Sonder

I recently stumbled upon a new word via Tumblr: Sonder, or, "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own." As I was mulling over the word, I started thinking about the implications of this concept and was reminded of a paper I had written during college. The paper was an analysis of two rhetorical theories, L. Bitzer's (1968) Rhetorical Situation and J. Edbauer's (2005) Rhetorical Ecology, as they related to a modern day rhetorical artifact. In other words, the paper was an attempt to understand and unpack the context surrounding a modern-day speech.

I bring this up because the topic of today's blog, sonder, relates closely to the theory of Rhetorical Ecology. According to Edbauer (2005), Rhetorical Ecology is the idea that "the contact between two people...is never simply a matter of those two bodies; rather, the two bodies carry with them...effects from whole fields of culture and social histories" (p. 10). In other words, the person you made eye contact with on the road, the cashier who took your order, the stranger sitting across the table at the coffee shop, they are all the main characters in their own individual stories. Just as you are the main character in yours. Their emotions, thoughts, and desires are just as vivid and complex as your own.

This realization holds quite a few implications for our lives. While I would love to create an extensive list of take-aways (and maybe I will some day), I'll simply elaborate on two of these implications that I think are fundamental to our interpersonal interactions.

First, the concept of sonder ought to have a strong impact on the way we enter dialogue with others. Our opinions and ideas and beliefs are all products of our life experiences. When our opinions are ignored, the multitude of experiences that have led to the formation and development of that opinion are also discounted. When our opinions are listened to and valued, so are our experiences. Understanding that others' opinions have been formed and developed in the same way as our own ought to compel some level of empathy and listening. Others want to be heard and listened to just as strongly as you do. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone you disagree with, take a step back and instead of immediately countering their argument, try to understand why they believe what they do. Often, we approach the act of listening with the mentality of "listen to respond". Instead, have a mind-set of "listen to understand".

Second, sonder ought to encourage us to view others as complex beings. Our minds naturally categorize information into 5 morality binaries: Care-Harm, Fairness-Cheating, Loyalty-Betrayal, Authority-Subversion, Sanctity-Degradation (Graham, Haidt, Koleva, Motyl, Iyer, Wojcik, & Ditto, 2013). As useful as these concepts may be, these categories exist on a large-scale in order to help us to easily identify social problems. The damage occurs when we allow these binaries to extend past their social conceptions and into our complex interpersonal relationships. In other words, before labeling others, we need to realize that identities are complex and rarely fit neatly into the binaries that rule our social morality. Now this does not mean that we should get rid of categorical thought processes. I am simply suggesting that we not be so quick to assume the worst about people. As I am constantly telling my students at work: "You are not a bad kid. Sometimes, you make bad decisions, but that does not make you bad."

Imagine what a change we could see in our society if we all practiced a little healthy dialogue and accounted for identity-complexity.

This blog post is getting pretty long and heavy, so I'm gonna stop right here. But, before I go, a quick note: the concepts addressed above, dialogue and identity-complexity, are extremely complicated concepts that require much more time than a single blog post allows in order to properly address. So, look forward to future blog posts concerning these topics. If there was anything in this post that you felt you disagreed with or that you would like some extra clarification on, please feel free to message me for a deeper conversation!

As always, I would love to know your thoughts. If you have constructive feedback, topic ideas, or musings you just want to share, please send me a message. I want to hear what you think! I hope you enjoyed this topic! See you next time.

-J

References

(in case anyone was curious)

Edbauer, J. (2005). Unframing models of public distribution: From rhetorical situation to rhetorical ecologies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 35:4, 5-24, doi: 10.1080/02773940509391320

Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Psychology 47:55-130