To disagree is human
Let’s first talk about opinions. I feel that our place of birth, parental upbringing, our religion, privileges, peer groups, our choices, the books we read and the algorithms that we interact with everyday go a long way to start and later mould our opinions. As we grow, our opinions grow with us and these opinions are our safety net, our community and the window through which we learn to see the world. Because each one of us grow up in different circumstances, our opinions are different as well. I find it fascinating that someone as “close” as twins, can grow up with radically different points of view too.
It is because we found ways to convey our opinions and have a conversation about them, that we are able to live healthier, live longer, peer into the smallest corners of our bodies and travel into the farthest reaches of space. I am sure that not everyone agreed with each other, but they got to where they wished to, together.
Disagreements form the bedrock of successful friendships, successful relationships and most importantly - progress of thought.
One of the primary reason why I think we find it easier to talk about this is over being able to practice it, is because we are enshrined, from an early age with the bias of appeal to authority. Examples of which look like:
- My parents told me to do it, so I do.
- My teacher told me to do it, so I do.
- Society told me to do it, so I do.
- My boss told me to do it, so I do.
- My religion told me to do it, so I do.
Disagreeing with any of these, is showing a lack of respect, is “talking above your age”, is avoiding conflict, is blasphemy.
But why? Why are disagreements not OK? Can it not be that I value you, but do not share your opinion? Can my lived reality not tell me differently? Why don’t we converse about it? Heck, we can still hold the same opinions we did when we started, but do we not owe it to each other, to hear the other one out, fully? Is there an assumption that we know better?
To illustrate, I have very strong opinions when it comes to my lack of belief in god & religion, the patriarchal structures perpetrated by men holding both men and women within its grasp, the years of suffering endured by people in the name of the caste system among many others. However I do understand that these are the result of my influences and as much as I am entitled to mine, there might be more nuances to this that I am missing.
I think maybe this is because we have an obsession with classifying things as right and wrong. The more I observe, the more I see the world being filled with shades of gray. But greys are uncomfortable and it is more comfortable to choose one among the 2 sides of the coin and hold your ground. It is more peaceful, we have a tribe here - we tell ourselves. However, the great things about grey things, is that we can see the world for all its messy complexity and give ourselves the chance to look at things without the compulsion of putting them into buckets.
Some of my closest friends do not share my points of view as strongly as I do. Yet they are the ones I go to, when I need help. Why? Because my opinions are not what make the entire sum of me. And their opinions are not what make the entire sum of them. Because when they disagree with me, they are disagreeing with my opinion. Their claim isn’t that Shrayas is a bad person.
Looking back, I feel disagreements are what have helped me grow - to find the nuance in my argument, to understand the nuance in theirs. It is impossible for me to know everything and that’s the beauty of disagreements and of conversations where disagreements are possible - you open the floor for learning. My world view, allows me to see things in one way and my conversations allow me to slip into someone else’s world view, to see what the point of view looks like - maybe I have missed something, maybe they have. Being able to have such conversations has allowed me to reflect if my biases are too strong, if I’m not considering another obvious point of view or if I am thinking too much from my privileges. It has empowered me, to be open enough to disagree with my own opinions - to lay them bare, and inspect their origins and their stories.
And hence, my wish is for all of us to disagree more with each other, respectfully, fruitfully and mindfully. One simple (?) way I trained myself to do it, is to be a better listener. More often than not, because we take ourselves more seriously than we take others, we are listening to respond and not listening to listen. I have found that when I listen to listen, I end up being able to better put myself in someone else’s shoes rather than hold the supposed moral high ground to “win” the argument. Listening allows me to disagree better - because I can parse the argument better, because I can let it sit in me before responding. Of course this only works when it goes both ways - if one listens to respond and the other listens to listen - then we’re not going anywhere.
The only caveat I’d add here is that there is such a thing called core ideologies that I dare say must match. For example: You and I may disagree about the way to reach equity in society, but if we cannot agree that society and its power structures favours men over everyone else, then we must first address that disagreement moving on. Of course this also means that we may never agree on something, and that’s OK too, our relationship allowing.
With all that said, let’s show each other our worlds and share how we came to inhabit them. Allow me to pick a sapling from yours and you can from me. Let us disagree about why the mountains in my world are more rugged or why the rivers in yours run clearer. Let us break from the circles of rights and wrongs because your rivers have kept you as sane as my mountains have. Maybe in this journey of trading disagreements, we can get to a place together, where I have more clearer rivers and you have more rugged mountains. Let us disagree more, let us learn to live more amongst the greys, because we are unique humans with unique histories and because to disagree, is human.