Have you ever disagreed with someone?
Of course you have. We all have. With over 7 billion of us on the planet, it'd be tough, and pretty exhausting, to agree on everything with everyone. You'd be left one heck of an eminently agreeable mess.
Disagreement isn't just political, religious, academic, or professional. It's more than taste preferences. Not just about the best movies, books, and songs, either. And definitely much more than the best route to get to whatever your destination is—especially if you're driving with other people. Like family. Like your spouse.
Disagreement, in my very humble but absolutely accurate opinion (ha!), is healthy. It presents a view on the world we may not have come across before. It can present a legitimate challenge to our way of seeing and thinking, a white glove thrown down at our feet inviting us to defend or explain our stance on just about anything.
And disagreement, apparently, makes us mad. It frustrates us when other people, especially someone we care about, fail to share our tastes, opinions, viewpoints.
Here in America, disagreement is not generally seen as a good thing. It puts us on the defensive. It catches us off-guard in our comfortable bubbles. This could be due to a failure on the part of our school system to teach us skills such as critical thinking, analysis, logic and reason. We have debate clubs, but learning how to disagree professionally is different than disagreeing with someone on a personal level. Professional debaters, especially those in the corporate and political spheres, typically have an agenda they are trying to push, whether that agenda has been assigned or is driven by ideology, desire for power, fame, money, or some other highly desirable asset.
Stop and think about it for a minute. Why should someone's disagreement with us bother us? Why is it so important that our friends, family, and even total strangers, agree with what we have to say or how we feel?
For one thing, all those nodding heads sure make us feel good. If you speak up at a meeting and people find your idea great, that's a feather in your cap. If your neighbors agree that there should be no loud noise after 10pm, you know you'll get a good night's sleep every night.
I grew up partially in Europe, where (depending on the country of course) it's common to have passionate arguments—to the point of rather vociferous, red-faced exchanges—among people who are close friends, and who continue being close friends even after multiple said vociferous disagreements.
How is that possible? It may sound overly simple, but we don't take things personally. And we appreciate a good conversation—which means plenty of oppositional viewpoints. It is certainly more challenging, and more character-building, to respond to a perceived affront to your worldview in a civil manner, and learn something from it, than to brush it off or attack it.
It strikes me, today more than ever, how differences in opinion, perspective, or sentiment flare up into vitriol. I'm not a frequent social media user, but I do take the occasional peek at Twitter, Linkedin, and other platforms. It's stunning to me how people get into each other's hair over mere differences of opinion. And worse... call each other expletives and threaten violence.
It's as if disagreement itself has suddenly become a threat. Not sharing similar views on a topic, whether it's a viral video about yet another passenger being kicked off a flight because s/he didn't [fill in the blank... generally it has something to do with behavior or dress code] or an off-handed comment, does not the right to take up arms give you.
If we cannot embrace disagreement in our heavily multicultural, multisocial society, we're in for a world of trouble.
But please feel free to disagree.
~ Birgitte
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