Danny ChaiJieun just finished watching this Korean miniseries Goong (Palace). I started watching with her, but she was more obsessed about it than me and has a more flexible schedule so she ended up watching the bulk if it alone, with me watching snippets here and there.
It was pretty good as far as KMSs go, interesting enough for me to want to read the comic it’s based on. (SN. The male leads look and dress like women. No exaggeration. I’m talking lip gloss, fem pink button-down shirts, sweaters with deep plunging necklines. It’s not metro, it’s not gay, it’s straight-up female.) It was also incredibly frustrating, because every situation comes up because no one fricking says how they feel. The whole series is basically an extended episode of Three’s Company with less humor and a lot more tears: it’s all based on secrets and miscommunication. If the characters just took the time to actually explain in full and honestly how they felt from the beginning, the series would be 2 hours long.
Is this how all Korean society is like? It just seems like a hugely inefficient mode of communication. Internalized feelings, misunderstood actions.
A.J. Jacobs had a really interesting (and entertaining) article in Esquire a few months back about a “movement” called “Radical Honesty”, which is pretty much what it sounds – always telling the truth, and never filtering out anything you feel, no matter how crazy or insensitive it might seem. To someone as reserved as me, that sounds insane. It’s fair to say a motto of much of my life has been that Mark Twain quote: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
I’ve come to believe though, that that’s wrong, that being silent does a great disservice to you and the people around you. I mentioned this before, but I’m reading through dcpark’s b-school class notes on Interpersonal Communication, and it’s absolutely fascinating, maybe even life changing. But one of the central tenets is, there are 3 parts to communication. One is the speaker’s motivations in speaking. Two is what he says. Three is the effect his words have on the listener.
What the readings point out is that we can only be “experts” in 2 of the 3 parts. Both parties know what was said. But only the speaker really knows the motivation behind what he said. And only the listener really knows the effect the words had. A large (maybe the biggest) factor in miscommunication is when one or the other party assumes knowledge about the one part of communication they can’t be the expert on – the other’s motivation or internal response. It happens all the time. Speakers are frequently unaware of the effects their words have on listeners. And listeners frequently misunderstand the motivations of speakers. It’s the heart of miscommunication.
The solution the class suggests revolves around gathering “data”, which requires talking out the things we assume. Meaning, listeners should ask speakers their motivations instead of assuming them. Speakers should inquire as to how their words make people feel. It’s a painful process; it’s tedious, and can cause a lot of resentment when people take things in ways the speaker didn’t intend. But in the end, the class suggests that it’s the only way we can really clear up miscommunication – you cannot fully understand the 3 parts of conversation without gathering all the data to make an assessment, and you can’t get data without people talking it through. And clearing up miscommunication ultimately makes us happier.
That last aspect has been something I’ve thinking about a lot, and it’s why I say I think I do a disservice when I don’t speak up. When I say nothing, people cannot know for certain how I’m feeling – they have no data to base it on. Therefore, they can only guess, and without words, they have little to make a guess with. This actually comes up at work. People attribute to me feelings and reactions that I don’t actually have, and it’s mostly my fault – by not saying anything, I don’t give them anything better to work with. So I cannot complain about being misunderstood if I don’t give people around me useful data. I have therefore been making a concerted effort to express how I feel, so that people know and don’t have to make faulty guesses.
I think there are a lot of reasons why we (or at least I) hold our tongues or just flat out lie. But I’m feeling more and more that the pain of honesty is far less than the pain of miscommunication. So I really think the Radical Honesty that Jacobs talks about is closer on the spectrum of life happiness than the miscommunication of Korean miniseries.