A three team tug of war is how I view my strategy when I voice my disagreement with someone about something. I generally view myself as one of the teams and the two other teams as those who disagree with me trending toward the opposite extremes. When I have heard a lot of one side of an argument and not the other, I will usually view this like one of the two teams is pulling the other team too far. Thus, I will often jump in and argue against that view. In my analogy, I would be leaning my team so that I am pulling harder against the strong team than the weak one. There are at least three problems with this perspective on life, though.
The first problem is that it always makes me think that I don't have an extreme viewpoint because I can always find people or philosophies that are more extreme than I am. I know some of the things I believe are relatively extreme when compared to someone typical. As a result, perhaps my motives aren't as noble as I think.
The second problem is that if I am around individual people only in certain contexts (for example, in liberal or conservative environments) I will look more extreme in my beliefs than I really am. I remember being in a Christian Philosophy class a few years back and someone I had been acquainted with for a couple years noted that she didn't realize how liberal I was. I probably wasn't really as liberal as she thought I was, though. I just played the devil's advocate a lot with some of the more conservative people in the class.
This is probably the problem that bugs me the most because I don't like people thinking I believe something that I don't.
The third problem is that there are some people who must feel like I am always disagreeing with them. I don't know if this makes the problem more or less extreme, but I generally (but don't always) follow a few specific rules in deciding whether to pipe up.
- I stand down when someone is too sensitive or immature to deal with my disagreement.
- I stand down when I don't care enough about the issue.
- I stand down when I don't think disagreeing will make anyone understand my point of view any better, and when disagreeing won't assist me in understanding the other person's point of view.
5 comments:
Am I reading this right? Sometimes you say what you mean, sometimes you don't? Sometimes you feel like a nut? Sometimes you don't?
On a more serious note, it sounds like you put a lot of thought into what you say and have specific reasons behind what you say. I have to admit that I do that with some people more then others. Sounds like you pick and choose based on your audience?
I know you like to play devil's advocate sometimes to make people think about the other side.
I liked your tug-of-war example. Having just been reading some of his works, it sounded very CS Lewis-ish to me - using a picture of something easy to imagin of a concept that is otherwise difficult to explain.
More than once I have reacted to arguments by overcompensating and pulling in the other direction. It is frustrating that sometimes when you do this to people on both sides of an issue, you find yourself alone in your own camp, because each of the other parties thinks you have chosen the side that is against them.
Now wait a second. I thought I was the only one playing devil's advocate for lack of a better term. So if everyone is playing devil's advocate, then we are all falling for each others game and no one is expressing thier true feelings on said subject, and also we are not as enlighted as we think. I think that is what you call a merry-go-round.
I stand down very easily and very quickly when people disagree with me and go home and have discussions with Dar about what I really think, and what I think about the other person's perspective. I think that is cowardly. If I am good friends, I feel I can say what I really think usually. If I know I differ with a friend on something, i.e. politics, I just don't go there.
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