The Deaf Effect
How do you react to unwelcome or unpleasant news? The answer is directly related to the amount of personal power we're able to manifest. In today's episode, we'll look at the deaf effect. Why it's there, how it limits us, and how we can free ourselves of its grip.
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The Deaf Effect
Have you heard of the deaf effect? I hadn’t until recently. The term was first coined by researchers Keil and Robey in a 2001 paper, which described the failure of project managers working in the field of information systems to effectively respond to bad news. This phenomenon is nothing new. A classic human response to unwelcome stimuli is denial.
It's one of the original causes that generates the misery so central to the human condition. In the past twenty years, the phenomenon has begun to be studied intently. Aversion to pain is what pain exists for. It's a signal that says, "Energy is blocked. Something needs to change here." Thoughts about pain, avoidance, and its implications go way back too. Plato wrote an allegory about humanity living in a cave. We are all caved dwellers because we can't withstand the piercing and revealing light of the sun, a metaphor for the realities of our existence.
Over 2,500 years later, we can still be considered as living in Plato's cave. Biologically, it's unavoidable. It's a function of the conflict between our instincts and our intellect. We cut ourselves off from the harsh or distasteful elements of reality by using the strategy of the deaf effect. In so doing, we sentence ourselves to living in a degree of darkness. This is where the problems of the world and our place within it all emerge.
Deaf Effect: We cut ourselves off from the harsh or distasteful elements of reality by using the strategy of the deaf effect. In so doing, we sentence ourselves to living in a degree of darkness.
It is an emotional state ruled by anger, alienation, and egocentrism. Living in the cave is voluntary and self-imposed. It is possible to break free of this condition. How? To answer, let's consider the universal struggles we must all face. Here's a poem I will share to illustrate the dilemma. I wrote it for this episode. I will call it What's Wrong There and Here. I sit, stand, and lay a soul on its own in a room. People say this space belongs to me. I don't feel it. I didn't make it. I didn't pay for it.
With drapes and switches, I shun the sun. I fight the light. Clever. I need not soil my eyes with reminders of what's so dismayingly wrong there and here. I drown out the sounds of the street and my mind blasting music furious. It's as alone as me. I need not hear reminders of what's so chaotically wrong there and hear.
I ignore the advice, the missives, and the words of the old and not so wise. I need not entertain, consider, or absorb reminders of what's so preaching wrong there and here. With my hasty impulse, I banish the hurtful inputs. How safe and smart am I as I remain unseen and unheard? The world will never see my shadow.
The feelings I try to evoke with these images accompany the crisis of consciousness that commonly plagues teenagers as they come of age. The dilemma arises from the inevitable and universal struggle. All conscious humans must face as we contend with the dual nature of ourselves and the world. Most of us don't do well with this. We fall into lifelong traps. We adopt false identities. We become slaves to ideology. We distract ourselves with vices.
The celebrated Scottish psychiatrist, RD Laing said, “The ordinary person is a shriveled and desiccated fragment of what a person can be.” Not a happy thought, especially with how insightfully accurate it was, but it does have a silver lining. We can all be much more than we are if we can break the hold of the deaf effect. When we look at the world around us, there is a basic choice we can make. We can see all the things that upset us, disappoint us, and break our hearts. There will always be plenty of evidence for a story of tragedy. When we do this, we can become cynical and jaded.
We can all be much more than we are if we can break the hold of the deaf effect.
Preeminent psychologist, Carl Jung, viewed our makeup as composed of four elements. One he called the shadow. Our shadow self is that set of qualities and emotions we reject about ourselves. The problem is they don't go away, they push back. Jung recognized a classic strategy we employed to insulate ourselves against this irritant projection.
Projection is when we recognize those negative qualities we suppress within ourselves in others. This is why we judge and reject, even hate and condemn others. Even if we don't do that, we often cope with these feelings by seeking relief through distraction. We chase a brass ring. We compare ourselves to others in ways that make us feel superior. We soothe ourselves with food, drink, and drugs. We direct our energies toward activities that give us short-term pleasure without regard for whether they pay off to our future selves.
The other option is not simple rose-colored glasses that filter out the bad. That's just delusion and it doesn't empower us. No. The other choice is to go to work. Work doing what? The work is to gain an understanding and wisdom, and to see reality. Not as our egos wish it to be, but as it truly is. When we can do this, we gain freedom and power. We don't suffer from the ill effects of the four corruptions we talk about in the Eye of Power model, which are carelessness, consternation, confusion, and condemnation. There are other episodes on each of those four. For now, the message is we can break their hold and become more of what we are born to be.
The deaf effect is one of the guardians we must learn to defeat, and progress along the journey of becoming our fullest selves. It takes many forms. We know it's near when we work and have thoughts like, “This is tedious and boring. This is too much work. This doesn't pertain to me. This isn't my business. I am what I am. It's a waste of time to change that fact.” In other words, the deaf effect can be recognized by its tactic of shutting the door to the new, even the uncomfortable. It's the rejection of bad news and denial.
Deaf Effect: The deaf effect is one of the guardians we must learn to defeat in order to progress along the journey of becoming our fullest selves.
Keil and Robey’s information system project managers rejected bad news about the projects over which they held responsibility. Leaders commonly sweep the unpleasant under the rug. They tell themselves the underperformer isn't that bad. They look at last quarter's financials and think, “It's a phase. It will turn around.” They take comfort in that which they have always known to be true. We have always done it this way and it has worked so far. This gives our minds permission to discount news that would require us to take a more difficult and scary path into the unknown out of the cave and into the sunlight.
What is it that we can all call upon to help us defeat the deaf effect among other guardians of the gates of personal growth? The answer is one word, virtue. It's said that all virtue is built upon only two fundamental virtues. Can you guess what they are? Courage and honesty. They are so important. It's not much of an overstatement to say that with them, we can do anything. Without them, we are sentenced to a hellish existence. It seems to me that courage is number one because it takes courage to be honest, starting with ourselves.
Back to the mindset of the cave, of the narrator of my poem for a moment. The problem we all have is we are innately social creatures. We need other people. We are wired to love and care, and we need love and care from others. We also have that Jungian shadow. We don't want to think about it. We don't want it to be seen, but we can't hide it, not in the long run. We talked about projection.
Astute people can see our shadow by how we project negatively on others. We are loathed to acknowledge our shadow. It's dangerous. It can get us booted from the group. We hide the shadow, but we can never rid ourselves of it. We need courage to look at it, to give it the light of day because if we don't, we push it down. As we noted, it always pushes back. The deaf effect is only one of the tricks it uses when the shadow does so.
Courage is not the lack of fear. It's being afraid and doing what's right anyway. In this case, we look straight at the shadow and what we don't like about ourselves. We do the same with bad or unwelcome news. We look at it without the filter of denial but with the intention to understand. Honesty allows us to be open to what this says about us, about what we have or haven't done in the past, or what we will be required to do or not do in the future. It requires a stoic acceptance of what is, not of what we wish things to be. Our power is a function of our actions. Our action is how we manifest what we wish. This is the basic mechanism of how our power or our agency works.
Our power is a function of our actions. Our action is how we manifest what we wish.
Let's end this episode with some questions for your consideration. Hopefully, this lessens the deaf effect for you. What news have you received in the recent past that is unwelcome to you? Take a closer look at it. What are you so sure of that you can't possibly question? Question it anyway. Entertain the possibility that you are wrong in your initial evaluation, and that there might be information of vital importance there. If so, what might it be? What could you learn? If you were holding on to dogma, what is it? What would happen if you let it go? I will answer that one for you. You will be open to greater understanding. That is how we break the hold of the four corruptions, and we are on our way to more of our power. Screw you, deaf effect. Let's go.