Don’t let that turkey get away from you — not even if it tries to turn the tables on you like this:
A cute little culture war in miniature, from long ago. Wonderful social commentary. (I might suggest that a better title might have been “Don’t Ax, Don’t Tell,” but the hell with politics!)
However, for those who find themselves drawn into political arguments against their better judgment, here are ten suggested rules:
1. Be open to the possibility that you’re wrong. Seriously.
2. Approach the conversation with the purpose of better understanding one another’s views, not proving to your relative that you are right and they are wrong.
3. Before you focus on any point of disagreement, ask questions of your interlocutor to figure out why they think the way they do about the subject at hand.
4. Emphasize points of agreement, if there are any.
5. Give them room to agree with your arguments without having to concede that their arguments are stupid, or feeling as if they’ve lost the exchange and you’ve won.
6. Rather than harping on a particular flaw in their preferred policy, ask questions that force them to confront it. “I agree, killing all the sharks would make it safer for surfers. But what about the creatures that sharks eat? How would you make sure their populations don’t explode? Seriously, how would you handle that?”
7. Don’t bother trying to score debating points, especially when you both know that’s all they are.
8. Remember that they know stuff that you don’t, just as you know stuff that they don’t.
9. Remember that lots of intelligent, good-hearted people share their position, and lots of dense jerks share your position, because that’s true of almost every position.
10. Listen more than you talk.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, it seems that the less I care, the easier it is for me to listen.
I’m grateful to be alive and to have friends, and they can disagree with me anytime they want.
And it also helps to keep in mind that the smarter you are, the stupider you are.
Comments
6 responses to “Happy Thanksgiving everyone!”
Sun tzu: If you know your enemy and your self you need not fear the out come of a hundred battles! If you know your enemy ;but not yourself as the wimp liberal does you will lose as many battles as you will win! If you know neither like the tea baggers you will always lose! Just because you believe with all your haert that he is a muslim communist born in kenya does not make it so! Know your enemy’s arguments as well as your own and be able to articulately defend them in debate and then you will be able to give as well as you get!
My enmy is as smart as I am and some even smarter then me! My advantage is that they are evil and self destructive. Nixon was smarter then me ;but he was evil and self destructive that is why in the end good triumps over evil(some times it takes along time!) Nazi Germany Soviet Union and soon coke brothers and tea baggers will all fall from their self destructive evilness!
Nice thoughts, Eric. I hope all the contributors to and readers of this site had a happy and enjoyable day yesterday.
This picture reminds me of the movie Thankskillings Day. It’s hilarious. You should check it out.
The paper “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government” is an example of a common line of psychological research:
1. Researchers give experimental subjects made-up data.
2. The subjects recognize the data as fabricated and ignore it.
3. The researchers cite this as evidence of irrationality.
It looks like cognitive scientists have defined rationality to mean “agrees with anything you are told.”
JH, you touch on a growing problem. What is called “empirical data” and “science” is greeted with skepticism, because there is so much junk out there. This causes the scientists to react with outrage, because they confuse their assertions with facts, and conclude people are blind to “reality” (which of course some are).
Who gets to define reality and empirical truth? Those with credentials? We can see how well that’s working out, can’t we?