Through the course of your life you’ll encounter many people that disagree with you. They might not like your political party, your car, your mobile phone, your religion, or any number of other things.
Why?
If done in the right spirit, it can be useful for both parties if you ask and find out.
Going deeper, though, is trying to frame it from the other person’s perspective. From her book “I Never Thought of It That Way“, author Mónica Guzmán says:
This leads to another one of my all-time favorite questions to ask anyone steeped in assurance about their own position, especially when they’ve just criticized the other side: “What’s your most generous interpretation of why they disagree with you?”
It kind of gets into the idea of a “steel man” — come up with an argument in favor of the side you disagree with. A great example of that (also from Mónica’s book) is “The Waters of the United States“. It’s not something I had heard about before, but it’s a great reason why someone might have voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.
I often try to understand the back story of why someone might disagree with me. Perhaps it will give me more insight into changing their mind, or give me reasons to change my mind, or we might just keep things as they are. Even if nothing changes, the increased empathy that you developed is only going to help everyone involved, so it’s worth trying to chase it down.
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