Safe Spaces for Reason

There’s one kind of safe space I believe in: safe spaces for reason. If you’re in fight-flight-freeze mode, you’re no longer capable of reason. You’re on a kind of autopilot. You’re reactive. Older reptilian parts of your brain are running the show.

Demagogues, tyrants, and cult leaders keep their followers perpetually freaked out precisely because we’re incredibly easy to manipulate when we’re in that reactive, fight-flight-freeze frame of mind.

If you want to have a reasonable conversation with someone about something, don’t do or say anything that’s likely to put them into fight-flight-freeze mode. If you notice yourself sliding into it, stop talking until you’re out of it.

Thinking that a better version of the same argument will get through to someone who is momentarily blinded by fear or rage is like thinking that a louder version of the same question will get through to someone who doesn’t speak English.

If you can see that your interlocutor is in fight-flight-freeze mode, don’t try to have an intelligent conversation with them. It’s futile. They’re not listening. Indeed, they literally cannot listen. Not now. Not until they’ve calmed down.