It’s no secret that I have a problem with pride. I cut people off mid-sentence, I always seem to respond to people sharing with, “yeah, I know”, and when people ask me if I know about something, I of course must claim to be at least familiar with the topic. This makes me essentially no different than the casual Facebook user, which is the mark of an area for personal growth.
Changes in the World
In ‘the old days’, politics, social issues, and religion were all avoided topics of conversation. The result was that friendships could only be surface-level and discuss the weather. Any societal issues were also left unattended and unresolved. As is typical, society has over-corrected itself with the introduction of social media (not that social media was designed to remedy this problem). While the world of social media is a fairly new addition to society, the collective seems to struggle with the same character flaws as myself. We can now no longer engage in any conversation without making certain that all members of the conversation are aware of our opinion on all matters, as well as our thoughts on their opinions. There seems to be a pervasive struggle with merely reading that an acquaintance (aka: the majority of Facebook friends) or a complete stranger (aka: the Facebook friends of your Facebook friends) holds a differing opinion than your own. If, in the end. their points make you feel any unpleasantness, you can deem them worthy of being ‘cancelled’ for ‘triggering’ your emotions (looking over the fact the emotions are easily triggered).
“People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool–even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs. Now, obviously they don’t agree with every idea; they simply do their best to ensure that all ideas find their way into the open.”
Kerry Patterson, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
The problem is that this over-correction has not brought about the solution we need. Friendships may not be surface-level, but they are short-lived. We must all express our opinions but at the first sign of disagreement, the friendship has ended. The ‘cancel culture’ has drifted into our personal relationships, ensuring that we never have to actually critically analyze another persons point-of-view, or even more difficult to achieve: critically analyze our own point-of-view. Rather than consider the aspects of their viewpoint we may have missed or the flaws in our own logic, we claim that they are ‘toxic’, so it is for the sake of our personal wellbeing that the friendship must be dissolved. We live in a world filled with opinions, yet we only have an interest in our own.
The Loss
Engaging in a back-and-forth dialogue means that we take an ‘iron sharpening iron’ approach, allowing for the rough edges of our opinions to be smoothed. No opinions are perfect on their own, but much like editing your own paper, there are always problems that we overlook. Conversations allow others an opportunity to ask “but what about…?” or other clarifications. We are now responsible for answering questions we would never have thought of, and we can refine our thought process. This means that we are losing the opportunity of taking our valid point and backing it up with credible proof, well-thought out logic– and yes, perhaps making some changes.
This depends on a mutual conversation, with both parties allowed to participate. Yes, I just defined ‘talking to someone’, but if you take a mere gander at Facebook, you can quickly see that we no longer engage in meaningful talks. We desire for a one-way conversation in which we state our opinions (I say opinions, because we often don’t back it up with any actual points or reasoning) and others agree. If others make statements with which we disagree, we assume that they merely lack our perspective. If we were to share the alternative opinion (or rather, the only correct opinion in our minds), they would surely change their position. If not, they must have some character flaws that we cannot afford to have in our lives.
In this way of defining relationships, we never really have friendships– we’re only looking for support for us to stay the same as we are and without the challenge of growth. If we fail to obtain these so-called friendships, we then cut the person out of our life, transitioning from a missed opportunity for an eventually meaningful friendship into a blatant loss of ever having another opportunity for that friendship. We lose out on friendships, leaving only a circle of like-minded spirits who give us permission for never growing as a person.
Misplaced Value
The problem Facebook and I seem to share is that we’re working on a faulty assumption. We assume that we are correct and others are incorrect. Taking it a step further, we also expound on this assumption to also imply that our difference in opinion is somehow a moralized issue: we are good and they are evil. Of course, there are truly toxic people and there are those whose position is directly immoral (or amoral). I’m not referring to the outliers, but the norms. The value of making the world a better place, investing in self-care and speaking truth are all misplaced to make us feel better about the emotion-based reaction to simply ‘not liking others’ opinions.
The Inaccuracies
By ‘inaccuracies’, I am just gently referring to all the ways in which we are wrong, but that lead us to justify our decision:
- We have all of the information. I research everything (mainly because I’m a nerd). I do my homework and I do my best to research both sides, keeping an open mind. But this all hinges on the notion that I have succeeded in obtaining the best sources on both sides, which could easily be wrong.
- We understand all of the information. As soon as I have the general idea, I so often stop researching. I feel as though I have reached the point of understanding enough that I can reach a conclusion. But, I never stop to ask people who hold the opposing position if I fully understand their views (this never seems to stop me from also thinking that I understand them well enough to explain to everyone else what all sides of the issue think)
- They lack any information. This one is especially difficult for me. I filter out opinions, assuming that they must not have researched the issue. Otherwise, they would know that they are wrong. I then transition to attacking the sources of their information, regardless of accuracy and validity.
- Changing our view is synonymous with adopting immorality. We have created a worldview that our opinion is morally founded because it’s based on a principle that is the implication of a misinterpretation of a moral stance (based on either Bible, philosophy or logic). Yet, if you look at any social media platform, you can easily find people on either side who feel that they hold the moral high ground. Perhaps, it’s possible that neither or both of us can trace our opinion to morality.
- That a difference of opinion marks a hopeless friendship. Let’s say that our difference in opinion does mark a difference in morality. In what way is the decision to cut someone out of our lives the biblical response? Where did that sense of morality go?
Please don’t hear what I’m not saying– I am in no way endorsing remaining in abusive friendships or to support immorality for the sake of humility. But if we are being honest, those are rarely the true reasons. What we tell ourselves isn’t always the truth. We justify our decision as the only way of ensuring that we are not encouraging the world to be a horrible place. But what we actually mean is that we don’t want our world to force us to adjust our worldview or admit being wrong. I don’t know nearly as much as I would like to think I do (a sad reaction to so much student debt) and there is almost always the possibility that I am wrong or that I could modify my position (even if to only strengthen my position– something you only do if the position is challenged).
