Oops, Ouch, Whoa: Tools For Discussion

     Between outrage-mining, hypersensitivity, "f--k your feelings," trigger warnings and on and on, back and forth, a lot of conversations between people with different opinions and worldviews have become difficult if not impossible.

     It's easier to sling bumper-sticker slogans at one another, get angry, decide the other person is simply impossible and stomp off, mutually assured that you are surrounded by hostile jerks in thrall to political lunacy.

     But what happens when you have got to work something out?  Is there some way to acknowledge when you realize you might have gone a bit too far, or when your toes have been stepped on, or things have taken a turn for the wait-what-even-happened?

     There can be.  Just a set of signals, terms mutually agreed on not to shut discussion down or score points but to use to keep the talk going: "Oops," if you think you have pushed too hard, "Ouch," when something zinged and needs to be talked about, "Whoa," when you're losing track and need further explanation.

     People sometimes get askew without wanting to, and it's very easy to escalate that into personal or political disagreement instead of looking for a common understanding (which may or may not lead to agreement).  Or, as one article put it, "The point of this tool is to signal a clear set of values: Mistakes are normal, harm can be mended, it’s okay to not know something, and accountability is a shared responsibility."  The purpose isn't browbeating, silencing or enforcing a particular philosophy, it's sorting out the underlying reality from the posturing everyone does.

     I stumbled over this while reading up about writer's workshops, which often use a particular set of rules to keep things moving, rules which can at times encourage a kind of flashy-clever criticism at the expense of useful feedback.  But it is a technique that has wider applicability when you need to get something done.