2017 has had a rough start. Thankfully, 2016 did not end up taking Betty White, but we did receive a few more stressors than we would all like. Whether you’re one of the legal residents who was banned from coming back home for a few days or Betsy DeVos whose confirmation landed as one of the biggest historic moments in the transition to a new administration, or a college student with undocumented legal status in the height of changing immigration status quos, it is amazing we all haven’t lost our minds, although some may have crossed that brink.

Why is it that we feel all these stressors? Take a microscope at our news, whether in paper or electronic form, and it constantly seems as though we have a constant clash of cultures. For someone who has both Fox News and CNN sending notifications as the “news” happens, it seems as though the little bubbles of text that populate on my iPhone are attempting to feed a narrative that I, in theory, want to be told through my day.

Let’s take the example of President Trump’s (or, #45, if you feel a certain way) executive orders. CNN paints a completely different picture than the one Fox gives me. Syndicated talk shows hosts can take this narrative and go on the different channels of communication. Being able to entertain both narratives from an objective standpoint is called, cognitive complexity, and now, more than ever, do we need to help develop a habit of using this.

Human communication scholar Julia T. Wood, author of multiple human communication theory textbooks and research articles treats this concept as the ability to see events, people, ideas, and narratives from different perspectives and entertain them just as we would our own narratives. People who tend to be more complex, for example, are able to ponder new information, or perspectives, and counter them with their own prior experience or values, and be able to make an evaluation and use the new information to understand the other perspective. As you can guess, some people possess this psychological trait, while others are attempting to develop it.

Now, what about all those nouns listed in the title? How to they even relate to this whole idea of being cognitively complex? Well, we give rhetors a stage to give their thoughts, and we tend to listen to a narrative that WE want to listen to. To pick a random example, let’s take someone who lies more conservative on the spectrum, and prefers more conservative narratives and of the news and a subsequent interpretation of the events.

One of the most outspoken conservative pundits in the journalism world is Tomi Lahren, whose comments are often subject to liberal critique. Lahren uses certain rhetoric (not necessarily unique to her) to describe those on the liberal spectrum that tends to include the word “snowflake” a few times. When describing those of different beliefs, the words, “the left”, or, a more direct hit, “liberal”. According to Oxford Dictionary’s running blog, conservatives have claimed the word, “liberal” within their culture as a negative political insult.

Language like this is divisive, and no one political movement or affiliation is immune from blame here. Both sides feed their audience narratives that place derogatory intra-cultural labels on the other side. Here is where it becomes a problem; those with little cognitive complexity are sitting with these narratives, and not even giving the “other side” a chance!

This rhetoric by the media is the very thing that divides us even further than the original actions of the perpetrator. The cognitive complexity here gives the other side a chance at trying to make itself heard, lest they fall upon deaf ears, as is most often the case.

There is an article circulating my complex friends’ Facebooks lately, by Sean Blanda, and the synopsis of the article (which REALLY is worth your time reading, can be found here), really states that there is an inherent need to listen to the other side and move outside our preferred narrative. It is within ideological diversity that we learn the most, and not from homogeneity, or “sameness of type,” in this case.

The article, while not explicitly stating this theoretical term, is pushing us all to at least listen, at some point and gain another perspective. Whereas a conservative may only have Tomi Lahren, and FOX in their feed, a liberal has CNN, Bill Maher, too, and the list goes on for both. Diversifying the communication channels to “listen” to (either aurally or visually) is a great step for building your complexity muscles.

Critics of this piece will probably write their comments on my Facebook about that we ought not to compromise beliefs, and being set in our own relieves us of having to even ponder giving the other side our ear, or we may appear weak.

There is a large difference of hearing the person the person out, humoring them by talking, not arguing with them, than to compromise your values because you entertained the “wrong idea”, in this case. Hear your neighbors, coworkers, church body, club members, and significant other out. The divide in this country can only be fixed if we listen as much as we speak.

External links: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/11/political-insults/

https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063#.v7z515stg

The concept of cognitive complexity: Julia T. Wood, Ph.D., human communication scholar.