I "Felt" Attacked

When you follow American politics, it's easy to realize that there is a lot of confusion about the verb "to feel." It is versatile in the English language with an etymological history that connects its meaning to physical sensations, emotions, and perception in middle and old English. According to the Wikipedia dictionary page, "feeling" can mean:

1. To use the sense of touch
2. To be or become aware of something
3. To experience the consequences of something 
4. To seem (through touch or otherwise)
5. To understand (slang)
6. Or, to think or believe

It's this last definition that interests me most. It seems that more often than describing an emotion, an experience, or understanding, American politicians are in the habit of using "to feel" instead of "to intuit." The verb intuit is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as, "to know or understand (something) because of what you feel or sense rather than because of evidence." It is this definition that makes it an unusable verb in political conversations.

American culture is steeped in reductionist thinking where every argument must be explained, it is something that has been normalized as a part of an effective rhetoric. It seems however, that there exists a semantic loop-hole if you will, that lets one intuit under the premise of describing a subjective experience (presumably such an intimate experience that it cannot be explained). When deconstructing the semantic units "feel like" and "feel that" in context, it becomes evident that this phrase very often conceals a wealth of information.  When used effectively, the phrase shrouds the speaker from the responsibility of having to explain themselves.

A couple of weeks ago I watched an episode of The Daily Show with John Stewart where Stewart criticizes the lawmakers of Arizona, United States for voting for a bill that was designed to give legal protection to people who refuse to do business with people based on their own religious beliefs about their potential customers (supposed) sexual orientation. When you get to minute 4:30 in the video linked above, John Stewart shows his audience a montage of clips of Fox News commentary warning their viewers that their religious faith is "under attack."

However, if you listen closely you will notice that the news anchor doesn't say that people think they are under attack, she says people feel that they are under attack. Just like that, by replacing the word think with the word "feel" the person expressing themselves is excused from justifying why they sensed they were attacked. However, when a nation for example, claims they were attacked, the public demands concrete evidence. It would be laughable for a country to claim they were attacked because they "felt like" it. Why then, do we excuse one another when we make illogical claims?

There's a great book called the Tao of Conversation by Michael Kahn that explains this phenomenon. On page 73 Kahn describes how people often use the phrases "I felt like..." and "I felt that..." as a way to express their reasoning for their actions. The problem with this however, is that adding the words "like" or "that" after "I feel" turns the statement from the description of a feeling to what basically amounts to an intellectual cop-out. Feeling statements, Kahn says, are "I feel scared, worried, sad, etc." Feeling statements describe emotions (see this picture to see the breakdown of "basic" emotions). Therefore, if one is trying to express an emotion, the word that follows "I feel" should always be an emotion word.

What happens when one is allowed to pass a statement that includes the phrase "I felt like I was attacked" is that the person is excused from explaining why she thought she was attacked. I'm not sure if this linguistic sleight-of-hand is unique to the English language, but there are many times when this phrase is translated into another language the mystique of the abstraction is lost. "I feel like" becomes "I think" or "I intuit" and suddenly the phrase must be justified. The other person can then ask: 'What makes you think that?' Or what leads you to this 'intuition?' When imagined in this way, there is no secret  magical, emotional experience that can't be described- the phrase is once again clear and the conversation proceeds rationally.

In the clip montage referenced to above, the politicians interviewed could have say, "I was attacked," or "I think I was attacked," or "my intuition is leading me to believe I am being attacked." All of these other methods of expression open up a space for further questions or elaboration. However, when one states a thought or sensation as feeling rather than an experience, it closes the dialog and there is nothing further that can be inquired of the person- no further reasoning is possible. This lends the speaker a kind of unquestioned "Truthiness" to their statement, although no justification is required.

For the record, I am by no means a proponent of reductionism, nor do I have anything against intuition. In fact, I do much of my preliminary thinking through the use of intuition and it's often when I get my best ideas.  My argument is that it's good practice to be aware when one is employing this mystifying tactic, and to call them on it. Ask them to justify themselves, to think through what they are experiencing.

I think this is an important deconstructive tool especially in media studies when political actions are often described with this phrase. By requiring those from whom we request vital information to use more clear speech patterns, we can facilitate more reasonable conversations and ultimately more understanding. It's often hard to cut to the point and admit one is actually scared, angry, worried, etc., but when we do, it encourages meaningful reflections and promotes taking responsibility for ones own actions.

Radical Honesty and Imagined Space

(Photo via Ads of the World)

Is honesty always the best policy? Or better stated, how can the truth be used to gain power over someone? I read an article in Esquire Magazine a few months ago that sparked a conversation with a group of friends that made us wonder if and when honesty is ever inappropriate. The article, titled "I Think You're Fat," features the story of one of the company's young, male writers as he narrates his arrogant and often disturbing account of his experiment with "Radical Honesty."

I understood a lot of what the author A.J. Jacobs writes about the problems of actually implementing radical honesty because I too have experimented with the practice. If lying were a drug, you could say I've been sober for just over a year. It's not that I was a compulsive liar, or that I lied all the time. When I did lie, I was holding back crucial information, or I would purposely not tell the whole truth.  I usually did this in relationships to avoid answering questions I knew would lead to hard conversations or arguments.

Last year however, something changed. I told a whopper of a lie (or rather a whopper of holding back the truth) and I almost lost someone I love very much. Ever since, I've committed to a personal standard of radical honesty and checking in with my deeper feelings about what I wanted to conceal.

(Photo via Why Vegan Guide)


It wasn't easy, and I failed a more than a few times. I always admitted the lie after and talked about why I was scared to confront whatever situation I had to deal with. Every time was about trust. I was scared that the other person would misunderstand me and/or react in a way that I would not be able to handle. It was about fear of not feeling strong enough to be capable of handling the implications of the truth.

Funny enough, it turns out that I can handle the truth. Like a muscle, it gets stronger with practice. Over the journey of this past year, I had times when I realized that it wasn't appropriate to "just" tell the truth. Sometimes I knew it was going to hurt the other person, a lot. In these situations, that old fear would come back and I'd try to find excuses to not tell the truth. I followed the guidelines I had set out for myself at these times and realized that my fear then was justified, the other person will be hurt by what I was about to do. So I asked myself, what then should I do?

I had a friend a few years ago who lived down the street from me. We would meet at either her house or mine a few days a week and talk about all of our worries and concerns in our lives. We'd talk about our guilt, anger, frustration, and our humiliating secrets. Obviously, this isn't the kind of thing one would usually do in public or with someone they've just met. There's certain parameters we would establish in order to facilitate the truth session. We'd light some candles, put on a pot of tea, put on some nice incense and music, sit on the floor and smoke cigarettes. In effect, we created a space for it and gave it what Walter Benjamin might call the sacred "aura" of a ritual.

We called it a "Blah Session." She'd call me up and say, "Can we Blah? I need to Blah." Sometimes a Blah would go terribly wrong. The situation or timing parameters wouldn't be adhered to and it set into motion a challenging and painful (un)reception of the Blah. Like playing football with cold muscles, it hurts to enter into Blah space when you're not ready. When we recognized that it was a failure of ritual and setting, we began to coin a term for it- we called it a "Non-consensual Blah."

The Non-consensual Blah feels like being violated. Imagine, someone coming up to you at an inappropriate time (maybe while you're at work), in an inappropriate space (maybe the bathroom) and telling you something deeply personal when you are not expecting it. Now imagine, someone you know first asks you if they can talk with you, then together you go to a park bench where they proceed to tell you deeply personal.

(Photo via NY Mag)


In the first instance, your personal boundaries feel violated. It's usual to become angry, as if the other personal has taken something from you, or as if they have soiled you by dumping their problems on you (perhaps that phrase reveals the physical sensation of the feeling?). So in the article, I can understand when the author feels guilty for being so brutally honest. His performance of being honest has no connection with social behavior. By dropping truth bombs on his unsuspecting recipients, he places himself in a position of power over them. His recipients didn't give consent to the kind of intimacy required to listen to him, and he therefore proceeded to violate what I would consider their social boundaries.

In the case of Jacobs, he said he felt creepy after he told the young woman he employs to watch his children that she's "stunning" he would ask her out on a date if he wasn't together with his wife. Feeling creepy is a side effect of blatantly using the power of his truth to put his nanny in a position of inferiority. Because he didn't ask if he can tell her something, he didn't afford her the agency to agree or disagree to subject herself to his advances. By asking her he would be arranging a sort of social contract that would allow them to equally hold the power in the intimate space he was creating.

The imagined space of intimate conversations exists on a real level, and practicing radical honesty can take you to that space before you and your audience is ready to handle it. Consent for discussing an intimate topic is just as important as consent in any other intimate activity. Because the truth can be so powerful, it's important to recognize how you use it. When one is careful to create structures of equal power relationships when practicing radical honesty, it becomes a tool for creating the kind of transformative space where a trusted friends can help each other take heavy truths off each other's backs.