by Ray Rawls for LeftWingCapitalist
What is the difference between an ‘argument’ and a ‘disagreement’? An argument can be a disagreement to which people have added hate, anger, attacks, provocations, or revenge. None of these additions constitute a real enhancement to the point being made. Skills like negotiation and problem solving would have a much more positive effect on influencing the other person in the disagreement.
In a marriage, in order to win an argument, one person may take a very extreme position and refuse to listen to the other side, which just enrages the other person. This may lead to emotional and sometimes physical violence over unimportant issues. Why? Why not either let the issue alone entirely or disagree but refuse to escalate the emotions which cause suffering? If you disagree over an important issue, then make your point of view known in a kind and respectful way and let the other person think about it. Leave anger out of it. Usually the other person’s primary concern is that their issues are heard and respected. I think most married couples really know that there is no ‘winning’ in a marriage unless both parties ‘win’.
The length and severity of the Covid-19 pandemic has hurt or threatened us for a very long time. I suspect it has awakened our ‘fight or flight’ response. Since there is nowhere to run, our instinct is to fight. That may explain the increase in violent crime as well as some predisposition to be more argumentative. In the U.S. our society is more polarized than ever and seemingly less tolerant of others’ ideas. We need to find the resources to cope with higher degrees of stress and manage our own personal response to this stress in a better way.
Where is this heading? We are only going to face harder times and worse challenges as climate change progresses and parts of the world become potentially uninhabitable. We need to pull together and not pull farther apart to handle the bigger issues coming. The earth is too small for us to forsake multilateral cooperation.
Pandemic-amplified stress is causing unfortunate behavioral changes. Physical violence has increased but that is not the only kind of violence. You can kill somebody physically when you stop their heart. You can kill somebody verbally when they suffer irreparable damage from your actions and words. The Buddha said, “When a person is born, there is indeed an axe in the mouth. The fool speaks evil and cuts himself off with the axe.” Our words can cause damage or incite physical violence.
Trolling can do such damage. Trolling in fishing refers to dragging a baited line behind the boat to lure fish to bite the tasty treat. Trolling on the internet refers to posting very emotionally charged messages which stir up people’s emotions (in a negative way). Some trollers have even posted mean messages on a funeral site and laughed when the family of the deceased suffered. The negative emotions of the family fed a positive emotion in the troller.
In a disagreement at work with a coworker or a client, you can also treat the other person respectfully and make your point of view known without resorting to anger or escalation. This will make the other person more likely to hear you and consider your ideas. Who knows? You may get a WIN-WIN!
In international relations, engagements can be calm and respectful, or emotions can prevail and endanger whole societies. With so many nuclear weapons (as well as other weapons of mass destruction) in the world, we all want our governments to be careful not to cause too much conflict.
Then there is social media. Social media thrives on emotional responses. Advertisers want to engage the emotions of their customer base. Political parties want to engage the emotions of their audience to follow them. Advertisers want to engage the emotions of their readers so they will spend more time on their site and hopefully act in a way that means more revenue for the advertiser. How can social media engage emotions without doing harm? This is certainly a big issue for our world.
We all hope that the future will be bright and the whole world will thrive but that will not happen automatically. It will require effort on all our parts to be respectful and thoughtful about each other and our environment. We can each start by trying to keep our small portion of the world thoughtful and peaceful while we engage with one another.
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Ray Rawls served in both the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. Those enlistments were followed by a lengthy career as an Information Technology professional in the corporate world. He has a strong religious background and has thoughtfully studied behavioral science for many years.
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