Tag Archives for Anger

The Experts Weigh In – on Disagreeing

Nuggets of wisdom on How, Why, and To What Ends we disagree from some of my favorite writers and philosophers.

As horribly conflict-averse as I am (I suffer from a crippling tendency to be a people pleaser), disagreement has been on my mind lately. I wonder about the best way to disagree, why we can disagree so strongly on things that seem so trivial, and how it is possible that we can disagree so fundamentally and irreconcilably when it comes to some of the most important of issues (think pretty much the entire political landscape in 2017).

And so I have mined from what I’ve read some nuggets of wisdom on disagreeing – among which, fittingly, there is somewhat a lack of consensus. Take from it what you will.

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Bertrand Russell on How to Overcome our Biases

The below is taken from Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy in which Russell strives to objectively describe the contributions made by key individuals in Western philosophy. Early on in the book, Russell acknowledges the challenges of bias and outlines a methodology useful for considering the ideas of others objectively, despite any disagreements we may have with their ideas.

Although the context here is studying the contributions of philosophers, I think this approach could be used in a variety of settings, including those of a political nature where it is often so challenging for one side to truly understand the viewpoints of the other.

“In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held.

Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second.”

All in all,

Two things are to be remembered:

1) A man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence

2) No man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever.

And further,

“When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.”

Eckhart Tolle on How Much Can Seem at Stake Even in the Most Trivial of Arguments

[From Eckart Tolle’s A New Earth]

“What is an argument? Two or more people express their opinions and these opinions differ. Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. In other words: Identity and thought merge. Once this has happened, when I defend my opinions (thoughts), I feel and act as if I were fighting for survival and so my emotions will reflect this unconscious belief. They become turbulent. I am upset, angry, defensive, or aggressive. I need to win at all cost lest I become annihilated.”

Tolle captures perfectly how even the simplest and most trivial of issues can create the most heated of arguments. In these situations, the actual issue at stake is less what is being argued over – but more likely pride, identity, and one’s need to feel right and validated.

Alain de Botton’s excellent The Course of Love carries similar insights in its exploration of the ups and downs in romantic relationships.

Daniel Kahneman on How Facts Don’t Actually Always Matter

In a recent episode of Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast she interviewed Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who has won the Nobel Prize in economics and the author of Thinking Fast and Slow. Together, they discussed how our beliefs – and therefore our disagreements are in many ways fundamentally irrational.

Kahneman is quoted below,

“When I ask you about something that you believe in — whether you believe or don’t believe in climate change or whether you believe in some political position or other — as soon as I raise the question why, you have answers. Reasons come to your mind. But the way that I would see this is that the reasons may have very little to do with the real causes of your beliefs. So the real cause of your belief in a political position, whether conservative or radical left, the real causes are rooted in your personal history. They’re rooted in who are the people that you trusted and what they seemed to believe in, and it has very little to do with the reasons that come to your mind, why your position is correct and the position of the other side is nonsensical. And we take the reasons that people give for their actions and beliefs, and our own reasons for our actions and beliefs, much too seriously…

Even if you did destroy the arguments that people raise for their beliefs, it wouldn’t change their beliefs. They would just find other arguments…

The reason [people] don’t change their minds is that facts don’t matter, or they matter much less than people think.“

Theodore Zeldin on the Benefits of Disagreement

And finally, ever the idealist (see Zeldin’s hopes for the future of creativity and cooking here), Theodore Zeldin describes quite beautifully a different image of disagreement – one in which there is opportunity for growth, conversation, and an expansion of what we had previously considered possible.

“Disagreement forces us to clarify our thoughts, to put thoughts into words, and to discover new questions. Without disagreement, there would be no reflection, no search for truth, no enlivening conversation; humans would have nothing to dissuade them from constantly repeating the same platitudes, nothing to expand their tastes and their sense of wonder.”

(from The Hidden Pleasures of Life by Theodore Zeldin)

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Well, what was the good of that?

A brief reflection on Public Displays of Anger.

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Once, while at Heathrow getting breakfast, I witnessed a little scene. It wasn’t anything big or unusual, but it was indeed a scene.

“And how is everything?”

The waiter walks up to a table where mother and daughter are sipping on the icy remains of smoothies. The daughter looks about ten years old, dressed in her travel clothes, comfortable – grey sweatpants and a grey and pink long sleeved shirt. Straight hair and a bit of a sullen expression, she’s hunched over her smoothie glass, noisily sucking up air and chunks of ice. The mother perks up at the waiter’s approach, and you can tell she’s been waiting, dying, for someone to ask.

“Well, I’m not too happy with your seat discrimination policy,” she announces loudly. I close the cover on my iPad. She has my attention.

The waiter starts, clearly not expecting this. “I’m sorry?”

“Your colleague,” she demands, “Let me speak with your colleague.” And her finger hooks in the air at the young hostess in the front of the cafe.

Soon the hostess has been summoned, and it begins.

“Right,” she starts. Just so you are here with me, you have to imagine her with this strong English accent – think Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances – and so this, “Right” comes out full force posh and authoritarian.

“So how come we’re seated here at a regular table and you just seated the two who just came in at a plush table?” The ‘plush’ table she refers to is one of many along the edge of the cafe, with high backed leather armchairs. The mother and daughter are seated at a table in the middle of the cafe that has normal wooden chairs. “We’ve just finished one 9 hour flight and then we have a 10 hour flight to go. Tired, got my daughter with me, and then we have to deal with this crap of, oh, you can only sit here.”

The hostess is red in the face now – she’s only a young girl. “I don’t understand,” she says, shaking her head.

“I said I wanted to sit there,” the lady says, “and you said, no, one of these tables only.”

I write this off as a complete misunderstanding. I am convinced that somehow the mother misunderstood. From how I was seated and from watching other customers, the hostess gives a choice and the customer chooses. I don’t see why this case would be any different – and there were also other kids in the restaurant, so I don’t think that was a factor.

What is interesting to me beyond the details of this specific case however is the customer/server dynamic and how this lady responded to what she saw as an injustice.

The incident ended with the hostess offering to move the two to a different table and with the mother brushing the suggestion off. “No, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

It was quite a stressful exchange with no obvious material benefit resulting…so, why escalate it? Why did the mother feel compelled to say something? What benefits? What end was she trying to achieve?

She felt like she was treated unjustly, discriminated against. She spoke loudly, perhaps for others to recognize this. She was shaming those that had ill-treated her. When we call out the deficiencies of those who serve us, whether it’s the air stewardess who knocks our elbow with the cart or the waiter who makes us wait too long before taking our order – are we seeking to punish? Punishment being their discomfort? Perhaps we imagine that there could be some negative consequences for the employee. Sometimes, there could be compensation for us, a free dessert, a gift voucher – is that what we’re targeting?

There is also a psychological, emotional element. Of being human and needing to release frustrations, to prove to ourselves that we don’t let people step over us, that we know how we should be treated and know how to stand up for ourselves.

And then there is the customer/server element. Are we crueler to those who serve us than to everyone else? My instinct tells me yes. We are more prone to get angry at someone in a serving capacity than someone not in a serving capacity. We might expect more from those serving and less from everyone else. But also, there is little danger or risk from verbally abusing someone while they’re working. They, by the terms of their employment, do not have the ability to respond fully and defend themselves. Chances are, they won’t swear back at you. They certainly won’t physically assault you.

I just found myself, as the hostess, red in the face walked back to the front of the cafe with the mother and daughter still sitting at their ‘non-plush’ table, wondering, well what was the good of that?