LET’S JUST AGREE TO DISAGREE Often in a discussion, a person would declare, “Let’s just agree to disagree”. Sometimes you may accept this and let the debate end there and sometimes you may get a bit annoyed, trying keeping on debating the topic. When you do the latter, you may be told that you’re a bad sportsman, or you’re accused of suffering from an obsession to force people to agree with you. Let me explain how I decide my course of action when I hear those familiar words. If there is a genuine stalemate, that is, if there are key issues to the discussion that simply cannot be resolved through objective, rational means, if our views clearly cannot be reconciled through progressive, evidence based on honest discussion, then, I have absolutely no problem agreeing to disagree. I may even suggest it myself. What really can annoy me, is when some are hiding behind “let’s just agree to disagree” to save face while retreating from an argument that they know they cannot tackle. That is how some people use the “agree to disagree” excuse. Sometimes I can even see it coming. I watch as they summarize each of their points just one last time, just to check that they can’t argue any of them any further, before they say it. Now, coming out of one discussion badly doesn’t mean that you’re wrong all together, or that you have to change your beliefs on the spot. However, I’m reminded of a face to face discussion I had at work with one of my colleagues. After nearly an hour of intense but amicable discussion, he told me, “I can’t answer your points. I’ll have to go and think about what you’ve said and look into the arguments you’ve made more closely”, after which he held out his hand and shook mine warmly. Now, that’s sportsmanship. See, this is a real sportsman, full respect for that. I probably would have done the same in a similar situation. ஜ۩۞۩ஜ
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:30:36 +0000
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