How can you tell truth from lie? How do you determine what is right from all of the conflicting information compounding in front of us? The ability to use discernment is invaluable and ever increasing in necessity these days. Discernment is the ability to judge well. It is a perceptive way of seeing things, particularly seeing through to the real meaning behind things that are hidden or obscure. This is a powerful gift that I would encourage everyone to practice and implement in their lives.
There are different ways to apply wise judgement. In order to be wise, we need to be informed, or at least, be aware of when we are not informed. Important and vital ways are to actively listen, to ask questions, and apply reason.
Active Listening
As I was learning my Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and later my FBI Crisis Negotiations training, a large part of negotiations skills and crisis skills is active listening. What is that, you may ask? It is listening with the intent to hear what the person is actually saying instead of listening with the intent to respond. It is understanding where a statement is coming from. If you ever listen to the news, or read a click bait, so often the journalist takes a statement out of context in order to incite an emotional response.
When you actively listen, you understand the context. In order to do this, we have to take the emotion out of it. When we react out of emotion, we hear what we want to hear instead of hearing what was actually said. Many people have this ability naturally, those “really good listener” people, but if you are anything like me you like to tell instead of hear. It takes work, but it is worth it in the end.
A few of the techniques are more for rapport building and de-escalating, such as mirroring (or reflecting)and “I” statements, but effective pause, emotional labeling, asking open ended questions, summarizing, minimal encouragers, and paraphrasing are good for understanding and to let the person know that you understand where they are coming from. You don’t have to utilize all of these techniques, but they are there for your tool bag.
The two biggest ones I use are emotional labeling and summarizing. If your friend calls you crying that her boyfriend cheated on her, to emotionally label (and it takes practice to get this right) would tell her “oh my gosh, you must feel really upset and betrayed right now.” Let’s her know that you see her. Summarizing what they tell you helps both of you to know that you understood what she told accurately. Like “wow, that’s crazy that he’s been with her for the last three months and using his buddy to cover it up!” That gives your friend a chance to agree with your summary or correct you, “no! It was 5 months!”
Active listening is not a sales pitch. It is a wonderful way to connect in your relationships with family and friends. It works on your kids, and helps with any misunderstandings with them and their motives. I have to remind myself to do this with my son when he keeps getting up from bed. Instead of yelling at him for being out of bed, I try to slow myself down and start asking questions as to WHY he is out of bed. Most of the time, he just wants to be up. Other times, though, he needs the bathroom or he doesn’t feel well.
Asking the right questions
As I was learning to interview witnesses, victims, and suspects, I learned how essential it was to ask the right questions. This skill does not come over night, it requires practice. I use this skill from asking my kids questions, but also when I read a news report. It is not just asking “what happened?”. I need to flesh out the whole picture. Most news stories don’t answer all the questions or they redirect your focus to something inconsequential but seemingly enraging.
What are the right questions? Well, you should know how someone came by their information. What is the source? Did they personally witness it? Did they hear it from someone, and if they did, who? What was that persons involvement in the incident? Even if it is a family member, is this family member known to lie or misunderstand? I have interviewed many people who believed their sibling or children would never lie to them…but lie they did. Especially because they want to save face with their family.
You don’t have to constantly ask someone questions, but when a news anchor or a politician makes a definitive statement, you may want to ask yourself how they know what they know. It’s a plague on our society that our journalists don’t ask the questions that need answered. Climate change, why can no one answer why there were mini-ice ages and mini-global warmings before humans had cars, so why did they happen and why are those different than now? There could be a reason, it simply has not been answered. Am I unreasonable for asking? Not in the least.
Using Reason
When you are presented with new information, or even old information, ask yourself if the information makes sense and why? A big problem with today is that we take news at face value. My friend told me Trump is a racist. The news said that ivermectin is horse de-wormer, and that it’s silly to treat covid with. The world is the hottest it’s been in recorded history! We should only eat vegan food or we should eat lots of meat! The border is secure. A tweet is a threat to our democracy.
Sensational claims are rarely accurate but clickbait is used for a reason. To question a narrative is the worst offense, but you will thank yourself that you asked and applied logic to an emotional outrage. It is not wrong to question. Only truth benefits from scrutiny. One of the tenants used to judge whether a police officers actions were proper is to compare it to what a “reasonable officer” would do. I know a lot of defund police litigators what to get rid of this standard, but it is a good tool for measuring an action.
If someone says hello to you, would it be reasonable to scream at them for violating your safe space? No. You can look at what the majority of people are doing, what you would normally do, see that it is not normal. I saw the stupid TikTok videos of women screaming at men who walk behind them in a parking lot or something. That is not normal. Most men are not going to attack you. If your paranoia is overly sensitive, you can miss actual danger cues.
How Do I Use Discernment in my Day to Day?
As I briefly mentioned above, we can use our discernment in our day-to-day. Not only when reading or watching the news, but also listening and speaking with family, friends, and co-workers. Even your kids! It’s called a “bullshit meter.” It can be used on everything from politics, to food safety, weight loss, to the spiritual and moral. It’s not just about your feelings. It’s about truth.
Everyone has a meter, but not everyone is as adept to remove the emotion when it touches something personal or something you feel strongly about. Just consider information about a female co-worker. You see how she acts around your other co-workers, but suddenly you see behavior changes, more flirty, around one particular male co-worker. You can use your meter when she tells you that she just sees that male co-worker as a friend and you say “yeah, right.”Take that unemotional meter and try to apply it other information.
There are verbal and non-verbal ways to ascertain truth. Non-verbal is a fascinating subject to study. Our bodies react to information in ways we can’t control. Stress will make us guard ourselves (arms and legs crossed, talking behind our hands), or when we are uncomfortable our feet will point towards the door. When we are interested we lean in or open ourselves up physically (arms open, leaning forward). Hash tag not all, but you see people’s body movement change in different situations and we humans naturally pick up on it, whether we recognize it or not. I enjoyed reading “What Every Body is Saying” by Joe Navarro if you are interested in learning more.
Verbal is also a fascinating study. The words people use when they are lying is fascinating because it is unnatural to lie. So we find ways to lie while lessening the stress caused to our bodies by lying. This is called Statement Analysis. Probably one of my favorite classes. Listen to how a politician answers (or does NOT answer) a question. They usually answer a question with the question they want to answer. When police are searching a car or looking for evidence, we would ask a person “do you have any guns in the car.” “No.” “Do you have any bombs in the car?” “No.” “Do you have drugs in the car?” “Not that I know of.” The change in answer. There were definitely no guns or bombs in the car, but there were drugs in the car at some point, or currently were. Just to give an example.
To use discernment, you need to ask yourself these questions:
Does that sound realistic?
Is it too simplistic?
Did they answer the question?
Does It Sound Realistic?
You have seen the ads “Doctor’s hate this one trick!” or have heard political commentators claim “they are a threat to our democracy!” For the first, why would a doctor hate that you use something to better yourself? They go into their field to help people and take an oath to do no harm. The second, there is rarely an explanation as to what the threat actually is. Extreme rhetoric gets the blood pumping. It gets the clicks.
Even the program on website host uses to give me a grade on each post encourages me to use stronger wording to bedazzle. When I hear that cops are systemically racist and are just waiting for a chance to murder a black man, I ask myself why black men feel so safe to protest and confront police, if, in fact, they are just waiting for a chance? Often it is self fulfilling prophecy.
Does It Sound Too Simple?
It is a rare thing for there to be a black and white explanation for something. Why, you hopefully ask? Because humans are involved. How quick are we to place blame on a person or situation when, in reality, it has nothing or very little to do with the actual problem? There is a reason why quick fixes are so popular, even though quick fixes simply don’t work effectively. But we like simple. We like the path of least resistance.
When a new easy diet pops up it is so tempting to try it because eating healthy and working out takes discipline and work that I would rather not have to do. Which is why I always look for the little disclaimers on the bottom of an ad that says “with diet and exercise.” Keeps me from buying those fat loss teas, and pills, and whatnot. Because i know reality is not that simple. Something being too good to be true is a good measure for everything. You could probably apply, being too bad to be true as well.
Did They Answer The Question?
This applies to politics as well as sales pitches. I HATE when you are watching a video that you can’t fast forward through and they keep saying “I’m going to tell you the secret, but first let me tell you…” I will then lose whatever interest I may have had, and go on with my life because I realize I don’t need it that bad. It is a sales pitch, to repeat the emotional twist to their product to hook you. But I find it annoying. Tell me once, cool, but stop saying the exact message ten different ways. It is insulting.
When it comes to politics, it is even more blatant. It is very rare for any candidate to actually answer a direct question. They will obfuscate, and redirect with attacks on their opponent.
Everything is going to get a lot more difficult. Deep fakes are able to make video, something that should be “proof,” just as able to be manipulated as audio and photographs have become. How can we trust what a politician said two years prior when someone can just change it? Even if there are recordings to the contrary, it has been proven that simply saying something on the news will make it a “fact”.
Even when they retract it, the initial report is always “fact” and reported as such. Look at debates where statements are thrown around as fact which had been debunked before, but they can still use it as a way to target their opponent. It’s disgusting. Fake news. So how do we fight back against it? We look at someone’s actions. Look at what they have said, and if they are a flip flopper. Kamal Harris is a flip flopper.
A big problem with social media is that people do not cite their sources. You will see a clip from a speech, but you don’t know what speech that came from to see the whole situation. Context is always key. News and politics love to take things out of context. They also like to edit.
Statement Analysis
During my tenure working patrol and investigations, I noticed a few quirks. First off, people say what they mean. This is one of the basic tenants of statement analysis, interviewing, and interrogation. Most people do not like to lie. It makes them nervous. It is also difficult to do well. Let me give you a couple of examples to show my point.
I responded to a murder where a man was shot in the middle of the road. When I arrived, within 1 minute of the call hitting the call screen as I was only a block away, he was laying in the middle of the road with a large group of people running around and screaming. I had not heard any gunshots. There had been an exchange of probably 50 rounds.
Again, I was a block away, I would have heard it had it just occurred. No suspect on scene. No guns on scene. The friends were screaming at me, telling me to help their obviously deceased friend (he had about 11 gunshot wounds to his head and torso). The friends were way over reacting to this situation. I have been in these types of situations before, and this screaming and sudden hostility I received from the “friends” is unusual as they were the ones to call us.
They started to accuse me and my fellow officers of taking 15 minutes to respond. Now, one might chalk this up to adrenaline distorting their time perception, as I did that night. But as the investigation unfolded, the increased hostility and the repeated line of “it took you 15 minutes to get here” didn’t fade as they should have calmed down. It did not. It turns out, the male that was shot was actually the suspect, and he attempted to murder a man in a car leaving his house party. The friends cleaned up the scene after shooting at the victims car. They waited 15 minutes to call the police. This is why I did not hear the shots. This is why they kept accusing me of taking 15 minutes to get there. Because it probably had been 15 minutes. We found the guns and video of the incident, fyi.
Now, this might seem like a one and done thing. However, I responded to another shooting a couple years later. This one, again, started out with them requesting medical and police, their adult nephew had “shot himself on accident”. He was still alive. I get there within a few minutes. Initially it’s ok, people are acting appropriately concerned for their family member. But as time went on, hostility grew. Because we were asking questions as to what happened. Suddenly, the family started to accuse us of taking forever to get there, 15 minutes, oddly enough. That accusation piqued my interest.
Turns out, the victim was shot by his own brother during an argument. The family took time to cover up the crime scene and waited to call the police. Which is why it seemed to them that it took forever. Because they had waited to call. I highly doubt they intended to give away that fact. But people don’t like to lie.
We Need Discernment
More and more we need to ask questions. We need to be aware of what is being sold to us as truth. One thing I had to remember, “Most people are good”. When I was dealing with about 30% of the population, and about 10% of that repeatedly, it can feel like EVERYONE is a criminal or a liar. But I had to remind myself that even in that 30%, most of that was people who were having a bad day and weren’t truly repeat violators, or bad people, just made a bad choice. So, the majority of the population does not have malice towards me. But on a separate note, I do not think that applies to people who will repeat things without checking. As a species, we certainly love to gossip.
Seek truth, love your neighbor, and give the benefit of the doubt.
Resources
”What Every Body is Saying” by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins
”Don’t Be Deceived” by Marc McClish
”The Gift of Fear” by Gavin De Becker
FBI tools for Active Listening