Why I don’t “debate”

I have made an active effort these past 3 years to stay out of certain discussions. It’s not because I don’t care and it’s not because I am scared of being judged for what I say. It’s because I think it’s important to prioritize the things I can actually have an impact over rather than get caught in arguments with heated people over issues we have little impact over.

I find that a majority of English speakers, and this is probably similar in much of the world, although not Japan, feel a strong desire to express their point of view and I like this, but it doesn’t often end here.

People feel threatened when others don’t agree with them, or feel like they have a responsibility to influence them in some way. They feel like if they don’t plant some seeds of doubt when they hear an idea that they think is a bad idea, they are somehow responsibile for that person choosing the wrong candidate or giving their support to something that they consider evil.

I made the decision a few years ago that other peoples opinions and support wasn’t my responsibility, and I stand by that. We hear the word fascism get thrown around a lot in modern debate about politics but those fascist tendencies start with the intention of pushing others to feel and believe the same way we do. Obviously they go much further, forcing people to comply, but the seed of such a mindset begins very innocnently. We are scared of a threat and we want to neutralize that threat for our own saftey.

But there has never been a perfect society and anyone we think is perfect will eventually let us down because life is more complex than just good and evil. Intentions matter, conext matters, experiences matter, and relationships matter. We carry all kinds of biases and we can and should try to identify and deal with them, but if we are honest with iurselves, we never know for sure that we are being objective.

We still live in very confined cultural bubbles, and while those bubbles are becoming more diverse and dynamic, they still are full of blond spots.

When I find myself feeling angry or threatened, my initial reaction is no longer to find what is wrong with that person, but to throw out my own perspective and look for reasons to agree with them. I don’t hold on to these persepctives if they aren’t consistent with everything else I know and how I want to live my life but I sit with them and try to temporarily eliminate any kind of negative thoughts I may feel about them and consider that maybe I’ve got it all wrong.

In the end I usually discover that this person is full of their oen biases, but that from the place they are standing, with their experiences and surroundings and level of emotional maturity, with their natural strengths and weaknesses, everything they say trnds to make a lot of sense.

We dismiss people as crazy or evil far too easily. Almost all behaviors we see as a threat are done by people who feel threatened by other things and are acting in response to that percieved threat.

This was always a natural tendancy of people who are scared, it’s only been brought to the surface of our awareness thanks to the internet. Our echo chambers often show us the worst of the people we disagree with, because the extremes get more clicks. Then we categorize the people we disagree with and associate them with the worst their side if the discussion has to offer.

It’s a vicious cycle created by fear when meanwhile, people are categorically more reasonable when we get them out of the fear state and allow them a chance to step outside their bubble.

If you are reading this and thinking that that is what the other side needs, then I would bet that you could benefit from this as well.

I hear people on both sides of every discussion saying that this is impossible but is it really? Sure it’s impossible for YOU to decide exactly how any given person feels about something, but if you want something somewhere to improve (regardless of what you consider to be an improvement), if you want your ideas to spread, you need to create that space for them to spread.

If others won’t create that space, you can always create it yourself by holding back your desire to change everyones mind and try to change yourself. If your ideas are as wonderful as you probably want to think they are, they should be able to survive an honest attempt to respect the views of the other side.

If you can really keep your ego in check you will find that your perspectives WILL change from the other side, not because you have been brainwashed and not because you were on the wrong side all along, but because different people are standing in different positions and so their persepctive is different.

It’s too easy to find fault with other people’s perspective, it’s far more rewarding to challenge our own, and to challenge them with the things we feel the worst about. The more someone looks like a crazy person to us, the more we can gain from considering the possibility that they might not be. The further someone stands from where we are standing, the more we can learn from them.

We will likely disocver that they are stubborn and unwilling to budge, because many many people are, but thats fine. Once again, if our goal is to force them to see things the way we want then to see things, we are playing into those pre-fascistic tendencies.

A lot of people might consider this a waste of time but if the goal is no longer to change peoples minds and instrad becomes to develop a peace of mind and a calm way of discussing these things, our confidence around our honest perspective will speak a thousand times louder than an attempt to convince others of what we believe.

I’m reallly not against a conversation about these controversial topics but I try to speak in terms of my own experience and feelings because those are far easier for anyone to engage with than accusations or assertions.

I don’t believe in debates where there are winners and losers because I think if the goal is to understand as much as possible (which why shouldn’t it be?) we should be more focused on building a bridge where two sides can see each other better and develop some form of respect for each other.

I love discussions though, even with people I disagree with, especially with people i disagree with when they are jovial about it.

You won’t be able to do this with many people, but if you can do it with one or a few, it’s worth it, because fighting them, calling them names and trying to humiliate them is only counterproductive.

And if you think there aren’t any people on the other side who would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt once you do it first, then you might be over-characterizing people or you might have a habit of hitting peoples sensitive spots in every conversation (yeah, triggering them 😛) and pulling then into that fear based state where they are prone to be unreasonable.

My mother recently had a friendly conversation wotha. Stranger devolve into a war of words when she was probed about her feelings about a popular controversial candidate (oh you know who!) and she said she didn’t like him because she thinks he’s a liar. The guy exploded and started calling her names. It became clear that he had decided that this man was a kind of savior and anyone against him was a threat.

My mom doubled down and called him crazy for not allowing her to have her own opinions and she ran off out of fear of the man standing in front of her as he got angrier and angrier. I probably would have played that much differently.

I would have started by mentioning i liked certain things about his foreign policy and that the other side is totally corrupt as well. IShe could have easily said that and meant it because she agrees with me on a lot of political issues these days, certainly this. If he got upset I would have stayed calm so long as he wasn’t getting any closer to me and looked for ways to calm hom down without accusing him of anything.

This is something you can only do if you alrwady have a havit of giving people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve spent lots of time trying to empathize with both sides so I get it, people are losing their jobs ans inflation is crazy and everyone feels the walls crawling in around them. We know the government is dishonest.

I probably would have told him “if that’s how you feel i get it, but….” And then I might have shared a few of my feelings softly, but I’d reitterate that I am more interested in knowing this mans personal story and what caused him to have his beliefs than trying to change his mind or tell him he’s wrong.

It may have worked and ot may not have. But i find people really underestimate the effectivness of staying calm and seeking out things we agree on rather than focusing on what we disagree on, at least whenever things look like they are going to get heated.

If we aren’t willing to give even a sliver of consideration that SOMETHING the person we are talking to says is valid, then the problem isn’t them, it’s us.