The Touro Communication Club Notes - #117–May 26, 2010 Tourocommunicationclub.blogspot.com

Contents:

1. Quotations about “Negotiation”

2. Upcoming Club program, “Negotiation” Wednesday, May 12, 2010 @ 2 pm in Room 223

3. Touro English teacher uses Communication Club blogs in her classes.

4. Logical Fallacy of the Week # 8 – “Begging the Question” plus a listening strategy

5. A Note to Communicators: “Negotiation – A necessity for a Democracy”

6. Upcoming Conversations

7. Possible club topics

8. What happened last week: “Distraction”

Six Quotes about Negotiation

“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.”

Adam Smith, 18^th century Scottish moral philosopher and father of modern economics, best known for his work, “The Wealth of Nations.”

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35^th President of the United States

“Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.”

Harold Macmillan, British conservative politician and Prime Minister (1957-1963)

“Start out with an ideal and end up with a deal.”

Karl Albrecht, German entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest men in the world (2010)

“The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal.”

Anonymous

“There is no road map on how to raise a family: it’s always an enormous negotiation.”

Meryl Streep, American actor, nominated 16 times for an Academy Award, winning two.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 – School is closed.

The Touro Communication Club

2 pm - Wednesday, May26, 2010– Room 223

“Negotiation”

We know how to get into conflicts. But do we know how to negotiate ourselves out of one without fighting? Negotiation is an important skill that we forget exists when tempers rise. We’ll do an autopsy on the negotiation process with a couple of role plays.

Touro English instructor Jan Garden Castro shares her unexpected response to receiving the Communication Club blogs. Ms. Castro is a poet and professional writer who formerly taught humanities at Lindenwood University, St. Louis, MO. Here are her comments.

A Note on Hal Wicke’s Blogs

I have been using Hal’s blogs as class starters for reading, vocabulary, and issues/ideas. Hal’s subjects range from happiness and leadership and the seven virtues to distractions and the seven deadly sins. How often, outside of religious services, do we dwell on the virtues? Hal’s essay reminds us that the ways we live and how we behave toward others have their own rewards. For one, we’ve all learned that our behavior and manners in the classroom have a direct effect on those of our students. At the same time, we can change a student’s use of language and courtesy only to the degree to which our lessons engage that individual.

Hal’s section on logical fallacies is a primer on mistakes we all make. It provides insights into reading between the lines – whether in conversation with a friend or while being bombarded with endless television commercials. We don’t have to “buy” what everyone else is buying or “behave” the way everyone behaves. At the same time, New Yorkers learn how to queue up to wait for a subway and how to let others exit before we enter by watching others. Learning from others in a city like New York does not necessarily lead us to becoming gullible consumers.

Jan Garden Castro, teacher of Asset Workshop at Sunset branch, Touro College

Logical Fallacy of the Week #8: “Begging the Question”

Many people use this device to avoid answering the question directly or at all. Since some people don’t like direct questions, there are many variations of this logical fallacy. When you discover that someone is not answering your question, listen carefully for the kind of response. Examples include:

· Sometimes it is a non-responsive response that changes the subject:

“What time is it?” “I love your hair.”

· Another type is a response that answers a question with a question:

“What do you mean?” “You mean you don’t understand?” Or “What do YOU mean?” (Psychologists love this one.)

· A third type is circular reasoning – the statements go in circles without a conclusion.

“He’s annoyed.” “How do you know?” “Because he is really angry.”

· A fourth type of begging the question is one that often begins with an argument. We never define our terms and disagree over details when a definition might have cleared up the argument. This is enthymemic reasoning or circular reasoning. Each statement is followed by a thought leap to another topic and both parties are often to the fights.

· A fifth example of begging the question is the tautology, occurring often in dictionaries. A tautology defines itself in terms of itself.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” “What do you mean?” “Well, I mean she’s gorgeous.”

Strategy: Discovering any logical fallacy requires careful listening. Call it “critical listening.” When you ask a question, you have the expectation that you will get a direct answer to your question. Teachers can often be guilty of this. If we are not listening carefully – and most of us don’t listen carefully, the response may beg your question. When this happens repeatedly your emotional hot buttons are pushed and who knows what can happen.

A Note to Communicators:

Negotiation – A Requirement for Democracy

Most of us are not taught how to negotiate in school or elsewhere. We are taught that third parties like the police and the courts resolve differences.

But what happens when a third party isn’t around? An argument ensues and often escalates into a yelling match and perhaps a physical altercation. In these situations, everyone loses. Some may be physically hurt. Others may be emotionally damaged. All are unhappy and upset.

You would think that if these behaviors continue, someone would stop and say, “This way isn’t working. Maybe there is another way.”

There is another way. It’s called negotiation. For people habituated to fighting out their differences, negotiation is quite foreign. For starters, negotiation without an intermediary requires at least one party to withdraw emotionally from what looks to be a fight waiting to happen. How is that possible?

When we face differences, we often get annoyed or angry. How are we able to control our emotions? We don’t have any training in disciplining our emotions. When our emotions get out of control, we are sent to “Anger Management School?” where they put on a temporary band aid on our anger.

How do we start? Let’s start at the beginning. Statement: “All people are different.”

Do you agree with the statement? If not, then we need to have another discussion. But if you do agree with the statement, try to follow my loose syllogism – a logical construct which begins a line of reasoning.

If “All people are different,” then John, Anzhella, Hiroshi, Abraham, Janira, Vadim, Shamecca, Oxana and Khalil are all different. These students are different in more than name only.

Yet we continually make the assumption that everyone is like we are. Our egocentrism is hard at work to support our ethnocentrism.

We quickly abandon our agreed upon principle that “All people are different.” We expect the other person to agree with us. When they don’t we get angry. We expect others to respect us while we blithely disrespect them. We expect others to have the same behavior patterns as we do and when they don’t, we get annoyed and angry.

If we accept the profound implications that “All people are different,” we may then realize that each time we meet a new person we are entering a foreign world. This world has different values, beliefs and attitudes that we need to acknowledge and respect at every turn in the relationship.

In the “best of all possible worlds,” Voltaire’s Candide would enter into a new world of worlds. The genders might even respect each other. Students and teachers might even acknowledge and respect each other. Politicians might step beyond differences to arrive at a common solution.

But, both you and I know this won’t happen – at least over night. Voltaire was writing a satire. We can preach and teach the bridging of differences, but the gulf is embedded within the DNA of each of us.

So, now what? Are we stuck in more Sisyphistic behavior? I am an incurable optimist. That rock of Sisyphus will stay at the top of Mount Tantalus, despite the curse.

A democracy like ours is structured to accommodate differences, although painfully at times. Differences are resolved by negotiation, by voting, and the court system.

As individuals, we have the power to choose to negotiate our differences. It takes just one party to begin the process. Only when one or both parties are intractable in their demands does the resolution go to a third party like a mediator or the court system.

At the personal level, if we can insert a pause between an outside stimulus and our response, we are well on the way to beginning a negotiation. If we operate on the Win/Win strategy, advocated by the Harvard Negotiation Project, we move another step toward negotiation.

The topic merits much more discussion, but if we can conceive that negotiation is the preferred strategy in all of our advocacy, we then allow for “All people are different” to be a viable concept that is appropriate for a democracy.

UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS:

June 2, 2010 – Success Strategies – Are they different for men and women?

Dean Donne Kampel and Dr. Sabra Brock both research and publish about how women and men carve out pathways to success. They will compare notes on how men and women manage. They will share some of the secrets and tips they’ve uncovered. They will even discuss the perception of some as to whether or not the leadership/success “pipeline” continues to be more difficult for women than for men.

June 9, 2010 – Imagination – Many people assign this human ability seems to the arts and artists, but everyone has an imagination which can be the springboard for all kinds of enterprises in business and the professions. We’ll talk about what imagination is and can do. If we’re lucky, we’ll even do some imagination exercises.

June 16, 2010 - “Rodney King: ‘Can’t We Just Get Along?” In 1991, Rodney King was the subject of a violent beating at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department which was videoed and shown around the world We won’t recount here the details which led up to the beating, but the acquittal of the LAPD officers led to the 1992 LA riots. During the riots, King appeared on television, pleading with the rioters, “Can’t we just get along?” His question continues to reverberate in any discussion about peace. We’ll examine the many sides to King’s provocative question.

What about one of these topics?

“Repetition”

“Meaning”

“Why Does History Repeat Itself?”

“Heroism”

“Concentration”

“Coping with Adversity”

Student Poetry showcase

“Empathy”

“Connecting the Dots”

Role play of cynical people

“Cold Calling in Sales”

“He’s Just Not That into You”

“Money”

“Critical Listening Institute: Ravel’s ‘Bolero’”

“Criticizing – Giving and Receiving”

“Freedom II”

“Gender Communication II”

“Anger”

“SPAR Debate”

“Distraction II”

“Getting Organized”

And dozens of others!

Compare the notice of the session with what really happened!

What happened on Wednesday, May 5, 2010?

“Distraction”

We are bombarded with some 2 billion stimuli each day. Until recently, people seem to be able to juggle the external “noise” and the internal “noise.” But recently many of us are on stimulus overload. We cannot concentrate. We cannot focus. Our minds wander. We are glued to our BlackBerrys wherever we are. We seem to be reduced to Pavlovian dogs responding to stimuli that we cannot or choose not to control. We seem to have become a nation of ADD people. Lots of opinions here. Perhaps even a case or two of denial?

Newcomer Abiola Davis saw the signs about the topic and joined regulars Dean Donne Kampel, Al Walker, Carlisle Yearwood, Michael Mattocks, James Millner, Ronald Johnson and Hal Wicke

Quickly the group started listing the items which created distraction.

· Cellphones was the main culprit.

· Noise of all kinds is distracting.

· Students seem very distracted.

· Hal offered a style of debate called, “Off-Topic Debate” the goal of which was to get as far off the original topic as possible.

· “Some people distract me. They annoy me.”

· “My free associations distract me.”

· “Women putting on makeup in the subway.”

· People on bicycles create havoc in the streets.

· Hal told the story of a teacher asking if Romeo loved Juliet in the middle of his lecture on 20^th Century American drama.

· Thought leaps in paragraphs.

· People are on information overload and cannot concentrate.

· “Big words bore students.’

Although not directly related to the topic of distraction, Al Walker suddenly shared his reaction to a recent English assignment. His reaction to Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” was that the story was dumb. “It was ridiculous. In the story, Gregory, the protagonist, wakes up one day and discovers that he is a “big bug.”

Al’s statement sparked a number of reactions. Some felt it wasn’t “dumb” because it was a “classic.” Another said the story made perfect sense if you knew the autobiographical details of Kafka’s life.

· Ask the question, “What if?”

· Get the background on the story by Googling it.

· Carlisle – Vladimir Nabokov’s comment that the story is an allegory of how a totalitarian government crushes the individual.

· What about the title? It indicates social change.

Al reiterated his viewpoint, “I still think it’s dumb.”

Hal suggested that there at least two ways to look at a piece of literature using extrinsic sources (biographical, sociological, etc.) or using intrinsic sources (examining only the story itself.) Professor Yearwood was approaching the novel extrinsically. Al was reacting to the story itself as “dumb,” meaning that he got nothing from it.

Back to distraction.

· When things are too quiet.

· “I find that a dog-eared page is annoying. Books are to be honored.”

· “84 Charing Cross Road (novel, stage play, film) characterizes books as prized possessions to be kept in pristine condition.”

· Having too many things to do.

· Spend more time avoiding what I have to do.

· “I’m a clean freak. I can’t begin to work until everything is clean.”

· Incorrect English bothers me a lot.

· The “N” word bothers me.

· So does the “B” word directed at women

· You have a standard in your head and that standard gets violated.

How do you deal with distraction?

· Focus, concentrate

· Concentrate and study on the train when I can’t study at home

· Be goal oriented

· Ask questions

· But how do you do this without getting distracted?

This was an unusual session with the important but unexpected digression on Kafka. That raised other unexpected issues. But the central question of distraction needs further examination. More importantly, how do we find ways to avoid or control distraction? We’ll schedule another session on this very important topic.

In his graduation speech last week at Hampton University President Obama said that we were in an “age of distraction.” He urged the graduates to focus on their goals.

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We always have a great time exploring these issues. So often our daily life never focuses on these Communication issues. If you have something you want us to discuss please let us know and we’ll add it to the list.

Next time bring a friend. The Communication Club is always an open discussion, limited only by time. Everyone gets a chance to speak. All opinions are welcome. Here is an opportunity for students to challenge professors’ views outside the class without any homework or assignments. You just have to show up and listen and talk if you want.

Hal Wicke