Dinner Table Dynamics: "Peeling the Onion"

Is the conflict in our lives based on fundamental value differences? Or, is most conflict we encounter a result of how opinions are expressed on the surface?  In this episode two Santa Fe College Ethics Bowl competitors Gillan Chalono, SF alumni currently at Amherst College and Noah Frazier, SF student discuss the importance of looking beyond stated opinions in conversation to peeling back the onion, revealing core values which may provide insight to common goals and beliefs. 

Sound clip:  Noah Frazier from 02:28 to 02:48

The Center for Applied Ethics & Humanities at Santa Fe College (SF) promotes the values of honesty, integrity, and civility, as well as individual, social, and global responsibility. It fosters appreciation for ethical reasoning and encourages and supports active engagement with ethics and humanities in our communities – in thought and action, (((In Word And Deed))). This podcast, a product of the center, features SF faculty, students and alumni engaging in dialogue around critical ethical issues. The first season, "Dinner Table Dynamics," features current and former members of SF’s nationally ranked Ethics Bowl team and fellows in the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership. They encourage listeners to practice civil discourse as they head home for the holidays, and into extended family discussions. Learn more at sfcollege.edu/ethics. Share your thoughts (and actions) with @santafecollege using #InWordAndDeed.

Transcript

Ann Thebaut  0:05   

Hello and welcome to In Word and Deed, a podcast produced by the Center for Applied Ethics and Humanities at Santa Fe College. I'm Ann Thebaut Professor of Philosophy here at SF and in a moment, you'll hear from some of my students who have participated in Ethics Bowl over the years and a few who are Fellows in the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership, which is committed to reducing polarization by teaching students to connect across political differences. This desire to connect is increasingly on our minds as we think about being around family over the holidays, and the prospect of sitting down to have discussions with people we don't always agree with. Today, Noah and Gillan explore the different layers of beliefs, values and identity that affect our interactions in our episode, peeling the onion. 

Gillan Chalono  0:57   

Alright, well, and now how you doing today? 

Noah Frazier 1:01   

What's up, Gillan, how are you? 

Gillan Chalono  1:03   

I'm good. I woke up pretty early in the morning and I got to test this mic out. I'm excited for our Convo. Looking forward to it. Yeah, for those who don't know, my name is Gillan fella. I'm a Santa Fe alum. I started going in I believe 2018. I graduated in 2021. I was a philosophy major. I got involved through Santa Fe essentially through Ethics Bowl, which is an intercollegiate competition for ethics nerds for both in the philosophy major and also another, another majors is all over the country. And yeah, so Noah and I were teammates. And now that I've graduated, I'm at Amhurst College, still very much liking my ethics ball, and still very liking everything ethics related. 

Noah Frazier 1:55   

Yeah, so just a little bit about myself. My name is Noah Fraser. I got involved with Ethics Bowl while I was in high school. I believe it was the principal of the high school dual enrollment program who came to my class and kind of introduced some of the topics and I just got really interested in really involved and the rest is history. I met Gillan and we've been friends ever since. 

Gillan Chalono  2:19   

Yeah, so the podcast that we said we got today it was called peeling the onion. Avoiding Avoidance. So, Noah what do you what do you think that means? What is peeling the onion? Avoiding avoidance means? 

Noah Frazier 2:32   

Yeah, so peeling the onion is basically a concept that allows you to break down the complexity. Of a person and you're able to understand that they're more than just their opinions. And the words that they say that can be coming from a deeper place, and they can have a deeper meaning. And being able to peel back those layers is a better way to understand people. Essentially. 

Gillan Chalono  3:00   

Yeah. Okay. So, I assume you mean so in a way. It's like when people tend to have opinions or when people act a certain type of way. We just tend to paint them all as that one thing. Yeah. So, in peeling the onion to you is like something. It's seeing people it's more than just one thing. It's like multi layers. Stuff like people's opinions or beliefs and values. 

Noah Frazier 3:20   

Right, definitely, exactly. We have the peeling the onion concept essentially breaks us down into three layers, the outer layer being our opinions. There's the middle layer being our behaviors and the core layer being our values, which can fluctuate and they can fluctuate and they can, they're all into interrelated essentially. 

Gillan Chalono  3:47   

So, Noah, what is avoidance means here. 

Noah Frazier 3:50   

So, what is to me generally means not wanting to participate or engage in the conversation or any interaction because you're afraid of what the outcome could be. So that's what awareness means to me. How about you? 

Gillan Chalono  4:08   

Noah, I definitely think about it this way as I was thinking about avoidance maybe in less intense ways. So, kind of just tuning out of the conversation, or, I guess tuning out of a particular situation, losing attention, losing interests also something else too. I want to think about avoidance. And, in particular, I think of I think, senses and like uncomfortable situations that we want to avoid. For example, there might be playing dodgeball back in middle school, and there was always that one kid with an incredibly strong arm and you were wanting to avoid his throws at all cost. It's kind of like that. You want to avoid those situations in which you know the situations you don't want to be in, like you said, that when it's fear, confrontation, whether they're painful, or whether it is generally kind of like uncomfortable, and you don't want everybody's attention on you. To me, that's what avoidance is, it's kind of the stimuli and you don't want it you don't want to deal with it and you don't want to touch it. And when it comes to conversation, I think this is really important because we want our conversations to go well. We don't want people to kind of opt out of them for multiple reasons. And no matter what that conversation may be, whether it's at a Thanksgiving dinner table between family, with the classroom between students or even conversation between strangers, right, we want people to feel included. And you know, and wanted in the spaces that they're in. So, this podcast is going to be on avoiding avoidance, right? We're going to try to make you figure out ways that we can create environments and create situations in which people don't want to disconnect. They don't want it to now or maybe there's not that confrontation or the fear of you know of a bad outcome happening when we have these conversations. 

Noah Frazier 5:44   

Right? Yeah. unpeeling the onion is a skill that we want to introduce. And it can be used as a tool to help people avoid that avoidance. So, Gillan, why do you think these two concepts are important? 

Gillan Chalono  5:58   

I think that any conversation, whether that be with family, or you know, a stranger or an acquaintance or friend, forgetting that other people have core values and beliefs and so on, can lead to deeper issues in the relationship between you and them, or a you in the group and whoever you're talking to. So, what I mean by that is sometimes there's things like power dynamics between two different groups of people, whether that be because of age, or racial or gender dynamics, even value system sometimes, and those power dynamics depending on who's talking can really affect who gets included and who gets excluded from the conversation. So. 

Noah Frazier 6:39   

Yeah, I definitely understand what you mean by that and these power dynamics that we're talking about. There's, there's a lot of different types, ageism, racial and gender dynamics, among other value systems, that could create this sort of effect and affect people differently. So yeah, 

Gillan Chalono  7:00   

yeah. So, for example, I was thinking of a time here on our campus, at Amhurst we had a recent, I guess, roofie incident, where now we're in the whole campus is worried about community safety, our policing system, the way that we can make our campus safer for all people regardless of gender. And we kind of have these like community circles that we have every once a week where we bring every, some students and we come together and we literally sit in a circle and we go on one by one talking about what we invest in safety looking like on campus and I remember one of the first ones I went to, they had kind of like an icebreaker right for to kind of get the conversation started and the icebreaker was, from quote, What is the favorite vacation spot that you've ever been to?"  

And the first one that ever came to my head was like, hey, the last vacation I went to was like, like 10 years ago, like, you know, but back when I was a kid, it's like not only there's a COVID time, but also some people don't have the time and don't have the money to go on vacation. And essentially what I'm trying to say by that is depending on the topic and the way that you approach it you automatically exclude some people from the conversation. So that question, what is your vacation spot you've been to assumes that you have money and time to go on vacation, a lot of people depending on your college situation. And depending on you know, your work and your lifestyle and the kind of responsibilities that you have to others kind of don't have that luxury to do that and in a lot of ways, I feel like a lot of our conversations can be like that. The way that we talk about things, the content of our topics. Also, just our general demeanor when we're approaching these conversations to kind of exclude some people, or I guess or even make some people feel hostile to the conversation topics. Depending on the way they approach. 

Noah Frazier 8:43   

Alright, yeah, I totally agree then that exclusion can really mean make the difference with somebody and they can really stick to them. I remember a time my son and my oldest siblings came down to visit and we were all sitting down at the dinner table. You know, discussing several politic political topics and gun control came up and the topic was generally left sided. But me personally myself when it comes to gun control, I have a little more conservative ideals and I can remember just wanting to avoid the conversation completely because I didn't want my family to look at me a certain way. You know. 

Gillan Chalono  9:28   

Yeah, I know, I know. It's like there's an especially on like those really polarized political issues. I think like gun control is definitely one of them, especially nowadays. There's a lot of judgment that comes with dispositions, and I can I can totally get how you are kind of like avoiding avoidance by trying, you know, trying not to abuse judge, do you think that you would have been more open to expressing your views if maybe your family peeled the onion? You know what I mean? Like they, they essentially looked at you and they're like, you know, this is Noah and Noah can have this opinion, but that doesn't really like, define Noah. I know, generally, they might do that. I think it's hard to do that in a conversation where you're really like, deeply emotionally involved in kinds of topics. What do you think? 

Noah Frazier 10:12   

Right, yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that one. I actually remember, I'm actually trying to enter the conversation and instead of them addressing my views, it kind of turned into a topic of why is Noah even thinking about this type of stuff at this age, you know, so yeah, definitely understand how that exclusion can really affect somebody. 

Gillan Chalono  10:34   

Yeah, that sounds to me like a key. Like you're just talking about kind of like these power dynamics, right. And like things like ageism. And one of the things that happens around the dinner table is parents to younger children, right. It's like there tends to be that and we know this has to be kind of like the condescending attitude. Sometimes, you know, either parents to children or children to parents, whatever it may be, or it's his older siblings and other siblings or other family members. And that's exactly one of the examples that we mean by power dynamics that can kind of forget, make us forget that people are onions, kind of paint them as one picture and make people avoid avoidance, you know, or make people avoid these conversations that we have so. Awesome. And then one thing you know, one thing that that makes me think of like the example he said is that if you think about it, if you're the only person in your family, that kind of has like these right leaning views, the fact that they're excluding you from that conversation kind of creates an echo chamber, doesn't it? 

Noah Frazier 11:30   

Right. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And that can be really damaging to the family dynamic. If you're not allowing those views and it can be it can become really toxic. 

Gillan Chalono  11:44   

Yeah, yeah, I think not just in the family dynamic too. Even things like in classrooms or conversations with your friends or strangers. It's like when there's only one type of view which is accepted within the conversation when maybe there's one type of voice dominating the conversation. It's, it does a disservice to everybody because we can't hear, you know, different viewpoints on the issues that we're talking about. Nobody can learn because we're always hearing the same thing all the time. Like for example, I have these old friends from middle school or high school and every time we get together, it's "Oh, do you remember the good old days where you sit there like paper balls back at Mr. Smith and we're in band class," like we always talk about the same topics every time that we see each other? And it's kind of like the same voices are always put on the pedestal and every time it's I feel you not you could record us the last five meetings that we had, we said the exact same things because there's kind of like this echo chamber that happens when other people who are in the group don't get to speak, you know, 

Noah Frazier 12:43   

Right. Yeah, I totally agree. I can give an example myself. I remember one time that Thanksgiving, the topic of Trump came up and it seems like every time that that topic is brought up, there's this picture painted around Trump's supporters, and it's usually a negative connotation attached to that idea. And attached to those people, without even knowing them at all. But I can say for myself that I do know some a lot of great people who are supporters of Trump, and I don't think that that has anything to do with their, their morality as a person. 

Gillan Chalono  13:26   

Yeah of course, I think I think there's a lot of different reasons that people have their political preferences or have views on political points. But yeah, it's I guess it goes back to like peeling the onion thing where just because people have one certain view or think about things in a certain way. We shouldn't paint them all in that color or paint them all within you know, that narrative of what we're talking about. So, I think I think we listed a lot of our examples, and we talked a lot about, you know, how some power dynamics depending whether it's politics, whether it's age, whether it's class, can kind of exclude people from conversations and make them avoid conversations. So, we want to talk maybe about how does this happen? What are some ways in which people dominate conversations more concretely? Or, you know, what do we think causes that? 

Noah Frazier 14:14   

Right? Yeah, so it ties back to this concept of peeling the onion, right. So, people's opinions on this the opinion layer being the most outer layer is usually affected by this second layer, the beliefs and this belief layer is usually affected by our values or our core values. Now somebody can share the same values with you but they can also have conflicting opinions. And this is this ties back to that the the importance of why we need to peel the onion before we start the conversation so that we can acknowledge these core values to try to get the conversation started on the right page. 

Gillan Chalono  14:57   

Yeah, I think, I think one way to do that really, really, really well is essentially asking value questions right before you start a conversation. So, things like you know, what about this topic inspires or motivates you or how do you apply? You know, what are your feelings towards this topic? Or you know, what is the fundamental issue that bothers you when we talk about things like gun control, or things like, you know, like policing for example, is it the safety of your community? Is it you know, you wanting to wellbeing for others, you know, whether that be children, whether that be people in public spaces. For example, one one issue that we find that this peeling the onion analogy falls through a lot is when we talk about policing in our communities. I think most people want safe communities, right? That's like the underlying value at the core of that issue. Most people want to be safe at home to be safe in their neighborhood to go to safe places in school, and so on and so forth. But we disagree on how to do it some. We disagree on how much policing is necessary. We disagree on, you know, how much money how much allocation and sometimes it seems like we're fighting about, you know, the value of policing when really, we all agree that we want safe communities, and we're on we're only arguing about the outermost layer, which is how to do it. 

Noah Frazier 16:19   

Right. Yeah. So, if you look at the police officer who, for example, can be using profiling to keep the community safe. If we peel back those outer layers, we will see that the core value of that officer is to keep the community safe, they value the safety of the community. But their opinion of using profiling to keep the community safe doesn't necessarily always align with that value. And this can be for many reasons. 

Gillan Chalono  16:45   

So, I think kind of the key to avoiding, you know, avoidance, we're essentially trying not to exclude people from conversations or trying not to create conversations with start excluding themselves. It's kind of understanding what layer you're disagreeing on. I like to believe that most people don't disagree on the core layer fundamental values. Most people want safe communities. Most people care about others. Most people want good outcomes to happen. But we tend to argue about the other layers but sometimes when we think we're arguing about the core layer, we can get very emotionally charged. Very you know, we can that conversation can become very polarizing instantly. So, Noah, like I mentioned with the police officer, you brought up yeah, if that conversation would go so well. If we If before, you know we did the whole peeling the onion analogy, and we figured out what the core value is that we agree on, and then we might disagree on how we do it. Right. 

Noah Frazier 17:36   

Right. Yeah, and I agree with that point. It's also important to peel back the layers within ourselves because sometimes we can feel like, like somebody is attacking our opinions. We may feel like they're attacking our values. So, it's important that we not get those things mixed up. 

Gillan Chalono  17:53   

Yeah, I feel like I feel like Facebook should have this and it's like it's community guidelines. It really helped a lot of the online comment sections. So, when I think about this, are analogy is great. I think I think the points that that we're getting have some deep meaning but it's kind of hard to apply them in the conversation. It's hard to in the middle of a conversation and Thanksgiving when things are getting really politically heated you know, and your aunt comes out with you know, the point he always comes up with it's kind of hard to, to, to use these skills in a way that that can actually help you make conversations less toxic or make kind of like these power dynamics a little bit less intense. So essentially, I guess Noah and I wanted to offer you all some skills on how to do that. 

Noah Frazier 18:37   

Yeah, so what would be the first and most important skill that you think is necessary for people to handle that confrontation? 

Gillan Chalono  18:45   

Yeah, one thing I like to do and I learned this, here at Amhurst through restorative practices. It's this practice they have called the talking pieces and sudden conversation agreements. So, I'm gonna go backwards. I'm gonna do compensation agreements for so certain compensation agreements essentially, is before you start a conversation, whether that be sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner table, or you know, having a gathering with your friends, or whatever it might be. You might want to set some rules and agree to the rules together of how you want that conversation to go. And one way that allows everybody to kind of have like a democratic decision making process on how they would like to talk about these polarizing topics, but it also makes everybody feel respected and equal at the table because everybody has a voice and how the conversation will go from there on and you know, if the conversation kind of strays off, you can always point back to the rule and be like, hey, then we just agree not to you know, cuss like each other at the dinner table, talking about politics that you should probably not, you know, go ahead and do that. And that can give people a good kind of guideline and, I guess, constitution to go by. And just one thing, there's this one rule called the talking piece, which I really, really enjoy. This comes from indigenous practices. Essentially. One rule that I like to have in my conversations is to have like an actual physical item like like a physical it could be like, it's like a poem or, I don't know, like your phone or something like that. And that's the talking piece. So, whoever has that piece is the only person allowed to talk and everybody's attention to be given to that person. So as the conversation goes on, you can you know, ask for the piece or raise your hand for it and you pass the piece around. I think that makes sure that these power dynamics is ageism, gender, or race or so on. That really is like a physical and really practical tool to kind of mitigate some of these influences that make us kind of tune out you know, 

Noah Frazier 20:38   

Alright, yeah, definitely agree those sound like some really good skills that can be used in any situation and they're, as he said, really practical and really easy to apply in a situation. Um, so another skill that me and John when I want to offer to you guys is making space and taking space. And just to talk about making space by this we mean, being able to analyze a conversation and recognize when too much space is being taken by either yourself or someone else. And being able to offer that space up and give an equal talking floor to everybody who's involved in the conversation. 

Gillan Chalono  21:18   

So, I definitely I struggle with this a lot. I like to talk, I got a loud voice. I do I can I can I can come across kind of confrontational and even sometimes so. One thing that has worked for me, learning to make space has been the Duck, Duck, Go rule, which is, which is exactly as simple as it sounds. Essentially. If you're speaking, you let two ducks go, and then you can go so if I say something, if I'm in a conversation, and I just gave a contribution, then I'm going to let two other people speak. So, duck duck, and then I'm going to go again. So that I think that that rule kind of makes sure that there's multiple people who are able to put their voices on and also depending on the number of people in the conversation, for example, if I'm in a classroom with 25 people, I'll probably do like a duck, duck, duck, duck, go roll, right I'm gonna let more people go than just two people from there. So, it's kind of being sensitive also to the context that you're in. But I think you'd understand the general the gist of that. 

Noah Frazier 22:16   

Yeah, definitely. That's a really great concept I introduced. I feel like the duck overall, really gives other people a chance to be involved, and it's a great way to be able to time your own voice in the conversation. So how, how would you encourage people to take space if you feel like there's just no other option for somebody to enter a conversation that somebody who's hogging the floor? How would you encourage people, listeners to take that space? 

Gillan Chalono  22:49   

Man, this one's hard for me because I often feel especially in academic settings, I think more so than in personal or family or you know, or in settings or family. I feel I feel very comfortable taking space and I guess taking you know, my intellectual room up so to speak. But I guess then when it comes to taking space, like putting yourself out there. I think there's kind of this. It's kind of it's like a muscle right and needs to be trained. You need to even if it's weak at first even if it feels uncomfortable, you need to keep practicing and keep trying to take up your space and eventually, I think I think it does get easier. Like for example, I one thing I used to be really afraid to do back in back in when I was in, I guess even in elementary school was raising my hand, knowing that the entire class was going to turn around and look at me and listen to what I had to say. And then you know, after I got used to raising my hand, then and then I said something, I would immediately be so embarrassed or whatever I had just said I was so self-critical. Just looking inward. So intensely and I think that again, it was like the second wave of profit. Right now. It's like now it's not about raising your hand. But it's about practicing to be less self-critical about what you say. And I think if you keep, keep practicing and keep these things in mind, I guess keep a good attitude doing it and leaving your ego at the door. I think with practice and time I'll go forward and then that's not as satisfying and as like easy as a skill as the other ones that we've put. But that's, that's kind of my take on it. What about you Noah? 

Noah Frazier  24:29   

Alright, yeah, definitely relate to that one in the academic setting. For me, my it was almost became a fear, a fear of being wrong. In the sense when it came to raising my hand. I always feared that. You know, if I raised my hand and I got the answer wrong, then my classmates would look down on me or for whatever reason I was being, as you said, self-critical but you know, it's important to leave your ego at the door in those situations. And you just have to be prepared to be wrong, be prepared to be embarrassed, you know, and it's, it's really rewarding once you train that muscle, and you're able to take that space with confidence. 

Gillan Chalono  25:12   

Yeah, I think the thing you said about leaving your ego at the door really, really strikes me because we're we tend to be so self-critical about the things that we do and the things that we say and also critical others and their contributions to conversation or their contributions to whatever projects that you might be working on. I think really at the core of our, you know, peeling the onion and avoiding avoidance thing is this idea of respect, right, respecting ourselves, respecting the other people in the conversation and wanting to include everybody in ways that make them feel whole and like they belong there. And I think leaving our egos both for ourselves and, and the judgment of others is one way to kind of strike out the core of the onion, so to speak, you know, as the fact that the core of the issue. And yeah, and if there's anything that we should take from the take from this conversation, I think it should be that, 

Noah Frazier  26:06   

Right. Yeah, totally agree with that, you know, these skills and these concepts that we introduced, they really tied back to that idea of respect. And we really want to emphasize that because that feeling of being respected and acknowledged in the conversation can really make a difference to somebody in that environment. 

Gillan Chalono  26:26   

Well, thanks for having me on. Noah. All right. 

Thank you for joining me.