Friday Forward - The Messenger (#540)

We've become so focused on who is speaking that we've stopped listening to them

One piece of advice has survived more than two thousand years: don’t kill the messenger.

This saying dates to ancient Greece, where envoys carrying unwelcome news often paid with their lives. Last month, a modern transformation of this played out at Yankee Stadium.

Jonathan Haidt, a longtime New York University professor, was selected to deliver NYU’s commencement address. It’s easy to see why. His latest book, The Anxious Generation, has spent two years on the bestseller list. It documents how smartphones and social media have rewired childhood and damaged a generation’s mental health, and it has sparked a movement that has led nearly two-thirds of U.S. states to restrict phone use in schools. It even inspired NYU’s own device-free campus initiative.

However, a group of students made it clear they didn’t want to hear from Haidt. Weeks before the ceremony, student government leaders demanded the university rescind the invitation, calling his selection “a regression.” In their letter demanding rescindment, student leaders made a number of accusations that cast Haidt’s viewpoints as far more inflammatory than they are and did not consider what Haidt was actually going to speak about at commencement.

When Haidt took the stage, some graduates booed and dozens walked out. But his actual speech was anything but polarizing.

Instead, Haidt gave the students a key piece of advice: treasure your attention. He argued that the largest companies in history are built to take our attention, not earn it, and that the most consequential decision we make each day is what we choose to think about. He shared the exercise he runs with his own students: kill the notifications, remove social media from your phone for a week, and notice how your life changes. He talked about what they could do and with whom they could spend that reclaimed attention, especially in the physical world with real people.

Why would this well-reasoned, influential message draw such anger from students?

Haidt has been critical of the monoculture of the modern university system and has repeatedly argued that shielding young people from discomfort leaves them more anxious and less capable, not more protected. In making that case, he has occasionally made statements that NYU students can reasonably disagree with, including on some controversial topics.

However, Haidt has also spoken about the damage technology addiction is doing to young people with as much clarity, logic, and empathy as anyone. He is not a provocateur seeking to belittle people for attention, and his message is completely appropriate and highly relevant for graduating students to hear.

But many people simply refused to hear it because they’d made up their minds on Haidt before he reached the podium.

The phrase “kill the messenger” was about punishing the messenger after the bad news arrived. Today, we take an even worse approach: we evaluate a message without even hearing it, based purely on our view of the messenger.

This is not to say a messenger’s credibility is irrelevant. Track records matter, and someone who has repeatedly misled you deserves extra scrutiny. But being skeptical of a messenger is rarely a good reason to refuse to listen entirely.

We should be able to examine a person’s statement on the merits without dismissing it based on our perception of the speaker. But because evaluating each message objectively is harder than sorting messengers into tribes and deciding if they’re worth listening to, so many people simply do the latter today.

Universities are built explicitly to serve ideas that challenge students; that is the product. And yet, here were graduates of one of the world’s leading universities, at their coronation, demanding not to hear a perspective they had preemptively decided to reject.

When we don’t listen, we don’t learn. Here’s a simple test for the next time you feel an instant guilty verdict forming before the case has been made: if someone you trusted said the exact same words, would you judge them differently? If the answer is yes, you’re grading the messenger, not the message.

The ancient advice still holds: don’t kill the messenger. But at least the ancient Greeks waited to hear the message before passing judgment.

Quote of the Week

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” – Flannery O’Connor

Have a great weekend!

-Bob

robertglazer.com

PS: The Compass Within is on sale this week on Amazon for just $3.77, so don’t miss you chance to pick up your copy (or buy it as a gift).