I used to think that words were just words, logical things with defined meanings. I have come to understand that there really are "poisonous" words; words, phrases, attitudes that absolutely have impacts well beyond their dictionary definitions and the speaker's likely intent. If you include these things when conversations are tense or critical, the situation is likely to destabilize and get worse. Making the conversation "safe" and non-threatening is very important. Steering away from emotional arguments and focusing on facts is also key. All of this is harder to do in any text message or email as well, as body language and other social cues are unavailable.
Added:
This comes up a lot in employer - employee conversations. If you want your team to function efficiently, you really have to create a safe environment for comments and discussion.
> I used to think that words were just words, logical things with defined meanings.
Well, they are! But those defined meanings are different for everybody who has a history with the word, and oftentimes you don't know that history going in. The problem with "straight white male" privilege, speaking as a straight white male myself, is that there are words which have enormous baggage for one group or another, yet I've simply never had to deal with such baggage myself.
That's where the overreacting canard comes from, and I don't think raganwald fully empathizes with this in his post. Some people simply don't understand why somebody might have a reason to be worked up about a particular issue because they've never had to care about that issue in their life. I don't just hear "you're overreacting" from people who can't comprehend that people have bad days sometimes. In fact, assuming that the only reason a situation might be personally charged is because somebody had a bad day can be just as frustrating: it really sucks, I've learned, to be "forgiven" for your bad mood when the forgiver has said something truly offensive. What's difficult, but also truly necessary, is to be able to understand why somebody's reacted the way they have – to be willing to admit to yourself that even if something you said didn't seem egregious to you, that you might have crossed a line somehow that you simply haven't learned to notice.
A lot of people forget that in any human-to-human interaction, the logical endpoints are the humans. Language, as all aspects of communication, is human-oriented; using it like it's a logical end unto itself is like trying to use Python phrases in a C script.
That's the beauty of human communication. If we were stuck simply trading well-defined units of definite communication, it would take us forever to convey the depth of ideas that we can convey by depending on the context surrounding words.
We're a species where two people can look at each other and with nothing more than eye contact convey complex thoughts and emotions.
I disagree with the assertion that it's impossible to overreact without "deliberately" exaggerating for effect. People overreact all the time without meaning to. Anyone who works with children can tell you that putting things into perspective is a learned skill: we are born overreactors, every one of us. Going too far is, as it turns out, the natural thing to do.
I have two children. My five year-old recently was tired and hungry, and had a fit when presented with a croissant to eat because it was slightly crushed where I held it too tightly.
Overreacting? Well, that is what I would call an inappropriate reaction, and of course it's part of my job as a parent to provide some guidance.
But it's still 100% the genuine emotion of the moment, and for that reason I'm not going to use the word "overreacting" with a child or an adult. I'm going to say (as I said, roughly) "I understand this isn't what you'd like, however..."
This holds that "genuine" emotional reactions are all equally valid. What makes rage over a slightly-crushed croissant a valid emotional response?
There is also a question of what makes the "genuine" qualifier necessary. It presupposes the idea of an emotional response that is not genuine: what would this mean? What would a "false" emotional response look like, to the one feeling it (and are they truly feeling it at all?) or to others?
Let me get the thesis of the post out of the way first. The post asserts that the word "overreacting" is unproductive to discussion.
If someone's emotional reaction is genuine, i.e. represents how they feel, then you or I may think it's 100% bogus and invalid, but their response to the word "overreacting" is still going to be negative.
Now what I meant by "genuine"--and I'm open to learning that I used the word incorrectly--is that it represents how they feel. The alternative, to me, is when someone feigns anger or distress in order to consciously manipulate people.
In the fullness of time, the roles will be reversed. "Daddy, you're OVERREACTING to my genetic modifications. IT'S UNREASONABLE to demand that I go for a DNA scan before you let me go to the brain-rave!!!"
If you take reactions out of their given context, then this holds: without knowledge of the situation, all the given parties are indeed equally likely to be overreacting. But real-world situations don't work that way. They bring their own context, and in doing, so they break the symmetry: unless all parties are reacting in the same way, it becomes possible to determine which party is more likely to be overreacting to that situation, often with shocking ease.
From there, of course, one can and should dig deeper. It's in the nature of probability that sometimes, reality will go against the likely outcome. But it's also in the nature of probability to hold often enough to be useful.
Equally likely? I doubt it. People overreact all the time, and realize it themselves when they cool down. It's not about the different opinions of different people, it's about the heat of the moment causing a temporary distortion in what seems reasonable.
If the only distortion possible was "heat of the moment", then yeah, the more emotional person in this situation would be overreacting. Unfortunately, there are systematic and structural faults in the way our society is constructed, which in many situations are invisible to the people who benefit from those faults and enormously apparent to the people getting screwed over by them. When an argument breaks out among those faultlines, the person getting emotionally charged may be doing so simply because they understand this argument from a context which the calmer participant doesn't see or refuses to acknowledge.
Or it may be just that the calmer person has a rationality 101 failure. I see the "overreacting" phrase used quite often against a person who raises a legitimate complaint. It's easier to say "you're overreacting" than admit that there's a problem here that might need to be solved.
Bottomline, there's no way in which telling someone they're overreacting is going to lead to a productive conversation. It's a nasty way of dismissing someone.
Legitimate complaints are not usually extremely emotional. I still think the odds are better than 50% that a very angry-acting person is overreacting. It's obviously not always right or always wrong but I really don't think it's close to 50%.
Whether it is polite to tell someone they are overreacting is a completely different issue.
Also if someone is reacting to faults in society.. they may be right but why are they getting angry now, specifically? They might be 'overreacting' to a current event which is equivalent to reacting to something they experienced at a different time instead. Is that legitimate? Well, sometimes. The answer isn't always clear. But that's not an excuse to go '50/50'.
Not to make an ad-hominem, but are you by chance a middle- to upper-class, straight, white male?
To be more precise, is there any area in your life where you are fully aware of systematically having the deck stacked against you and are repeatedly and painfully confronted by it?
Look, I'm not trying to say such anger isn't legitimate. I'm only saying I think legitimate very angry shouting in public is some amount less common than illegitimate very angry shouting in public. Especially when you consider the contribution of children to the latter.
Let me put it this way. I understand that the world 'overreacting' is heavily abused. It is very often wrong. We need to fight the abuse of the word 'overreacting'. But don't counter it by being wrong in the opposite direction, and assuming that every single time someone is very upset that there is a good reason for it.
This is a post about word-usage, specifically saying that the word "overreacting" is not a good word to use in conversation, because it carries a lot of emotional baggage and doesn't foster productive conversations.
Funny enough for a post about word-usage, I only understood this point after reading half of it. I think this post should've started with this sentence (from the OP, posted as a comment in this thread): "Let me get the thesis of the post out of the way first. The post asserts that the word 'overreacting' is unproductive to discussion."
Having said that, I agree with the post and think it makes a very good point.
What about when a guy has problems checking things into source control and starts throwing things around the office?
What about the a guy gets a call from his home monitoring system and starts yelling that his house has burned to the ground?
What about a guy who shouts "you aren't my manager and you never will be" to a coworker?
I made none of those up. They all happened, from 3 different people. (At the same company, for that matter.) Some people really do overreact and really do need to calm down.
The failure for those people to be removed led everyone else to leave.
You're ignoring the subtext of the hypothetical tweet.
By asking "where are the caramel colored men?", you are implying that there SHOULD be men, which further implies that it's the organizer's fault that there are not.
I'd be pretty surprised if such a tactless comment did not offend.
In my hypothetical story, she was offended (I used the word "pissed"). And if you agree that this is reasonable, I think this make smy point stronger, that the word "overreacting" is not helpful in having a productive discussion.
The end-goal of a productive discussion doesn't have to be me convincing her that there should have been a tall, handsome Canadian on the podium. Perhaps the end-goal could have been her convincing me that I need to see this from a new perspective.
Either way, the word "overreacting" is not a good start. That's my thesis.
I find the "overreacting" word incredibly annoying. What it basically amounts to is: "I don't care about you, your feelings or your opinion; I know better and I'm not going to have a rational conversation about it". It's an ugly thing to say, it changes the conversation from discussing objective reality to discussing the validity of someone's emotions. It's a very nasty and saddening kind of dismissal. I can't help but to think less of a person who uses this in a conversation.
Your sentiments on overreacting aside, why does it matter what gender or skin colour the speakers have? If they are qualified and best of class then they should be the ones speaking, no? Should we also invite granite rocks to presentations so that they are equally represented?
Your assumption is that there is a "best of class" which can be easily identified and sorted from the rest. Given that most conferences aren't going to consist only of the absolute paragons of an industry, we can conclude that in planning conferences we're selecting possible speakers from a number of very qualified participants.
In industries where there is a grotesque gender imbalance, one way you start to fix that imbalance is by acknowledging it and making efforts to pick women speakers when they're available – that both gives the speakers an opportunity that is being frequently denied them, and it indicates to other women that there is opportunity in this field, that they won't be passed over again and again by men for no merit other than their gender.
If we assume that no woman is as good as a man in this field, then your argument makes sense – but that's a silly argument, methinks.
Genes and gene expression affect neurotransmitter levels and neurotrophic factors which, in turn, affect cognitive performance - just as Jamaicans and Africans are on average better at sprinting than English and French natives. Particular genetic groupings are going to fare better at task X, not too badly at task Y and terribly at task Z.
I just said that the colour of a speaker's skin or gender may not matter. I agree with you that it ought not to matter.
As to my post, what I would say is that you and I are having a productive conversation in part neither of us is labelling the other as overreacting. Instead, we're trading viewpoints and questions.
Are you suggesting that the genetic grouping of white males is scientifically accepted as being a better ruby conference speaker than non-white or non-male people?
right, I was thinking of the actual incidents that (I assume) prompted this blog post. So you can re-state my question as, "are you arguing that it is likely that Asian women are genetically superior to non-Asian or male people in that field?".
Well yeah, that's what I'm arguing. Asian women are going to, on average, do better in field X than individuals from other genetic groupings - just as Jamaican men excel at sprinting.
Another example:
> Different studies have found different results, but most have found above-average verbal and mathematical intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews, along with below-average spatial intelligence. Some studies have found IQ scores amongst Ashkenazi Jews to be a fifth to one full standard deviation above average in mathematical and verbal tests.
I don't know which article you read, but all I see is a balanced and very well laid out argument for respecting the validity of the emotions of others whatever they may be.
Added:
This comes up a lot in employer - employee conversations. If you want your team to function efficiently, you really have to create a safe environment for comments and discussion.