Why We Can’t Understand Each Other

Podcast Damien Williams Insight 2025

We live in a world of “bespoke realities” whereby people’s lived experiences are seemingly so different they cannot even come to a mutual understanding of the parts that are objective — like science. He explains why other people’s realities feel threatening, and offers key insight as to how we can build bridges with those who disagree with us.

Threatening Realities

When people exist within different realities that brush up against each other, it feels threatening. Political polarization is inadequate to describe a world where people don’t agree on definitions.
People pathologically identify with linguistic tricks instead of finding common ground.

Transcript: Rachel Donald And what happens when we all exist within these different realities that then brush up against each other? How threatening that feels. Our response to a threat like that. And then what this means for political polarization. This is where the conversation gets to with Damien. The fact that polarization is simply not an adequate word for the state of the world today, a world in which people do not agree on definitions and become pathologically identified With linguistic tricks rather than trying to find the common ground upon which we all stand. (Time 0:02:01)

Trump’s Modulated Grievance

Damien Williams explains that Trump modulates the grievance space, making people feel he speaks for them.
This allows people to project their desires onto him, hearing what they want to hear even when he talks about himself.

Trump’s Communication Model

Damien Williams explains that Trump modulates the ‘grievance space,’ making people feel he’s talking directly to them.
This model, similar to his economic approach, takes from his audience to give them a sense of power.

Transcript: Damien Williams One of the neatest, and I don’t mean that as keen, I don’t mean that as good. And oft-repeated things that Trump does is that he has a very careful way of modulating that grievance space and saying that when he is talking about himself, he is talking about the Person he’s talking to, of building that space into something that looks like communication. It looks like sharing, but it isn’t. It’s a way of getting other people to take on his experiences as their own without him having to take on anything of theirs in actuality. Rachel Donald His kind of economic model as well, which is that he should give nothing. And essentially what he promised, you know, white working class voters, he has then taken from them in order to give back to them in a sense. I was having this conversation recently looking at how in order, speaking to the kind of economic situation of white working class men, which is worse. And Trump’s offer of raising them up was not, we will improve the economic situation for you. It was, I’m going to further oppress women and minorities so that you can feel more powerful again. So it is his capacity to take instead of give economically as well. And you’re saying that that’s kind of present in his communication model. Damien Williams Absolutely. Like that’s the (Time 0:10:43)

Language Shapes Reality

Language is about framing the world and trying to shape our experience of reality.
Linguistic framing doesn’t just describe what is; it shapes our possibilities of what might be.

Transcript: Damien Williams Everything that we do in language is about trying to frame and understand the world that we live in, right? It’s trying to capture a picture of what it is that we experience. And it’s also about trying to affect that picture, trying to predict and shape that picture, right? So words have always been about changing material reality. Language has always been about trying to shape our experience of what is real. And so the linguistic framing of things doesn’t just describe what is. It shapes our possibilities of what might be. It shapes our understanding of what could happen, what may be real. And (Time 0:14:37)

Language Shapes Reality

Language helps frame and understand the world, attempting to capture our experience.
Damien Williams says language has always been about trying to shape our experience of what is real.

Language Shapes Reality

Language aims to capture and affect our understanding of the world. The linguistic framing of things shapes our possibilities of what might be.
The more concepts we have, the more we open up levels of possibility and ways of seeing things.

Transcript: Damien Williams That we do in language is about trying to frame and understand the world that we live in, right? It’s trying to capture a picture of what it is that we experience. And it’s also about trying to affect that picture, trying to predict and shape that picture, right? So words have always been about changing material reality. Language has always been about trying to shape our experience of what is real. And so the linguistic framing of things doesn’t just describe what is. It shapes our possibilities of what might be. It shapes our understanding of what could happen, what may be real. And the more that we do that, and the more words that we have, the more concepts we have, the more we open up levels of possibility for ourselves in different ways of seeing things and different Things we could do into the future. And that can be very good. That can give us pathways to make real beneficial change for people in their lives. Because we can’t conceptualize it, if we can’t clearly understand or even kind of understand what it is that we’re working towards, how are we going to build it? Right? We can go by trial and error and maybe we’ll get there. But the more we have an idea as to what it is we want to see or what (Time 0:14:38)

Language Shapes Reality

Language shapes our possibilities and understanding of what could be.
Weaponized language shifts how people experience reality and is a function of communication.

Transcript: Damien Williams The linguistic framing of things doesn’t just describe what is. It shapes our possibilities of what might be. It shapes our understanding of what could happen, what may be real. And the more that we do that, and the more words that we have, the more concepts we have, the more we open up levels of possibility for ourselves in different ways of seeing things and different Things we could do into the future. And that can be very good. That can give us pathways to make real beneficial change for people in their lives. Because we can’t conceptualize it, if we can’t clearly understand or even kind of understand what it is that we’re working towards, how are we going to build it? Right? We can go by trial and error and maybe we’ll get there. But the more we have an idea as to what it is we want to see or what is possible for us to see, possible for us to do, to experience, the better a chance we have of actually bringing it into reality. And so when somebody uses language in this kind of more weaponized way, when they try to use reality to shift how people experience, or use language rather, to shift how people experience And understand the reality that they’re a part of, that is a function of what language can do. It’s a function of what the mechanisms of communication can be turned towards, right? And so if you disrupt those mechanisms, if you distort them, you can create something, again, that feels like communication, but is actually about manipulation. Something that is about, well, it’s called disinformation or misinformation for a reason, right? It’s not quite the same thing, but it uses the same channels. And sometimes it intentionally distorts, and sometimes it’s just an ([Time 0:15:10]…

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Different Worlds

When shared experiences and consensus reality are shaken, it becomes harder to hold on to them.
You may feel like you’re living in different worlds than others around you.

Transcript: Damien Williams And the more that that happens the more that sense of shared experience or consensus reality the more that gets shaken the more it gets harder to hold on to um and so it can get to the point Where you start to feel like you’re living in literally different worlds than some of the people you’re seeing around you experiencing things day to day. Rachel Donald And there are theorists who would argue you are living in different worlds. (Time 0:17:41)

Epistemic Threats

Damien Williams defines epistemic threat as a challenge to the way we understand and know things.
When our understanding of the world is challenged, it can lead to ontological shock, questioning what is real.

Epistemic Threat

Damien Williams defines epistemic threat as a challenge to the way we understand and know things.
When challenged, our understanding of the world can move into an ontological shock.

Transcript: Damien Williams I’ve actually I I’ve been thinking on this and writing on this idea for a while because what that is, that’s what we call epistemic threats. And the epistemic threat is the threat to the way that we understand and the way that we know things. And so when something arises as an epistemic threat we have this moment where we go okay but that’s not that’s not true that’s not knowledge that’s not facts um and when our understanding Of the world is challenged like that it can very quickly move into what we call uh an ontological shock if it is challenged for long enough right the ontological shock it comes from ontology And (Time 0:28:52)

Epistemic Threat

Damien Williams describes how challenges to our understanding of the world, ‘epistemic threats’, can lead to rejecting the source of the challenge.
This can escalate into an ‘ontological shock’ where fundamental beliefs are shaken, making it easier to dismiss the entire system that caused the doubt.

Nuance vs. Survival

Communities develop nuanced language to address specific needs.
However, explaining these nuances to outsiders can be exhausting, especially when survival is the priority.

Transcript: Damien Williams And to the outside world who doesn’t have any experience with that, it is all a gloss on the same stuff. Right. And that’s because it’s hard enough for disabled people to get experiences, needs, anything about disabled lived experience taken seriously to begin with without getting into the Fine grained weeds of no, no, no, I’m not talking about just access. I’m talking about disability justice. And here’s why that’s different. There has to be a point at which we communicate with other people. There has to be the space where we get people to understand what we mean by the words we use. But it is also deeply understandable that some people are too tired from trying to survive to want to go there with everyone they have to converse with on a daily basis. (Time 0:33:05)

Academia’s Accessibility Problem

Academia has been inaccessible to the public for a long time, but is now trying to make its work more accessible.
Simultaneously, people are incentivized to distrust anything from academia or experts.

Transcript: Damien Williams Now, again, a lot of that wouldn’t be possible if academia had not siloed itself off and separated itself from the concerns of a lot of the public, had not stopped making its work accessible To the public for a very long time. But it is also the case that many people within academia, researchers, theorists, trying to actually change how they go about that stuff. Making their work open access, making the things they have more available to everybody out in the world. It just so happens to unfortunately be happening at the exact point in time in which people have been conditioned, convinced, incentivized to regard anything that comes from academia, Anything that comes from an expert as inherently suspect. Rachel Donald Yeah. I think there needs to be a reckoning, though, with regards to accountability, responsibility, and also a seeking to build common worlds and finding common ground. And I think that those of us who don’t want to see authoritarian figures (Time 0:34:40)

Constructed Demographics

Demographics are constructed identities, and the concerns of the working class become white identitarian concerns.
There is a political push to make the white working class think of themselves as white first and working class second.

Transcript: Damien Williams Demography and categorization is nothing but constructed identity. But one of the things that happens is that there is a specific point at which the concerns of the working class become white identitarian concerns and categorized as such and leveraged As such more often than they are a working class collective concern. And so there’s a point in the United States, especially at which there is a political push to make the white working class think of themselves as white first and working class second. And so that framing puts those things at odds now those things don’t have to be at odds they don’t have to remain at odds but there is a history of why they are at odds if you can make somebody Blame a black or brown person, (Time 0:38:35)

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