A Mason's Work

So in the next couple of episodes, I want to talk about some conversational behaviors and

rhetorical techniques that folks use perhaps in a negative way and you might find yourself

struggling to deal with them as I often have.

People will interact with you using some of these techniques. You'll find that progress gets

stymied, the conversation gets uncomfortable and muddied and overall the people that are applying

these techniques in many ways are not actively doing so intentionally. They are beings sort of

puppeted by some underlying emotions and behaviors. So without judgment, we're going to talk about

these things and what they look like so that you can recognize them either in yourself or in

the people around you so you can sort of manage them as understanding what the technique is and how

it works and why it works. So today, I want to talk about one of the more insidious techniques in my

opinion for rhetorical sort of conversations. So when you're having a conversation with somebody,

people will do this and they will very, very quickly overwhelm you emotionally if you're not

careful. So this technique is called weaponized ignorance. And so weaponized ignorance, what it does

is it eliminates any education or any specialized knowledge from the conversation and what people

will do is say, well, I don't know anything about that or I wasn't here for the history of this or

I don't know how this happened and then you'll hear the kind of pause that comes in and then you'll get

butt and then they'll go on with whatever their opinion is. So what that does is it eliminates

any one having specialized knowledge, personalized history, direct involvement or engagement.

It's used as a technique to either cement the status quo or try and kind of bully the conversation

into the outcomes that the person using this technique wants. It is to be clear, it is an abusive

technique. It flattens the conversation and it eliminates the potential for diversity of experience,

thought, education, any of those things. It is an intention seeking technique. We use this technique

when we apply it to essentially get access to a conversation and say, look at me, I'm important

even though I don't know the things you know. You'll often use this for moral leverage as well by

reducing the sort of cognitive load of the conversation. You will essentially try and appeal to a

moral principle which dictates a different outcome than a rational sort of inquiry would do.

And the other things that happen with this as well and probably one of the more important parts

is by effectively someone claiming ignorance or weaponizing their ignorance in a conversation,

they are trying to get their way out of the accountability part of the conversation

by sort of going along with the expert or by surrendering visibly into the conversation,

they are essentially saying, well, you know, I just did what the experts were telling me to do

or I just did what the person who knew more than me was telling me to do. So therefore,

the outcomes are not my fault nor are they my responsibility.

Part of the reason this is so super insidious is because the weaponized ignorance as a

conversational sort of element masquerades as legitimate vulnerability. It comes across as I don't

know which is a vulnerable statement when you say I don't know you are kind of throwing yourself

onto the mercy of the conversation, right? When you say I don't know, it appears to be a vulnerability

and what that does is it pulls you in emotionally. So you either spend a lot of emotional

labor trying to do the education piece which is irrelevant anyway because the education that you

might provide in the conversation is going to be completely ignored in service to, you know,

escape from the outcomes, that kind of thing. When you look at this as a technique, again,

it's super insidious and invites a lot of emotional investment and probably in a way that is

counterproductive or difficult to process. So you'll find yourself kind of perpetually

struggling in a conversation like this to have this sort of cognitive breathing room and the

oxygen required to move the conversation forward. The best thing to do if you find yourself in a

conversation like this, if it's possible, just don't engage, right? So don't bite on the bait.

I don't know anything about this or don't bite on the bait of trying to expose the entire,

you know, personal history because again, there's nothing sufficient. There will be no

sufficiency to essentially counter the subsequent, well, I still wasn't here so I still don't know.

The thing about weaponized ignorance as a technique is that hole can never be filled.

There was no way for you to essentially take someone out of the weaponized ignorant state

because it's not really a state. It's a technique, right? So as you see this, if you find yourself

saying it like, well, I was, you know, I don't know anything about this, but stop what you're doing.

Think about what's going on in your own mind. Think about what you might be protecting or trying to

trying to shy away from and figure out how you might proceed in a way that allows people to

bring their expertise to the table for the benefit of everyone in the room.

As you go through this, as you go through this discovery process, take your time because this

is all raw territory. It's very easy to spot weaponized ignorance when you get an eye for it,

but it's still insidious in its sort of how you're going to get it to stop. So with that, go

forth and try to defend yourself from the slings and arrows of other people's sort of projection.

And I wish you luck. If you have experience with this, you've successfully solved the problem in

the past or you're good at how to deal with this, let us know. I'll be happy to either have you

come on the show and do a guest spot or take some of your work and help you write an article and

put it out on the website. You can reach me at Brian at aimasinswork.com.