Thursday; May 8

Have you ever thought about why we argue so much?  It seems like no matter where we turn people are looking for an argument.  Honestly, I get why there is so much disagreement – I mean with a national population of around 340 million people and a worldwide population of over 8 billion people, that’s a lot of diverse opinions.  So, while disagreements are all but inevitable, the thing that concerns me is how many disagreements turn into perpetual arguments.  There are too many of us who just aren’t willing to work things out with others.  As I thought about this the other day, I got to wondering if the issue wasn’t the topic, but the perimeters of the debate.  We can’t come to any sort of resolution because we are looking at things through different lenses.  I think there are at least four categories of disagreements:  personal, political, moral and spiritual.  Personal disagreements are matters of preference … political disagreements are based on how we believe government should operate … moral disagreements focus on how society views an issue and spiritual arguments deal with our most deeply held religious beliefs.  Now, this may sound pretty basic, but what happens when you are arguing something from a political perspective, and I am coming at it from a spiritual viewpoint?  What if I think something is a moral issue, but you see it merely as a matter of personal preference?  It is easy to see how disagreements can keep on going if we aren’t in the same ballpark.  By leveling the emotional plain, we might be able to understand where someone else is coming from and why we are so intense in our beliefs.

No, I don’t think we will ever be able to come to an agreement on many issues, but I think we can decrease the heat and the animus by merely defining the boundaries of the discussion.  When we intentionally set the parameters of the discussions – we might not end the debate, but we might eliminate the many of the hard feelings they generate.

Think About It!

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