The Art of Agreeing to Disagree
We live in a very strange time. COVID-19 aside, we inhabit an age where the art of civil discourse is a thing of the past. Now, it seems, there are only absolutes. You are on either one side or the other. There is a “you are with me or against me” mentality and it’s incredibly counter-intuitive. A tinderbox many years in the making, it was exacerbated by the UK’s vote to leave the European Union and then compounded when America voted for Donald Trump. It seems we have reached peak division.
The rise of social media is unarguably a huge factor. Many people, day and night, are willing to give and take offense over the slightest “provocation”. Everybody is shouting and nobody is listening. You can’t entirely blame social media: for millennia people have fought and disputed, it is human nature, but social media has made it easy to make it a pastime. It gives the most clueless and antagonistic in society the ability to be a toxic orator.
The anonymity that the internet affords also helps foster this environment. According to Cunningham’s Law, the fastest way to get the right answer to a question is to post the wrong answer. There is always someone desperate to argue with you. I have felt for a while there must be a strong correlation between social media and the explosion in anxiety cases. A little research shows this to be the case. One Pyschotherapist reviewed article can be read here and another article here. Between fake news, cyberbullying and the constant potential for conflict, the internet can be an exhausting place.
In my piece, How to Be a Gentleman, practising the ability to agree to disagree wasn’t listed. Instead, I felt like it warranted its own dedicated article. The next time you read something that you disagree with, unless it is really odious or offensive, perhaps chalk it up to someone simply looking at things differently than you do. The 19th-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill reasoned in 1869 that many opinions are based on emotion or opinion rather than fact. Quite simply, you’re wasting your time and energy trying to reason with someone that probably will not come round to your way of thinking. Save your mental capacity for the battles you can win.
Likewise, in your relationship, there will be times where you just cannot see eye-to-eye with your partner. You can spend minutes, hours, even days arguing over a point only to realise that sometimes, it’s just a difference of opinion, which fundamentally, is a perfectly acceptable thing.
Before commencing an argument, after trying to understand the other person’s reasoning, ask yourself the simple question “do I want to die on this hill?”. If the answer is yes, then yes, absolutely stick to your guns. I wrote in the aforementioned ‘How to Be a Gentleman’ article that a gentleman has conviction; it’s good to stand up for your beliefs. If, however, the answer is no, which if we’re being honest, is probably most of the time then perhaps utter the phrase “let’s agree to disagree”. You’ll find you start to feel a little better. You’re less concerned with petty squabbles and your mental capacity isn’t being drained by unnecessary conflict. You may even find your personal relationships improve.
I don’t know if it’s because we live in an age of extreme vanity, where everyone has a “look and listen to me” mentality or because we are simply too divided as a society to do anything other than pick a side and shout at the opposing team but the ability to agree to disagree is a lost art. It’s about time it was rediscovered.
Thanks for reading,
Terry
