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I’ve become much more concerned when I see people being too polite and conflict avoidant than when conflict is surfacing and being heard. Hidden disagreements are much worse than surfaced disagreements.
The key word in our definition of a disagreement (an unacceptable difference between two perspectives), isn’t “difference.” It’s “unacceptable.” Once the clash between perspectives becomes unacceptable, our motivation shifts from understanding minds to changing them, and from that shift springs a world of trouble.
Sometimes our attempts to change minds can actually have the opposite effect, making people dig in their heels even deeper in their current belief. It’s called the backfire effect.
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A mind is more like a pile of millions of little rocks than a single big boulder. To change a mind, we need to carry thousands of little rocks from one pile to another, one at a time. This is because our brains don’t know how to rewire a full belief in one big haul. New neuron paths aren’t created that quickly. You might be able to get a tiny percent of someone’s mind to rewire to a new belief in a given conversation, but minds change slowly and in unpredictable ways. You might be changing it in the wrong direction.
Every relationship is like a garden, and every garden has weeds. Arguments are the little weeds of our relationship that grow up around the things we intentionally plant.
The easiest thing you can do to have more productive disagreements immediately is to remember to ask the other person: “Is this about what’s true, what’s meaningful, or what’s useful?” Is this about the head, the heart, or the hands? If you can agree on the answer, then you’re on your way.
The three realms are: anxiety about what is true (the head realm of information and science), anxiety about what is meaningful (the heart realm of preferences and values), and anxiety about what is useful (the hands realm of practicality and planning). Each of them represents a part of reality that has its own rules for validation and different implications in a conversation. What works to resolve a disagreement in one realm will not work in the other two.
The antidote to arguing with a projection is to always know whom you’re disagreeing with, make sure they’re a real human being in the conversation with you, and then actually listen to their argument rather than putting words in their mouth.
THE GIFT OF DISAGREEMENT Truth 1: Arguments aren’t bad. They’re signposts to issues that need our attention. Truth 2: Arguments aren’t about changing minds. They are about bringing minds together.
Truth 3: Arguments don’t end. They have deep roots and will pop back up again and again, asking us to engage with them.
Watch how anxiety sparks Anxiety sparks when a perspective we value bumps into another perspective that challenges it in some way. If we find this new perspective to be unacceptable, that’s when our “Someone is wrong on the internet; I must correct them!” impulse leaps into action.
Anxiety is subjective.
You’ll also notice that anxiety doesn’t have to lead to a disagreement.
HOW TO STOP ANXIETY FROM DERAILING YOUR DISAGREEMENT When you notice anxiety, pause and ask yourself: are you anxious about what is true, what is meaningful, or what is useful?
Ask the other party the same question. Do they give the same answer or something different? Narrate out loud what each of you is anxious about (this buys more time and slows things down). Reiterate how each of you answered the question to see if that leads to new connections for yourself or the other person. Check to see if either of you is willing to switch to what the other is anxious about. Who has more cognitive dissonance happening and could use the other’s help?
At what point do you lose empathy for the other side? And how well do we understand how the other side sees us? The key to not demonizing the other side too hastily is to understand where the automatic tendency to demonize others is coming from—our internal voices—and to double-check with these internal voices that their stereotypes are accurate.
Cultural references that help implant this voice in us include: The belief that strength and power are evolutionary advantages Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and military strategy in general A common refrain in Silicon Valley: “Fake it till you make it.” Nike’s slogan “Just do it!” Gunboat diplomacy, a policy under which nineteenth-century imperial powers used displays of strength to intimidate less powerful states to concede power to them. This strategy is embodied
The voice of power is the ultimate conflict-resolution strategy, because you can’t argue with sheer force.
The voice of power is useful beyond one-on-one combat as well. Totalitarian dictatorships use this strategy to rule, silencing and even killing dissenters. Revolutions use the voice of power to eventually overthrow those dictators and start anew. The only downside of the voice of power is that a battle must occur, which potentially damages both sides. So while it’s the oldest known strategy to resolve pretty much any disagreement imaginable, it’s also the most expensive. It’s not sustainable without significant turnover if those in power are expected to fight every challenger—which opens the
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Whenever you hear yourself or someone else say, “This conversation is over!” “We’re done here!” or just a flat “No means no!” and the speaker is in a position to enforce that declaration, they’re using the voice of power. Whenever we resort to blocking, censoring, or exiling people or their dangerous ideas, we’re exercising the voice of power. There’s undeniable satisfaction in these moves, of course, as well as immediate benefits from shutting down an unproductive conflict with a ruling in your favor, but there are also downsides.
Institutions that make use of the voice of reason as an enhancement on top of the voice of power include: Religion: A system of belief that includes faithful membership as a criterion for spiritual reward. May resort to violent extremism if reason fails. Democracy: A system of government wherein citizens exercise power by voting and benefit from an agreement to follow the rules of citizenship. May resort to revolution if reason fails. Capitalism: An economic and political system wherein everything is traded for money and valued by its price. May resort to sanctions, buyouts, lobbying,
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What these institutions all have in common is an internal system of reason constructed on top of a system of power.
When addressing conflict using the voice of reason, the greatest crime is to betray the group and the ultimate punishment is to be exiled from the group.
If a Catholic bishop refuses to recognize the authority of the pope, he won’t be a bishop for long. If an employee decides that they disagree with their work hours, they won’t have a job for long.
The dynamic that reinforces the power of the voice of reason within the group also presents its greatest flaw: each of these institutions must adopt different strategies for resolving disagreements within their institution than they use when resolving disagreements across institutions. Institutions of reason aren’t well equipped to have productive disagreements with other institutions that don’t respect their primary system of authority.
The voice of reason shines when it speaks to people who belong within the same group.
Our three default voices (of power, reason, and avoidance) were all inherited from our culture.
But as is true of yanking weeds out by the stem, their solutions are only temporary. Each voice creates shadowy side effects that stick around and eventually come back to reverse some or all of the progress initially made.
The fourth voice, the voice of possibility, represents a way to approach conflict that diverges from the first three.
prepare us for today’s conversational climate. The first three voices attempt to resolve conflict, because conflict is seen as a problem. The voice of possibility seeks to make conflict productive, in the same way that a skilled gardener realizes that weeds are merely unloved flowers, and sometimes those unloved flowers produce sweet, sweet berries that can make delicious pies.
The voice of possibility encourages us very explicitly not to do what the other three voices have made habitual in us, which is to find a way to uproot and kill the conflict.
Discomfort is key to our growth, and desirable. Repeat after me: Discomfort is key to our growth, and desirable.
