How to Take One On The Chin
How to be a Radical Moderate in a Radically Immoderate World
Radical Moderates care about justice, truth, and goodness. Above all, they believe that those goods are most likely to be found - and in balance - somewhere in the moderate middle of our complex 4D moral landscapes. But that doesn’t mean radical moderation is popular or that radical moderates are immune from immoderate attacks. Even more, Radical Moderates must be acutely aware that how they respond to such attacks is itself part of the cause of radical moderation.
What happens in the moment when a Radical Moderate is the victim of immoderation? How can we respond in a way that furthers radically moderate goals rather than inflaming the immoderation around us?
Let’s be clear: attacks never feel great. Whether it’s on the internet or at work or in a personal relationship, most of the time it feels pretty awful. While we could respond by sitting around wallowing in the injustice of the situation (which is ok to do for a little while too), we also need to find a way forward.
So what *is* the radically moderate response to immoderation and injustice? The specifics will obviously depend on the context, but in almost every case the Radical Moderate’s general goal should be to try to move people back to a radical middle.
Let’s see how that can work in practice….
Why revenge doesn’t work
It’s tempting, when people are being publicly immoderate, to take three general approaches:
hit back or
try to defend yourself or
curl up into a ball.
All those things are very normal and natural reactions. My initial instinct is usually to do all of them at the same time. But all of them have as their main problem that they move us farther away from moderation and toward the more immoderate extremes. Hitting back is likely to escalate the conflict and fuel greater levels of toxicity in the future. A righteous verbal defense might seem like a good strategy, and in certain contexts that strategy might make sense. But often there are social or political reasons to just shut up for the moment. Yet shutting up doesn’t mean curling up in a ball, either. When victims of immoderation curl up and disappear - as so many are doing these days - we lose the very people who have the capacity to make a change.
So what can we do to moderate our immoderate impulses and use toxicity to fuel a better world? The most important thing - in the spirit of MLK Jr - is to control your immediate reaction to the immoderate or unjust event.
As most of us know from experience, being personally attacked triggers our fight-or-flight mode, with the potential for a vicious cycle of immoderate reactions. When we feel attacked it’s easy to lash out or react in a way that moves everyone further away from the radically moderate middle. Here are some shorter term things that have helped me in the past (particularly in a public-facing job) that might help you too:
Remove yourself from the environment, even if temporarily. Go to the bathroom, escape for a walk, pretend you’re sick or got an urgent phone call. Whatever you need to do, remove yourself in the short term from the attack until you can get a handle on your “fight” reflex.
If the conflict is ongoing, focus on the basics of self-care: avoid alcohol (which ramps up anxiety), give yourself extra time for sleep, exercise to conquer nervous energy, get into nature, take a hot bath, read a good novel, down some adaptogens, or prioritize anything else that you usually find relaxing.
Meditation/prayer: There are tons of free meditation apps out there, so that’s a good place to start. One of my favorites for immediate stress relief isn’t technically meditation at all, but is non-sleep deep relaxation, which can also be a decent hack for when your sleep is jacked up from anxiety or anything else. There are lots of good ones online, but I linked to Andrew Huberman’s since I buy (metaphorically, since it’s free) whatever he is selling.
Box breathing: when I started feeling anxiety about a conflict ramp up again, I just do box-breathing, a simple 4-4-4-4 breathing pattern.
Practice the “what’s the worst that could happen” game. It’s easy to catastrophize in the short term, but really what’s the worst that could happen? Probably not death or dismemberment. Walking with your brain through the actual likely consequences of this attack can help calm your brain’s high alert state. Some other helpful questions to ask are here.
Find a way to process what happened that’s non-reactive. Vent to a friend, journal, write a letter or email that you don’t send (seriously, don’t send it!), or talk it out with a therapist. You want to find a safe place to vent your rage and frustration that doesn’t fuel the situation that started it in the first place.
Borrow a dog. We have a sweet red heeler named Kodak, but almost any dog will do.
While these help in the moment to lower your blood pressure, we also need some strategies for crafting a non-reactive and radically moderate response. As we think about how to respond to injustice or immoderation, there are some helpful tools we can use.
Longer-Term Ways to Overcome Injustice and Immoderation in the Moment and Move to a Better World:
Understand the causes. A lot of times, on the political front, at least, conflict stems from some combination of miscommunication and tribalist thinking. Knowing that you’re a convenient target for displaced rage doesn’t make it feel any better, but it does make it feel a tiny bit more understandable. And once you understand the causes, you’re in a better position to know how to react.
Don’t take it personally. This one is hard when it does, in fact, seem personal. Often, people are attacking not exactly you, but their perception of you - as a liberal or a conservative or as a member of an opposing team. And that actually does make a big difference in our ability to dissociate our true selves from the attack. Add to this the general truism that we often don’t know what’s causing other people to act the way they do in any given situation - whether it’s anxiety or depression or stress or fear - and its even easier not to take attacks personally because such attacks are in fact usually about what’s going on in the other person rather than what’s going on with you.
Don’t feed the trolls. Really negative people feed off of negativity. What saps one person’s strength is a boon to others. Public responses just feed that cycle and it’s usually not worth it. Notice that I am *not* saying that we shouldn’t call out injustice publicly, but there are complicated reasons that it often shouldn’t be the victim of injustice reaching out. Not the least of which is that when you’ve been victimized like this it’s easy to get emotional and trolls will take advantage of that.
Look for the silent majority: A lot of people have retreated into their shells because the most toxic voices have the largest platform largely because they have no inhibitions about using it. But most people out there want a better world or workplace or neighborhood and they just don’t know how to get it. While you’re licking your wounds, find some quiet and reasonable people to hang with and you’ll feel better about the future.
Model radical moderation. I know, I know. This seems cliched. Being a good role model is hackneyed advice but some advice is hackneyed because it’s true. Take the high road, don’t get down into the mud with angry and immoderate people, and model for other people how to handle conflict. It’s not easy and I rarely get it entirely right, but it does make a difference. Reasonable people will start gravitating toward you and looking to you for guidance and support. Once that happens, you’ll be able to build a cohort of people who can help shift the institutional culture. Modeling radical moderation has a virtuous secondary effect, which is that it pulls people out from the silent majority and helps support their voices too. It’s a virtuous circle that only gets more virtuous over time.
Look for institutional changes. Lest my readers think this is just a lesson for turning the other cheek, that’s not quite right either. There are lots of ways that people can start to gently shift the conversation in toxic and immoderate situations. Most of us don’t have a lot of power over the halls of government, but we interact with institutions every day and these institutions have the power to incentivize either toxicity or moderation, depending on their structure. Next time you’re thinking about how things are going in your family or your workplace or your neighborhood, try to identify specific institutional structures that may be contributing to the toxicity. Are there rules for speaking at PTSA meetings that prevent more moderate voices from being heard? Does your workplace have enough opportunities for people to socialize and connect outside of formal meetings? Are people in your neighborhood or workplace communicating mostly online, where anonymity breeds toxicity and aggression? If so, those are practical things to try to change.
Look for some lessons, even when you don’t want to. However toxic and harsh the feedback you’re getting, sometimes there are some small nuggets of truth you can take away. In one example of where institutions meets individual behavior, I’ve found in my workplace that online meetings tend to breed distrust and a sense of disconnection, so I’m working to meet with more people in person, as much as possible. Such a practice reduces (but doesn’t eliminate) the likelihood of misinterpretation and also helps create the relationships that move trust forward. It’s a lot of work, but it’s work that’s worth doing.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, apply the Radical Moderate’s Big Five to your response:
Does my response to this fully recognize the complexity of the situation?
Am I understanding the full 4D moral landscape in which this conversation is happening?
Have I done a rough assessment of the tradeoffs of responding at all and of my specific response?
Am I working to engage with the human in front of me rather than an ideological strawman?
Am I embodying a humanistic toleration and accepting pluralism in the way other people think about the world?
If you can answer those questions affirmatively, you can feel pretty sure you’re well on your radically moderate way! That doesn’t mean the conflict will magically go away, but it does mean that you can at least feel sure you’ve done your best. And that’s all we ever can do.
As always, let me know what you think! What tips and tools have helped you think about surviving in toxic or immoderate situations? What kinds of institutional changes have you run across that really helped?
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