Yep, so many times I tried to talk to people in my former activist space and all they wanted to hear was my lived experience and they didn’t ask any kinds of questions. They didn’t want to have a conversation with me, they just wanted to hear me talk and move on.
The ones who did ask questions became my friends, until I had to leave because of the ones who didn’t ask me questions outnumbered the ones who did.
I wish I could like this a million times. Mark Crislip, who wrote “Flies in the Ointment” said that in the various health professions the three words “in my experience” are the most dangerous words in medicine. For medically untrained people this is even more accurate.
The key point here too is that one person's lived experience is just that, one person's experience. The experience may not be representative at all. There is research showing that, when purchasing products, people will read reviews and get all sorts of data but, in the end, they are often swayed by the experience of a close friend. That one experience is potentially an anomaly, not the median/average experience. The data show the product is great, but your friend's story trumps data.
Also, people tell stories where they leave out key context. Imagine a black person saying "The cops in my town are always targeting black people for pullovers. I've been pulled over 4 times this year!" but failing to tell you that they consistently speed through a school zone on the way to work. This person's lived experience isn't racist; it is that they are speeding through an area where law enforcement targets speeders in order to keep kids safe.
That last paragraph is the most important part of this article. We should be working together to discern the truth and be considering different points of view and possibilities together. To create the world we want to live in, we need to hear and weigh different points of view rather than silence those who do not follow an accepted narrative or believe that there is only one way to resolve the problems we face.
Yep, so many times I tried to talk to people in my former activist space and all they wanted to hear was my lived experience and they didn’t ask any kinds of questions. They didn’t want to have a conversation with me, they just wanted to hear me talk and move on.
The ones who did ask questions became my friends, until I had to leave because of the ones who didn’t ask me questions outnumbered the ones who did.
I wish I could like this a million times. Mark Crislip, who wrote “Flies in the Ointment” said that in the various health professions the three words “in my experience” are the most dangerous words in medicine. For medically untrained people this is even more accurate.
The key point here too is that one person's lived experience is just that, one person's experience. The experience may not be representative at all. There is research showing that, when purchasing products, people will read reviews and get all sorts of data but, in the end, they are often swayed by the experience of a close friend. That one experience is potentially an anomaly, not the median/average experience. The data show the product is great, but your friend's story trumps data.
Also, people tell stories where they leave out key context. Imagine a black person saying "The cops in my town are always targeting black people for pullovers. I've been pulled over 4 times this year!" but failing to tell you that they consistently speed through a school zone on the way to work. This person's lived experience isn't racist; it is that they are speeding through an area where law enforcement targets speeders in order to keep kids safe.
That last paragraph is the most important part of this article. We should be working together to discern the truth and be considering different points of view and possibilities together. To create the world we want to live in, we need to hear and weigh different points of view rather than silence those who do not follow an accepted narrative or believe that there is only one way to resolve the problems we face.
Very sensible!