The Believing Game

For many years, a while back, I was a teacher of writing. One of my favorite thinkers at that time was Peter Elbow, who wrote about the value of playing the believing game while reading and evaluating student writing.

The believing game, Elbow claims, is the necessary complement to

the doubting game,

which seems to dominate in most intellectual endeavors. You’ll recognize the doubting game: the act of finding flaws, of disproving, of disagreeing, of correcting, of winning the debate.

You’ll probably not recognize the believing game, which is the act of “dwelling” in ideas that feel alien. The point of dwelling in alien, even repellant, ideas is not to work our way towards wholesale acceptance of them. Not at all. It is to examine the ideas for useful information or perspectives that, due to our own inherent intellectual blindness and biases, we wouldn’t otherwise generate or encounter.

Dwelling in the alien gives us a chance to understand it.

Not to love it. Not to agree with it. But to understand and even benefit from it.

This is a fruitful stance to take toward student writing. It is also a fruitful stance to take toward people.

Consider Elbow’s description of a believing game approach to disagreement, or conflict:

[S]uppose…you are trying to persuade people who disagree with you. You will probably use the doubting game to show flaws in their arguments. Fair enough. But often (surprise!) they don’t change their mind. You haven’t disproved their position, only their supporting arguments. They won’t change their position unless you can get them to see the issue the way you see it. For that, you need the believing game. Of course you can’t make them take the risk of playing the game--of actually trying to believe your position, even hypothetically and temporarily. But the believing game is inherently collaborative, so you have no leverage for asking them to play it with your position unless you start by taking the risk yourself of trying to believe their position--and showing that you’ve really given this a good faith effort--even asking for their help.

To repeat: You can’t expect people to see things your way unless and until you make the effort to genuinely see things their way.

True for teachers. True for the rest of us. In fact, the wisdom of this is

stupefying.

This is what I mean by honoring gardens. This is what I mean by showing up to co-create the Nth. This is what I mean by engaging. This believing stance does not come naturally to most of us, I suspect. It requires discipline and practice. And it is foundational to healthy relationships. With humans. With ideas. With the content we teach.

So I believe.