Name: Subtle revelations on the nature of human communication
Item: Getting to Yes
Author: patricia

Getting to Yes →

by Roger Drummer Fisher, Bruce Patton, William Ury

Subtle revelations on the nature of human communication

patricia

Mar 12, 2025

I was struck by one particular passage when I read this book. In a chapter titled "Talking About Interests, Not Positions," under a section "Talking about interests," is the subheader "Look forward, not back." The text is reproduced below (emphasis mine):

Look forward, not back. It is surprising how often we simply react to what someone else has said or done. Two people will often fall into a pattern of discourse that resembles a negotiation, but really has no such purpose whatsoever. They disagree with each other over some issue, and the talk goes back and forth as though they were seeking agreement. In fact, the argument is being carried on as a ritual, or simply a pastime. Each is engaged in scoring points against the other or in gathering evidence to confirm views about the other that have long been held and are not about to be changed. Neither party is seeking agreement or is even trying to influence the other.

If you ask two people why they are arguing, the answer will typically identify a cause, not a purpose. Caught up in a quarrel, whether between husband and wife, between company and union, or between two businesses, people are more likely to respond to what the other side has said or done than to act in pursuit of their own long-term interests. "They can't treat me like that. If they think they're going to get away with that, they will have to think again. I'll show them."

The question "Why?" has two quite different meanings. One looks backward for a cause and treats our behavior as determined by prior events. The other looks forward for a purpose and treats our behavior as subject to our free will. We need not enter into a philosophical debate between free will and determinism in order to decide how to act. Either we have free will or it is determined that we behave as if we do. In either case, we make choices. We can choose to look back or to look forward.

"Two people will often fall into a pattern of discourse that resembles a negotiation, but really has no such purpose whatsoever. They disagree with each other over some issue, and the talk goes back and forth as though they were seeking agreement. In fact, the argument is being carried on as a ritual, or simply a pastime."

I liked how these sentences imagine a world in which no argument is ever brokered aside from the purpose of effective negotiation. It made me wonder what conversations were like in Roger Fisher's house, or what kinds of philosophical or ideological perspectives he has and how he shares them. He even links this concept of a pattern of discourse that is "argument as pastime" to the existence of free will: "Either we have free will or it is determined that we behave as if we do. In either case, we make choices." If determinism is real, do we make choices, Mr. Fisher? Or are choices made to us? Does the inarguable reality in which people argue or debate for the sake of pastime mean that free will does exist? Does he imagine a world in which no one would argue for pastime and is that world deterministic? This paragraph explicitly connects ritual argument to all forms of socialization of ideas: between a husband and wife, he says. A very intimate linguistic domain... and still a sphere for effective negotiation, not one for discourse for discourse's sake. I had to wonder!