5 tweets · December 2022 · 62 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
if I try to tell someone something, and they respond with an objection that's entirely irrelevant to what I meant what they respond with is entirely relevant to what THEY thought I meant*, and that's what I need to dialogue with *otherwise they would have said something else
what I've said above is technically a tautology, although I could imagine people not seeing that & rejecting it or what they think it implies which, interestingly, is an example of the phenomenon itself!
now, it *might* be that they got distracted or triggered by a particular word I used, and that if I try to explain again later using different language, then they'll be able to readily hear what I'm trying to say
or it might be that in fact they do understand what I mean in a local sense, but given other experiences and understandings they have, accepting what I'm saying would imply other things to them (but not to me) that they don't want to accept
& anything like that is part of what I need to deal with in order to get understood I don't need to myself see it how they do, but I need to acknowledge that (at present) they do, and that whatever new understanding they end up with will need to incorporate all of their knowings