“I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more” – Teach Different with Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Native American Tribe

Transcript

Dan Fouts (00:11)

Hey everybody. Welcome to the teach different podcast. We’re ready to dive into another provocative philosophical quote. That’s consistent with some theme of humanity that gets us to think, and to share, and to ask questions and all the wonderful things that the Teach Different Method engenders and leads to. We have a quote today from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce,  Native American tribe, which is a fantastic quote that is really going to get us to think about conflict, about opening our hearts and minds and about resolving things in peaceful ways. And, you know, we like to do quotes from Native Americans to both, of course, celebrate Native American heritage. And again, all of our Native American quotes that we have in our library are very aligned to deep philosophical ideas about life. So it’s nice to share Native American culture through the words and wisdom of people. For those unfamiliar, we’re going to do the quote, as you know, and we’re going to work the claim of the quote, try to figure out what it means. And we can do this both from the perspective of the author of the quote, but also of course, from our own perspective and our own personal experiences. Which is an important part of the method. We are diving into our own lives, our own lived experiences, and we’re using the philosophical theme of the quote to activate our own learning and what’s happened to us as individuals. We’ll then push against it with the counterclaim. That’s the critical thinking piece of this. Always need to politely disagree and hold multiple perspectives in our head. That’s so important now. And when we do that, when the tension happens like that, often we have questions that surface that we need resolved. And those are nice to put into the conversation as well. So here we go. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Native American tribe. I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more, I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. Steve, what do you think? What’s the claim here? How are you looking at this?

Steve Fouts (02:51)

The key to peace is to open your heart. And then I’m thinking of open your heart. What does that mean? First things that come to mind, be vulnerable, give people the benefit of the doubt, be more compassionate. Don’t be vengeful. Don’t be paranoid. Don’t be jealous. Open your heart. So the key to peace is if we all decided overnight that we were comfortable opening our hearts to other people, we wouldn’t have conflict, is what this is saying.

Dan Fouts (03: 41)

I like it. The word you use that I can connect with is, vulnerability. Opening your heart is about being vulnerable and being vulnerable is the courage to share with others what you’re thinking and feeling, your weaknesses. And in doing that, you’re actually addressing a lot of issues because you’re connecting with other people and they’re seeing the humanity in you and when you model that, if you open your heart, it encourages other people to open their heart as well. And that avoids conflict. And instead engenders understanding, love, and compassion.

Steve Fouts (04:34)

And going with the vulnerability theme, when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you can get your heart broken. And that is a phrase that everyone’s familiar with. So this is asking us to still step out there, even if your heart could be broken, because let’s be realistic, it’s going to be at times. But, if you keep it open, and you at least give people the benefit of the doubt, you’re going to have the least amount of conflict and trouble and blood is what this is claiming. And I’m already interested in why he didn’t say, and this might be a little bit of an allusion to the counterclaim, but I’m interested into why he didn’t say, I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our minds more. He didn’t say mind. He said heart. So I, the definition of heart is definitely the key to this. What does it mean? And we’re giving our, you know, take on it, but that would be a really good way to start the conversation. If you’re having this, you know, with young people or in other groups, ask people to define what it means. What’s your heart and how is it different than your mind, for instance?

Dan Fouts (05:59)

And moving from that way of thinking, moving forward with that way of thinking. Heart versus mind. In Western culture, it’s the mind that’s often thought to be the seat of the self. That, you know, the whole René Descartes famous philosophical phrase, I think therefore I am. You know, Western culture is all about the fact that you’re a thinking thing, that’s where the value of yourself is. And I agree with you, when you think of the heart as being opened, you’re almost positioning the heart in the driver’s seat of a human being. And in that way, the vulnerability. thing that we talked about makes a lot more sense when you speak from the heart, it’s different than speaking through thinking and through the mouth. And yeah, I really liked that. That captures chief Joseph’s way of looking at the self and the world. Love it.

Steve Fouts (07:07)

And again, a lot of this depends on what that definition of heart is, because, and I’m going to go into the counterclaim a little bit, and I’m going to suggest that you could also say, if we opened our minds more and we tried to understand other people more every day, you know, call it empathy, call it understanding, call it compassion. I think that would go a long way into avoiding trouble. Okay? Because again, when you open your heart, your heart is where your deepest seeded feelings lie. And I think you could really argue that not everyone’s heart is going to agree. You know, I might have a heart to protect my family and there might be someone from another family who’s, you know, threatening someone from my family and you know, my heart is open. I’m getting hurt as well by that, and that’s not going to avoid trouble, that’s going to get me vigilant, and that’s going to make me want to try to define, or not define, but defend myself and the people that I love. So, there’s a counterclaim, you know, why not opening your minds more, that can also address a lot of trouble. Understanding is the point.

Dan Fouts (08:31)

Well, I would push back against that a little bit and say, opening your mind does not absolve you from being hurt. You know, opening your heart might open yourself up to be hurt, but the same would be true with the mind. I think that it’s just a different way of communicating who you are. If you communicate through the heart versus communicate through the mind, both of those are valid forms of, of, of communication. And so, yeah, I see what you’re saying though, that if you think of the mind, that’s kind of a counterclaim, but going with a little bit more of just the, I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. You essentially said this, but when you open your heart and you’re hurt, a lot of times that makes things worse. It makes you more defensive. It makes you less willing to trust others. If you’ve been burned by opening your heart, it actually leads to more anger and conflict. And sometimes in certain situations, not opening your heart is the best thing to do because of the people around you.

Steve Fouts (09:52)

Exactly. And it doesn’t mean you have to be vengeful or be self destructive. But it allows you to detach yourself from your emotions and maybe from your heart. And one thing I’ve experienced just in my own life is that I found that the more understanding you have as to why someone that you are competing with or you see as an enemy or an opponent, the more you understand them and what they went through, and I’m talking about mentally understand, think empathy, the harder it is to get angry with them. Understanding just creates this sense of, you know what, I don’t have the energy right now to fight against you, you’re fighting a harder battle than the one that we’re fighting. And that’s a mental realization there. That’s not my heart. I’m trying to like separate my heart for a second and I’m trying to be available to someone else’s life and it’s got to be mental. So, you know, I’m kind of convincing myself of the counterclaim here. It’s at least as effective in avoiding trouble.

Dan Fouts (11:09)

And I’m going to go back to the claim and say that the heart is able to communicate in a different way than the mind. I think being with people, listening to them, And you’re using your heart as much as you’re using your mind in connecting with them. And there’s actually, there’s actually science. I show this in my philosophy class to the kids. It’s fascinating, that there are electromagnetic signals that are emanating from your heart when you’re around other people that is being detected in the brains of other people. Electromagnetic signals. There’s a communication from the heart. There’s a communication going on underneath that are kind of providing the background conditions for people to, you know, be together and understand each other. So maybe, I don’t know, maybe we’re saying it’s both the mind and the heart as things that need to be open.

Steve Fouts (12:16) 

Well, definitely we’re saying that because think of the neuroscience of the brain and the chemicals we already know are released. You know, when you’re understanding other people, when you’re having a conversation with them, looking at them in the eye, there’s brain activity as well, that’s obviously closer to the mind, that it is creating chemicals that reduce anxiety, reduce stress, allow for happiness, social interaction, so I guess you’d have to say it is both. It is both. Maybe an essential question would be, given every situation, which part should lead to address someone or a situation to resolve it peacefully? Sometimes you might need to listen and really think through something and help people see that you’re seeing it from their side. And other times, maybe just looking at them, giving them a hug and just showing them, you know, I hear you is a way to do it or, you know, giving them a gift or you know what I mean, like something that’s more heartfelt.

Dan Fouts (13:38)

How do I know when to open my heart? To prevent a conflict. How do I know when I should open my heart? And then how should I open my heart? There’s a lot of different ways you can open your heart. You can listen, you can, you know, give him a hug and all the things you’re saying. These are daily questions maybe we should be asking more of each other to resolve conflict, you know, before it starts. And we have to say, I mean, this quote, if we just tie it to the Teach Different Method, this is exactly what we’re trying to do with this method, with this real time communication with other human beings in a shared safe space. It really is a situation where we’re trying to help people open their heart as much as opening their mind and sharing their opinions about things. Because just being together in a supportive group, you are opening your heart, which is why we need more conversations and so on.

Steve Fouts (14:44)

Good quote.

Dan Fouts (14:45) 

Okay. I love it. I love it. All right. Well, thanks everybody. This was great. Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce tribe. I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. Hope you can use this in your particular settings and take care and we’ll be back soon.