So you’ve spent a long day hiking through the woods. You’re tired, hungry and want to eat something other than granola. It’s getting dark and it’s getting a bit cold.
You find a small clearing and remove any debris before creating a small campfire. It’s just some big sticks and tinder, no need for a roaring flame when it’s just you. You put down your bag and start enjoying the warmth when you hear a set of footsteps.
We often hear people talk about wanting to find their true selves, or to be their authentic self. This often coincides with a big life choice like leaving college or going on a months long road trip. Life gets too confusing and you just need to align with your own internal truth through some mystical, journey-like experience.
This mindset isn’t foreign to most of us. When our life circumstances change, it often feels like we change with it. Many people feel a nagging sense of doubt, of not being sure why they make the decisions they do, or why some things make them feel different than expected. There’s this concept that external forces (work, social constructs, whatever) keep us from truly knowing ourselves and if only we could be in touch with our authentic inner selves, then we could rise above our doubts and problems.
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Think of the most manipulative person you know. You know, the one who spreads rumors to create drama, or the person who knows just how to press your buttons to get you to do something you don’t really want to do unwittingly.
It’s pretty easy to get a sense that the things these people do - even if they don’t result in any harm - are bad. They kind of set off that moral “bad smell” scent that hints at us that something’s wrong. It seems kind of hard to understand why these things are bad without looking at the consequences, and yet it’s possible to condemn manipulation regardless the outcome.
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We’re surrounded by binary choices in our world: the light switch is on or off, we can have a glass of wine or not. We oftentimes want to apply this idea to other situations: our friends like us or not, our work is good or bad. The truth is very few things are actually binary, and almost everything in the world exists as a composition of states - in other words, reality is complicated.
All debates are arguments, not all arguments are debates. We aren’t here to address mindless shouting or simply attacking the other person. In a debate each side has a specific claim they’re trying to defend and advance, and is putting forward evidence for their side or rebutting evidence on the other side.
When two people disagree, why should they bother talking through the merits of each argument and trying to solve it? Why not just shrug, agree to disagree and move on?