for saying, “For the first time as an adult life, I am proud of my country.” Several weeks ago, Obama was criticized for “plagiarizing” the statement “Words count” with several examples from his friend, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.

Word we write are “in space.” Words we speak are “in time.” When we write words, we have a chance to consider and reconsider our word choice. However, when we speak our words, the emotional pressure of the speaking situation can often cause us to not carefully reflect on the vocabulary. Sometimes we choose wrong, inappropriate or inexact words.

That’s why in an argument we tend to use profanity. Under pressure to respond to an emotionally charged situation, we resort to using four-letter words because the anger dominates our mental dictionary. As a Touro professor once remarked, “I don’t use profanity because I have a vocabulary.”

The constant lesson of this or any other political campaign is that words – and deeds – do matter. We have to be especially careful in speaking situations. The topic is worth much more exploration at another time.

Here’s the upcoming schedule of the Communication Club is

Wednesday, May 28 – 1 pm -Debate Team – Final Contest

This is the week! The Debate Team’s final public presentation on Gun Control. Richard Green will video the debate and we will analyze it afterwards. This public debate is the culmination of about 3 months of preparation. No matter what happens, the Debate Team is clearly in a different place from when we started. When we’re finished, we need to give ourselves some perspective on our very challenging journey to discover and exercise our mental muscles. I am very proud of the Team’s progress and look forward a bright future.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008 – 1 pm - Club meeting –“Awareness II + Memory” led by Jason Carvell

The first session on “Awareness” raised so many thoughts and feelings among the group that they felt that a 2^nd session would be necessary to extend our exploration of what elements are involved in “Awareness.” Tanya Howard suggested that we add “Memory” to the exploration. Jason Carvell will again lead the session.

We are entering a period of limbo – in the middle of finals with the upcoming graduation on Sunday June 15 at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher l... We need to talk about continuing our activities during the summer. There’s always something interesting to “conversate” about.

What happened on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 – “Awareness” seminar led by Jason Carvell.

We had a good turnout for Jason Carvell’s interactive seminar on “Awareness.” Newcomer Tanya Howard joined Dennis Kniasev (from Touro Berlin) and Club regulars Drani Gabu, Jetante Morris, James Millner, Olushile Atkintade. Faculty David Nussbaum, Richard Green and Hal Wicke participated equally in the fascinating seminar. David took the valuable notes.

Awareness is a concept that all of us feel we know something about. So Hal Wicke asked the group to brainstorm what they thought “Awareness” mean to them before Jason arrived from his morning class. Responses to the word included

· Information

· Environment

· Who you are

· Knowing that you care perceiving through the senses

· Living in the now/the moment

· Know that you know that you know

· Emotional response to your own perception

Then Hal asked “What does it mean to be ‘Not Aware?” Only one person responded, “Something brought to your attention,” was developed before Jason took over the seminar.

Jason introduced the concept of “Circles of awareness”. A small circle with a dot in it.

The dot in the center represents the internal environment - the self as contained within “one’s skin”.

The next area out (1) represents the immediate environment – things that affect one physically such as people next to oneself

The next area out (2) represents an intermediate environment such as the room.

More circles can be added as larger spheres outside the internal environment are considered.

Exercise 1

Participants were asked to take a minute or so to be aware of their internal environment exclusively.

When asked what they experienced, participants said they were aware of:

Muscle tension of relaxation level

Location of where feelings such as anxiety are felt

Exercise 2

Participants were asked to become aware of the immediate environment. Awareness of area focused on the five senses – sight, hearing, taste touch and smell. And temperature, Jason added.

Jason emphasized many times the goal of these exercises is to maximize the amount of information we take in. What would happen, he asked, if we didn’t do this? The common thread among the answers was that our life might be in jeopardy.

Exercise 3

Next Jason asked us to expand the circle to the perimeters of the room, using all our senses. Participants were asked if they could recall specific things such as the placement of the chairs, who in the room was left-handed, the color of Drani’s shoes and the message in a sign in the room (all without looking or checking, of course). There were three left-handers, but people noticed only two.

We have to be aware of “psychological noise,” Jason reminded us. This noise included worries, family problems, exams, hunger. This noise keeps us from being able to be able to be “open.” When we are “open,” we are able to “focus.”

We talked about many things – how children seem to be empty vessels, changing the way we think, Drani’s cologne (and shoes),.respiration among others.

Exercise 4

The final exercise involved having participants in dyads (and one triad) look at each other without speaking and try to convey as little as possible while gleaning as much as possible about the other person. This gave the participants a heightened sense of awareness of both conveying and reviving messages and cues.

These exercises were synthesized with interspersed discussion of how we perceive these environments, and how we can be aware of just how aware we are. Toward that end, a broader discussion followed on awareness in everyday situations, such as walking on the street. Another part of the discussion focused on which of our senses we rely.

As participants became aware of their own levels of awareness, the concept of barriers was introduced, participants defined some of these such as internal noise and being overly self-conscious as opposed to self-aware. It appears that many of these barriers are acquired as one “grows” from childhood to adulthood. These exercises, which were new to the participants, and the discussions, which represented for all the first time the concept of awareness was discussed, gave the group a new perspective and a sort of meta-awareness – an awareness of awareness.

This session was an excellent follow up a previous meeting which addressed being in the moment, and it was decided that yet another session in covering this area using a similar format would benefit all.

Jason closed with a selection from his favorite poet, Emily Dickinson – “The brain is wider than the sky.” He commented that our exploration suggested, “How the weight of a single brain is equal to the weight of God.”

As I look at my notes and David’s excellent notes above, I realize that any distillation on paper doesn’t come close to capturing the energy and intensity of the session. Everyone was gripped by the interchange under Jason’s guidance. We look forward to “Awareness II + Memory” in two weeks.

Join us as we try to promote more light than heat! See you next time. Bring a friend!

Hal Wicke