Why Won’t They Listen to Reason?

Can't, won't, shouldn't: three opposite interpretations that leave us guessing.

Posted Mar 04, 2014


There are three broad interpretations for such impenetrability:

  1. They can’t understand: They’re not trying to give you a hard time. They just haven’t got the toolkit. They’re not stonewalling, they’re just tone-deaf in your communications register. Yes, you’re talking to a wall, but not one they’ve built to keep you out. They can’t help it. It’s not in their temperament, education or vocabulary to understand what you’re saying. When they say, “You’re not making any sense,” it’s true—though not about you, but them. You’d make sense to someone who had the range to understand you.





The bind may be as frustrating as the inattentiveness, not knowing whether to throw a fit or turn away.

Especially that middle interpretation, the lazy indulgent one. How can you forgive or walk away from people who are just being jerks? In a free society, we all can claim whatever authority they want. There’s no license or certification they have to earn in order to speak with self-congratulatory self-certainty. They can just form any old opinion they want by whatever means and claim to have the final word. They may not be able to get away with it in certain fields where there are concrete consequences for having wrong opinions, but in politics, philosophy, religion, ethics, strategy, forecasting, therapy, and a bunch of other big-picture soft-consequence fields, they can get away with claiming any authority.


And then there are those you can’t walk away from, the inescapable incorrigible boors. Yes, it’s nice to forgive, accommodate, tolerate, live and let live, but when you’re forced by circumstances to collaborate with these people, you can’t just give them space or tolerate their un-receptivity. They’ll just take the wheel and steer you both off a cliff ignoring your warnings the whole way down. In a democracy, we get the consequences we deserve, but not all of us deserve them.


I go molten, I shut down my comments, my response, even my interpretive engagement.  I need to give myself a moment to flush my emotional response. Emotions don’t turn on a dime, and in such situations, my emotions spin a swill of tugs in opposite directions. I don’t seek mindfulness in such meditation, but mindlessness, a quiet moment to flush the emotions my thoughts and interpretations have stirred.

After all, maybe they shouldn’t listen. Maybe I’m just being stubborn, nagging them with ideas that are justifiably irrelevant to them. I don’t want to push where I should accommodate, accommodate where I should push, or engage where I should disengage.
