Of different opinions

After a fallout with a relative, I better understood how easily people who come from even the same background can fall apart due to differences in opinions. As it turns out, even though we might share the same reality and environment, we can get so much of a different experience that it eventually leads us down a path where our ideas diverge. In this instance, it wasn’t even about who was right or wrong, our difference came down to one person being egotistical and another trying to be altruistic, two very different visions that failed to find balance.

Despite my best intentions and all the concessions I was willing to make, I soon realized that the objective of the other person wasn’t in good faith but rather a poorly veiled plot to rob me, at that instance only two choices were left, get robbed and pretend I wasn’t seeing what was happening or disagree and risk a lifelong feud with this person. My first instinct was not to get robbed, especially because we aren’t talking about a negligible amount here, but in retrospect, I think I could have done things differently.

Looking back, I now realize that our disagreement didn’t come from poor communication but rather from bad faith, corrupt intentions and a disagreement on core values, it doesn’t matter how much talking was done, things won’t have ever worked out.

So even going into the whole ordeal, things were already set to fail because one person had the wrong motives. How can you possibly agree with someone who has bad intentions? You can’t unless you are willing to stoop down to their level. Looking at that entire situation, I realized that disagreements didn’t always come from poor communication, there was an additional level we seemed to ignore most of the time which is the current state of mind of the person we have in front of us.

Are they good or evil, willing to change or not, receptive to any new information, personal interests, core values, and much more, before you even start a conversation in hopes of convincing a person, you have to be able to acknowledge who they are, to begin with, else it will be impossible to find any middle ground with them at the end? I blamed many of my fall-outs with others on my communication skills, but now looking at it all, it's clear to me that it's more of a personality difference than anything else. When you have a person who is prone to jealousy, anger, rage, who is self-centered etc. and you aren’t any of those then you can't get along. This is why you’ve got so much infighting in families, but not as much in friend groups, because we get to choose our friends and oftentimes they are people who share similar values as us, meanwhile we don’t do the same for our families. Proof of this is that you are much more likely to agree politically with your friend group than with your family.

The prerequisites to understanding

For us to get along would require that we first share a common understanding of certain core values and emotions. Gossips get along easily because they know and appreciate the art of gossiping, smart people get along often because they know and appreciate wisdom. To be able to get along with another person will require for you to share the same understanding and appreciation for certain core principles such as; Integrity, Faith/Spirituality, Loyalty, Freedom, Justice, Dignity, Courage, Love/Compassion, Respect for Life, Cultural Identity etc.

When these prerequisites aren’t met, then the seeds for disagreements are already planted, and it's just a matter of time before they germinate. When you have a greedy person on one hand and another who believes in fairness and equity, how can they possibly agree or find any middle ground easily? That’s a hard task. In society today you can see that some believe in hard work and no handouts while others believe a community helping each other is the way to go. Who is right and who is wrong doesn’t matter because the main goal here is for two people to agree. This is going to be impossible to do because they already disagree on a core value that transcends all of their other thoughts and opinions, not only that, but it influences their actions and mindset.

To be able to agree with each other or at least get a shot at that, you must be able to find common ground on the core principles that govern your mindset.

If that’s not the case, then the differences in core values will slowly sip into all of your arguments and make you much more polarized. As you can probably guess from the previous example, on one hand, you may have relatives who expect handouts and community help. On the other hand, some might believe in everyone working for themselves, which explains how families get so divided eventually.

Finding Middle ground

I think the most important thing about all of this is for us to find a way to live together. Humans who decided to isolate themselves and do things on their own eventually died out, and so I believe every decision or opinion that brings us together for collective development is the right one. In such a scenario where people differ from each other even on such a basic level, I think what needs to be done is to show great understanding and comprehension to find a middle ground. What makes this process difficult is that we are all so convinced about the logic behind our thought process that it makes it difficult for us to put that in question in favor of another.

For years, you’ve been reflecting on these core principles, and they’ve worked for you so far. They explain all the success you’ve had so far and you’ve seen so many people do the same to the extent where you have become indoctrinated by your own ideas. Having a person put all of that in question is traumatic, and we end up showing a lot of resistance. To picture this think of your parents who grew up in an era of hard work and individualism, they succeeded through it and everyone they know did the same. So it's very hard for them to start believing that something other than that will work.

Our ideas become like a religion from which we can’t escape.

Finding a middle ground in this mess requires that we be willing to let go of our ideologies and explore new ones, even when we know they might not work in the end. You need to learn how to prioritize collectivism over logic itself.

Conclusion

This is far from being something easy to do at the end of the day and there is not much I can say which will convince you that your ideas are wrong, inherently we as humans hate being wrong so we are going to fight against that best we can even if it means being delusional. Those who can find a middle ground very often are those who prioritize collectivism over everything else. Even though communication isn’t the main culprit, expressing ourselves with the utmost clarity goes a long way to solving these issues.

Thanks for reading ??

#SelfImprovement #Productivity #Programming #LifeLessons #Relationships