pafret Loc: Northeast

Does any of this strike a familiar note with you?



"The Art of Letting Others Be Right"

Posted: 30 Mar 2017 03:20 PM PDT
"The Art of Letting Others Be Right"
by David Cain



"My brain, like all brains, houses an unbelievable quantity of remembered information, and a huge amount of that information is stuff I’ve watched on television. I always h**ed Star Trek, and frequently said so, but whenever I catch a clip of "The Next Generation", somehow I’ve seen that episode before. I was also never exactly a fan of The Oprah Winfrey Show, but I’ve surely seen several hundred hours of it. For years after it went off the air, I kept remembering a particular insight Oprah shared once. I forget the context, but Oprah was amazed to realize that she didn’t have to answer the phone just because it was ringing.

It was a significant insight to me too, not because answering the phone is a particularly difficult task, but because it meant there was an invisible freedom there, which I somehow didn’t realize I had. Even if I still answered every call, it felt like a choice. Before that, it had been a kind of a master-s***e type relationship, in which some remote person could push some buttons and force my body up onto its feet (perhaps tearing me away from a Star Trek rerun).

I am slowly grasping another overlooked freedom, which is the freedom to let people be right (or at least feel right) even though I think they’re wrong. When someone tries to tell the world that Crash is a brilliant film, or that evolution is “just a theory”, I forget that I am free to let them continue to think so.

I gather I have a long history of arguing my views, even when I’m not sure why I’m doing it. One time I was respectfully disagreeing with a coworker about something, and after a particularly good point I made, his tone went from sporting to angry and he said, “Damn, you are one argumentative person!” I told him he was wrong, but later wondered for a few seconds if I was indeed argumentative. No, he was the argumentative one. Otherwise he would have realized I was right.

And this was before the internet was omnipresent in our lives, before it started joining us in the bathroom, back when “going online” was still just an activity you did for part of the day, rather than an additional mode of global perception we can activate at any moment. The typical person experienced far fewer moments in which it felt appropriate to argue a point beyond what politeness allows.

Today, it’s alarmingly easy to find yourself antler-locked with some remote, faceless person who’s trying to tell you that universal healthcare is a c*******t plot, while you’re waiting for your potato to finish microwaving. This facelessness turns up our impulse to argue even more. You may have noticed it’s a lot less pleasant to argue with someone when you can see their eyes.

I suppose many of you have no idea what I’m talking about. You see a statement you don’t agree with, or you know to be factually wrong, and it creates no urge in you to correct, illuminate or scold, even in your head. You could hear someone praising Nancy Grace as a selfless defender of the vulnerable, or arguing that Godfather III was as good as the others, and yet feel no desire to try to get them to stop thinking that. You are wise enough to know that “fighting the good fight” in internet comment threads is almost always pure indulgence, and just gives ignorance a reason to sink anchors and get louder.

But many of us aren’t so wise. Those argumentative souls among us that do engage, (and there are zillions of us, based on the comment totals on Facebook and YouTube alone) often believe we are somehow actually changing minds, actually eradicating ignorance and thoughtlessness. We aren’t indulging in a destructive or at least useless pastime, we’re saving the world from wrongness, one faceless Reddit user at a time. It’s not just okay to engage in these little conflicts, it’s a moral imperative. We can’t just allow ignorance to go on unopposed. The internet (well the whole world really, but it’s easiest on the internet) must be patrolled for bad beliefs.

And of course, it seldom occurs to us that we’re wrong. Maybe all my sources are incorrect, and we do swallow eight spiders a year in our sleep. But in the heat of enthusiastic wrong-righting, it never occurs to you that you’re the problem, or at least part of it. Being wrong feels exactly like being right, which is the sole feeling experienced by all parties, in any argument, about anything.

For those of us inclined to argue every point, it’s easy to forget that we have the freedom to simply carry on with our lives and let “wrong” viewpoints stand. It’s amazing how often it can seem like an exchange needs your input, the way a screaming kettle needs to be taken off the element.

But it’s not the same. A different viewpoint, no matter how egregious it seems, is no emergency. Civilization survived for over 10,000 years before you and I got here with our snarky corrections and condescending rebuttals, and we didn’t exactly make a huge difference when we did arrive. It turns out we don’t have to try to stop people from thinking what we don’t want them to think, and that our energy is probably better spent elsewhere. In other words, it is possible, theoretically, to retire from Belief Patrol.

I know beliefs have consequences in the real world. Harmful actions come from bad beliefs. I’m not claiming that we should never oppose anyone, never call anyone out, never engage with people who disagree with us. I just don’t think that casually sparring with blowhards on social media, or even in real life, actually affects anyone’s beliefs in a helpful way.

I think Richard Carlson’s advice is probably an ideal motto for this: Let others be “right” most of the time. Asserting and defending our views takes an enormous amount of mental energy and accomplishes little. Sometimes it’s important (and actually useful) to take a stand in a conversation, but usually it’s just a kind of peace-destroying indulgence.

By “retiring from Belief Patrol”, I’m talking mostly about retiring from having non-face-to-face arguments in which there’s no mutual respect. The moment the motivation slips from goodwill to ill-will or annoyance, I’m done.

I hope. I hope I will notice the impulse before the words come out. It can be so automatic. Once you start to consider retirement, it’s unnerving how attractive it is to say something, to throw in your “Well ACTUALLY…” It’s like being the hard-boiled TV vice cop whose family convinced him to retire, but then without realizing it, ends up embroiled in some wild crime adventure, following clues and chasing crooks across rooftops. He ends up back in that world, fistfighting a drug dealer on top of a moving train, not because he consciously decided to go back to the grind, but because his detective instincts were sharper than his awareness of what he was doing.

So we’ll see how things go in retirement. Already I’m noticing how often the impulse comes up. I’ve deleted so many half-written Reddit replies that I wonder if I ever contributed anything other than contradiction and snark.

I invite you to join me, if you’re a long-time Belief Patrol veteran. Let’s leave the swashbuckling game for good and go play tennis. We can still express our views in a thousand other ways that aren’t so indulgent and harsh. You have this freedom, and I don’t blame you if you didn’t see it. Already I can tell you it’s way better to be retired. But I won’t argue the point.”
- http://www.raptitude.com/

Y360AZ

Yes, pafret, I'm guilty. Many times people have told me I am argumentative. And that ticks me off - not them saying it, but that I am, which ticks off the one I am talking to. I think I know how it all started, but that can't be undone. I still try to bit the bullet - I just have to remind myself that before ever saying anything. Along that line, me being an writer/editor for several years has me seeing editing mistakes all the time when I read something, whether I want to or not. Here again, I try to bit the bullet and say nothing. It has been said it is a very difficult task to break old habits, and this one, I think, definitely is in that category.

QuestGirl Loc: Jayhawk Country

It annoys me to no end to read an article full of typos, most generally of the "on-line" format. I also see a lot of sentences that begin with "And". Not a sentence starter, old school grammer I suppose. The difference in production with print vs on-line seem worlds apart. If they can get it right in print, there is absolutely no excuse for the on-line counterpart to not get it right.

I have heard I am "contrary", yet my mother was the Mary!!!

QuestGirl Loc: Jayhawk Country

You'll never go wrong with, "Yes Dear"!!!

pafret Loc: Northeast

Would that be this Mary?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver bells and cockle shells,
And the rest is none of your damned business.

Have to admit I am guilty of "And" starts -- comes from not being able to type fast enough, to get my ideas across, in proper format. What I dislike is the lack of paragraph breaks in lengthy writings. Plowing through, you realize that some writers scattershot their message and return to a topic every other sentence and some others went to the James Joyce "Stream of Consciousness" school of writing.

pafret Loc: Northeast

Well Y360AZ I have found that argumentative people are extremely annoying, especially when they are right and I am wrong. Fortunately that doesn't happen too often, the last time I was wrong was about ten years ago when I thought I had made a mistake.

QuestGirl Loc: Jayhawk Country

I think the rule is 3-5 sentences make a paragraph, but it's been a few decades since I've been schooled.

Y360AZ

I made that same mistake twice. And I'll start a sentence this way now and again in emails - they are more like an unwritten conversation, but never in the technical documents I wrote, or for other 'printed' material for distribution. I am still the 'old school' with two spaces after a period and colon. My thumb automatically does it, but the computer continually suggests says that is an extra space.

pafret Loc: Northeast

Finally, I have met someone who agrees with me, that it used to be taught that sentences were separated with two spaces. I go through most articles I repost and insert two spaces using the find and replace functions in Word. I have been told I am wrong so often I had come to believe it was a personal quirk. Ave, fellow dinosaur, Ave!

By the way, there is no line feed, it's carriage return!

QuestGirl Loc: Jayhawk Country

Annoying, isn't it. So uncouth of the technological world to not follow proper protocol.

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

Here's my philosophy about it~~ you don't stop arguing because you have convinced them or they you.. You stop because you have made your point and heard there's and neither is changing their position so why keep arguing??
It's non productive and eventually only hurts you just as your post recites...

You don't have to be right, nor do you have to try and convince someone else they are wrong..

Thank God we have differing views and can be our own individual regardless of the " influence" around us.. What st a boring place it would be if we all agreed...