The Common Council held an Informal Organizational Meeting on 06/15/2021. Because it was an informal meeting, they didn’t have an invocation, but Mayor Woodford did take the opportunity to make a statement which, although not mentioning any specific situation, did appear to at least in part be responding to the discussion that has been happening surrounding Alderperson Schultz’s recent social media post.
Mayor Woodford: And so, it’s an informal organizational meeting so we don’t have an invocation, but I hope you’ll permit me to say a few words before we get started. I’ve been thinking a bit about the discussion over the last few weeks regarding Council rules and lots of other topics that the Council has taken up, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t share with you my concern–my concern for the level of discourse and my concern for the decorum of the body. And we talk a lot about decorum here in the Chamber and to your credit I think this Council does a good job of maintaining–by and large, maintaining decorum in the chamber. But I think decorum, which is really just another word for respect–I think, it extends beyond the walls of the Council chambers and out into the community, and not just the physical community, but I would argue the virtual community also.
And I’ve been concerned, and members of the community I think are also becoming concerned with some of the things that are taking place in discussions outside of Council meetings and particularly online. And so, before we get into our work tonight, I just want to share some suggestions with you first to underscore the concern.
So, you got a copy of a book from one of your colleagues. I think it was at the first meeting, one of your colleagues provided you with a copy of a book–a book that I happen to have a copy of myself–and it’s called “Love Your Enemies” by Arthur Brooks, and if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet I hope that you will. I think it’s worthwhile and thought provoking but I wanted to share a couple of things with you from the book. This is on the concept of contempt which I think is particularly concerning and one that we should be thinking about as leaders in this community and in particular in this elected body. So I’ll read a few sections here.
“Mode of attribution asymmetry doesn’t lead to anger because it doesn’t make you want to repair the relationship. Believing your foe is motivated by hate leads to something far worse: contempt. While anger seeks to bring someone back into the fold, contempt seeks to exile. It attempts to mock, shame, and permanently exclude from relationships by belittling, humiliating, and ignoring. So while anger says ‘I care about this.’ Contempt says, ‘You disgust me. You are beneath caring about.’” He goes on to say, “The destructive power of contempt is well documented in the work of the famous social psychologist and relationship expert John Gottman. He’s a long-time professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and cofounder with his wife, Julie Schwartz-Gottman of the Gottman Institute which is dedicated to improving relationships. In his work Gottman has studied thousands of married couples. He’ll ask each couple to tell their story. How they met and courted, their highs and their lows as a couple, and how their marriage has changed over the years, before having them discussion contentious issues. After watching a couple interact for just one hour he could predict within, with 94% accuracy whether that couple will divorce within three years. And how can he tell? It’s not from the anger the couples express. Gottman confirms that anger doesn’t predict separation or divorce. The biggest warning signs, he explains, are indicators of contempt. These include sarcasm, sneering, hostile humor, and worst of all eyerolling. These little acts effectively say, ‘You are worthless’.”
So what does this have to do with politics? So Brooks put this question to Gottman and Gottman said this, “There’s been a denigration of respect in the dialogue in this country. It’s always us vs. them. We see Republicans thinking they’re better than Democrats, Democrats thinking they’re better than Republicans, people from the coast thinking their better from people inland. It goes on and on, and I think it’s very harmful. This us vs. them is what gets our medial pre-frontal cortex—” Remember, this is a professor—”our medial pre-frontal cortex, that’s a part of our brain between our eyes, to not respond with understanding and compassion. And that’s not what our country’s about.”
So concerning, right? And I think we can think of examples, whether it’s been in our meetings here in the chamber or some of the things we’ve seen or heard online that maybe sound a little bit like some of those signs of contempt rather than just disagreements and rather than maybe being angry and passionate about issues. So there’s good news–there’s good news–and I’m happy to share that. We have a choice. That’s the good news. We have a choice. And that’s something that I wrote to all of you early on, I mean, it was like right after first or second meeting. I sent you all a note. One of the things I talked about was that we have a choice about how we treat each other, and how we carry ourselves. So that’s the good news–we have a choice. But what do we do with it?
So Brooks asked two experts. One of them was Dr. Gottman who I was just quoting before. Gottman gave him four rules, and Gottman had never been asked that question before, so he had to think about it, and he shared four rules. And those four rules were: Focus on other people’s distress and focus on it empathetically. When others are upset about politics or anything else for that matter, listen to them respectfully. Try to understand their point of view before offering your own. Never listen only to rebut.
Two: In your interactions with others, particularly in areas of disagreement, adopt the 5-1 rule which he gives couples. He says make sure you offer five positive comments for every criticism. On social media that means five positive messages for every one others might see as negative. Whoo. Might be a tall order. But it’s possible.
Number three: no contempt is ever justified. Even if in the heat of the moment you think someone deserve it, it is unjustified more often than you know. It is always bad for you and it will never convince anyone else that they’re wrong. And four: go where people disagree with you and learn from them. That means making new friends and seeking out opinions from those you don’t agree with. And how do you act when you get there? Well go back to rules one through three. I think the nice thing about rule, uh, this rule number four is that this group has an opportunity to do this every other week when we come to this chamber, because we don’t all agree. We all–we don’t all come from, come at issues from the same perspective. So we’ve got an opportunity to be exposed to different ideas every other week when we get in this room, and every week really because we have meetings every week.
He asked another expert, the Dalai Lama, and he asked the Dalai Lama, “What do I do when I feel contempt?” You know what the Dalai Lama said to him? “Practice warmheartedness.” “‘Well, how do I do that? Give me some practical tips, Your Holiness.’ He told me, ‘Think back to a time in your life when you answered contempt with warmheartedness and remember how it made you feel and then do it again, and again, and again, and again.'”
So those are a couple of practical suggestions for us about how we can not only make that choice but some of the things we can do to implement it, and I hope that you will. Because it’s not just about us and our interpersonal relationships in this body or in this organization. The community looks to us for leadership, and I don’t know that we’re always showing them that. And I think we need to.”
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