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There certainly are times to speak up. At the macro level, we might speak out on a political issue. Micro, we often should ask for what we want lest we unduly sacrifice our agency. Plus, speaking is active learning: We grow from figuring out what to say and then saying it.
But these days, silence may be getting short shrift. Sure, we may view as too limiting nuns' and monks' vow of silence, or even retreaters being silent for just a few days. Yet, at least in conversation, a reasonable argument can be made for silence: listening, evaluating. That may be especially true in a conversation in which the other person(s) feel compelled to talk, even yell, rather than listen to you. And mightn’t your pearls of wisdom become more pearlescent if informed by others, if only so your counterpoint or, perhaps better, your question, builds on their statements?
Let’s take a current example: COVID. Ask three people and you’ll get four opinions, perhaps with their being so eager to express them that they’re not very open to hearing what others have to say. Imagine that you’re in a three-person conversation that grew increasingly heated:
Person 1: Our county not only has a high infection rate, it has high hospitalization and death rates. We need to be on lockdown.
Person 2: Yes, but within the county, the rate varies widely by census tract.
Person 1: But it's too hard to effectively communicate different rules for each census tract. And because there are racial and ethnic differences, accusations of racism are likely.
Person 2: True, but by locking people down, you restrict their ability to acquire herd immunity, not just to COVID but to the myriad viruses and bacilli that we’re ever exposed to in doses that are large enough to create an antibody response but small enough to not cause significant disease. The heretofore insufficiently tested idea of sustained mass lockdown could make us more vulnerable to a wide array of pathogens.
Person 1: That’s merely conjectural. Consensus among the experts is that a fair degree of lockdown is wise.
Person 2: That consensus mainly is among public health types. They’re too narrowly focused on reducing cases, insufficiently weighing the costs of largely very old and sick people dying against the profound costs of the larger population losing jobs, kids not getting an in-person education, plus the psychological and domestic stresses.
You could have jumped in to add your perspective, but an argument can be made for silence: You get to hear their passionately held views so that what you then say or come to believe is informed by what they said.
A rule-of-thumb that many of my career counseling clients have found useful is this: In a meeting, it’s often wise to let others have their say and then, before the topic is closed, make a capstone comment such as, “In light of Mary saying X and John saying Y, I’m wondering if we should do Z. What do you think?”
Having been party to many conversations about COVID, the racial roiling, and the presidential election, I’ve found that tactic of saving your comment for last works well. There may be wisdom in the old saying, “There’s a reason we have two ears and two eyes but just one mouth.”
I read this aloud on YouTube.
