Wait…Are We Fighting? 🤔

[Triton™]

Lola,
I was nodding along right up until you suggested people could disagree and still remain friends. Honestly, that sounds suspiciously like witchcraft. 😉

I think you’ve hit on something important where somewhere along the way, a lot of people stopped treating opinions like hats you can take off to examine and started treating them like vital organs. The moment someone says “Have you considered another perspective?” alarms start ringing, battle stations are manned and suddenly poor Uncle Bob’s honour is somehow involved.

Personally, I love having my thinking challenged and not because I’m open-minded or enlightened but because there’s always the faint possibility I’ve been spectacularly wrong about something for years. It happens more often than I’d like to admit.

That said, the person doing the challenging matters too. Curiosity is attractive. Intelligence is attractive. A sense of humour is attractive. Someone who can say “I disagree with you completely” while smiling warmly and reaching for another slice of cake? Extremely attractive.

The trouble is that too many people enter conversations with a sword when a comfortable chair would do.

I completely agree with your point about this community. It’s far more interesting when people feel safe enough to be themselves with different opinions, different experiences and different backgrounds. Otherwise we’d all just sit around agreeing with each other. Which sounds pleasant for about five minutes before the conversation becomes remarkably predictable.

So yes, challenge my thinking but just be warned, if you’re clever, witty and make me laugh while doing it then I may become distractingly agreeable.

[Peter]

“Here’s what I can substantiate: you’ve repeatedly substituted personal insults for counterarguments, confused your own certainty with evidence, and treated my refusal to agree with you as proof of some psychological deficiency.”

Just because you claim my observations to be ‘insulting’ doesn’t mean they are insults. Or that they’re anything other than observations of what’s missing. Perhaps you’re insulted that I ask for what’s missing to be made present – to be brought out of hiding – so an actual exchange might begin? And nourishing exchanges, of course, require our vulnerabilities to be in play. No one likes being told what they’re currently offering isn’t good enough.

In all your replies you’ve drawn attention to your refusal to agree with me. And yet nowhere do you say what it is exactly you’re refusing to agree with (something else being kept well hidden). I must assume therefore that your use of ‘to agree with’ is not the everyday one and instead you mean ‘to be healthy or appropriate for (someone)’. As in, “my refusal to be healthy or appropriate for you so that we can enter into an exchange rather than my sabotaging it”. Is that a psychological deficiency?.. you tell me.

[Lola]

@milkylunch 🤓

Triton, I’m still laughing at opinions becoming vital organs. That might be the best description of modern disagreement I’ve heard in ages!😎

And I think you’ve hit on something. I don’t need someone to agree with me. I want someone who makes me reconsider something I was absolutely certain about five minutes ago. Bonus points if he can make me laugh while doing it.

Now, about this tendency of yours to become distractingly agreeable in the presence of clever, witty women… I feel like that deserves further investigation. 😉😘

[Sparkling 💎]

Just reading this..Can someone please summarize for me what is the outcome of what was discussed. I sort of got lost 🙂 🙂 🙂 and others reading this may be too in the future?

[Lola]

@sind 🤓, I wasn’t aware we were working toward a verdict! Lots of different perspectives, which is rather the beauty of a forum, and its responses. Take what resonates with you and leave the rest. 🫶🏻

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