Delphic Maxim 82: Restrain the tongue

I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.

82. Restrain the tongue

Many years ago I worked in the office of a member of parliament. My mind is probably going back to that era because there’s an election around the corner and it’s always an exciting time when an election is on (especially when it looks like the political winds have changed).

Anyway, the thing about working in an MP’s office is that you receive a lot of correspondence from people. And politics being what it is, it’s very rare that people are emailing or writing to say that they’re perfectly happy with the job that’s being done. It does happen from time to time, but mostly you are dealing with problems, policy suggestions, and angry complaints. The last category is the one that I’m thinking of right now.

Because politics is something that we get involved in because we care about the world, it’s often very easy to take criticism personally. This is especially the case when the language is…less than polite. And when someone is mounting an argument against policies that you believe in, the instinct is to reply quickly, snappily, and in a voice that you think is ‘clever’. Mistake.

A colleague of mine gave me a great piece of advice, and I’ve never forgotten it in all the jobs I’ve had since. She said “don’t reply to that email today. Leave it till tomorrow — the issue won’t go away, it won’t get worse, and if you reply right now they will see it as the chance to have an argument. Let the heat die down a bit.”

She was completely right. It’s a lesson that really ought to translate to our relationships on social media, and the physical world more broadly. Generally it’s fairly easy for us to bite our tongues when we’re talking to people because the social conventions of manners are much stronger in face-to-face interactions. But the digital world does something to the way we relate to each other: it makes us nastier, quicker to react, and a little shallower in our responses.

Restraining the tongue means that we take the time to think before we respond — which means that we need to give ourselves time to process and understand, to turn ideas over in our head, to be critical both of our own thinking as well as someone we’re dealing with. When we reply instantly on social media, we’re often giving a heated, half-baked response. I know this because I fall into this trap all the time.

One way I try to avoid this is by not engaging with political views I disagree with. I don’t think this is particularly healthy for civic discourse though: we live in a democracy and it’s a good thing if we argue about ideas. It’s just that social media — with its instant notifications, its insistent red bubbles, its audience and reacts — encourages us to respond quickly. That is most definitely not helpful for civic discourse, because public policy is complex and deserves complex thought.

When I return essays to students, I tell them to read over the comments I’ve left for at least 24 hours. If they find after that time that they want clarification of their marks, they can email me after that time — it takes the heat out, and forces them to reflect.

I once had a student who broke this 24 hour rule. I had a gigantic email within 15 minutes of their mark and paper being released. So I followed my rule, I waited for the next morning, ignored the email (especially because I was fuming), and then calmly replied with the detail they had asked for. I received a rebuttal within 30 minutes again — not a helpful way to have a discussion, because nobody seemed to be reflecting and critiquing, but rather looking to win.

Learning isn’t about winning, it’s about paying attention to the world around us. It’s about listening to people — even if we disagree with them. The best way to convince others is to understand ourselves what their argument is, and we can’t do that if we aren’t taking the time to think before we reply. Instead, we fall back on lazy arguments, and ideology, and ‘just because’.

I love this maxim as a lesson for doing politics in the age of social media, in the era of the hot take, and in the heated and partisan world of fake news. Slow down, hold your tongue, listen first, and then plan your way forward.

And maybe leave that reply until tomorrow.