By Michael J. Tittinger
“Hey, I just wanted to revisit something from last night,” began my buddy Matt’s message on my machine. “So do you think our boy is completely insane or what?”
The admission was music to my ears, even if a bit surprising. I hadn’t been sure if I was alone on this one or not. Maybe it was I that was paranoid and delusional, the very characteristics I so easily projected onto my friend by dismissing his thoughts and beliefs so readily. No matter that they smacked of conspiracy theories.
No doubt I thought I was alone in seeing what had become of “our boy,” as Matt called our former co-worker, whose name is being omitted for his own protection. There’s already a slew of people “out to get” him anyway, or so he thinks.
This was the topic for debate the previous night in a Montana-area apartment in Santa Monica, as we sat bandying about subjects such as secret wars, secret plots and life on the run from just about every governmental agency — all discussions repeatedly put forward by Pete, whose name has been changed to protect the paranoid, er, innocent.
Sitting in the darkened apartment with a mug of Guinness keeping cool my right hand, there was little excuse not to let Pete bend my ear. Yet I could not find it within myself to delve into a series of topics I found increasingly disturbing and increasingly less credible.
“What has happened to this guy?” I wondered as his diatribes on all things conspiratorial went in one ear and out the other. I knew Pete had fallen on hard times — losing his job, breaking up with his girlfriend and getting evicted from his apartment. I heard he had even been sleeping in his car off and on and assumed that setback after setback had rendered him somewhat delusional.
Or had they? Maybe it spoke more of my own insecurities that I wouldn’t even allow Pete to get started, wouldn’t allow him to try and counter my repeated stabs of cynicism. Of course, a big fat, “Why?” often is enough to shoot down such unsubstantiated theories.
Still, I didn’t even want to hear it. Not after Matt spent about 45 minutes poring through an underground spy magazine with Pete prior to settling into the living room with some brews.
On the other side of the coin, here’s Matt digging in deep with Pete, showing interest in the wild schemes and sensational plots that the latter is beginning to accept as reality. It was hard to tell whether or not Matt was buying into it, weighing the evidence, or just being polite. Of course, if he’s buying into this crap, he’s as zany as the next guy, I reasoned.
There I sat, alone with my cynical ways, while the two of them bonded over the absurd. Why was I the one drinking alone? Matt, if he felt like I did, to his credit never let on that he wasn’t with Pete 100 percent. So it came with some surprise when he left that message on my answering machine. While that allayed some fears about my own inability to listen to opposing viewpoints, no matter what field they spring out of, it soon gave way to a sense of disappointment on my part in that I didn’t give a friend the time of day when I disagreed with him.
I also wonder in hindsight whether Matt or I did our troubled pal the best service. Is it better to be up front from the get-go, squashing others’ beliefs without giving them the forum to develop them? Or is it better to pay lip service as Matt did, showing his friend that he is interested in what he has to say, even though he doesn’t necessarily agree with it? At the same time, he muffled his own feelings on the matter and Pete was none the wiser, though Pete knew exactly where I stood.
In retrospect, a measure of each would have been the best tact to take — showing interest as Matt did, but also voicing my dissenting opinion so Pete knew where I stood, as I did. As it stood, we sent Pete home thinking he made a connection with Matt, which he didn’t, and ran up against a brink wall in me, which, unfortunately, he did.
No, I don’t believe the next three wars are all pre-planned, the hole in the ozone layer is for alien surveillance or the moon landing was a staged television event but that’s not really the point.
The most convincing arguments involve a modicum of give-and-take, and listening to Pete, no matter how implausible, would have been the preferential precursor to voicing my own beliefs and driving the point home with Pete, not simply dismissing his views as gullible or irrational.
There is no substitute for an open heart and an open mind. Pete had to listen to some of the theories he has since adopted as his own, so it would follow that we need to do the same in our own efforts to affect change within others.
Sometimes it’s all too easy to forget that communication involves both sending and receiving, speaking and listening. (Mike Tittinger is a freelance writer living in Santa Monica.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 10, 2003. Read the original PDF.