This is very, VERY true! Do you want to be heard, your opinions and ideas and feelings listened to? Then be patient and listen to others. Find your way through their thoughts and yours will come out as well. If they don’t let you come out, maybe it’s time to find some new conversationalist friends.
“The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it.” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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>it goes back to solomon’s world-weary observation way back several millenia ago: “there is nothing new under the sun”.
just new flavors, new varieties, new packaging. (“now with sprinkles!”)
>yeah me too.
They can both be fun, but the debates are only fun if they are between two strong and willing participants. If one can’t or doesn’t want to challenge and be challenged, it’s no fun for either. One feels bad because she feels like a bully and one feels bad because she feels stomped on.
The exploratory discussions are fun too, but can be extremely frustrating when people just talk and talk with out saying any thing interesting or meaningful, or when everyone just pats each other on the back for believing the right thing. So that kind of conversation is good with the right people too. You have to have open minded creative thinkers participating, otherwise it’s boring, and you end up ‘exploring’ the same trite line over and over.
Interestingly though, some of my favorite discussions have been on things that I haven’t made up my mind about. I like those to be challenging though, because I want to hear many extreme views voiced convincingly before I take a stance (if I ever do).
>I think there is a time for debate and a time for discussion- It is good to know when and with who. It is so nice to be able to just throw ideas around with people; not to have them reinforced or challenged necessarily, but to expound on them. I know a few people that just don’t know how to do this -and while I still enjoy my time with them, I don’t feel like I get as much out of it. I think this is because I feel defensive instead of exploratory. If I’m not sure of my stance on an issue, I don’t want to talk to someone who is just going to try to argue against me. But then again, if I have a strongly held belief it IS productive to argue more aggressively sometimes.
I think both methods of talking are great when they are appropriate.
>That’s really funny because I was thinking that it’s not necessarily true. Sometimes the best truth and most interesting things come about when two people are trying to disprove each other. I am thinking of debate team or a court of law as examples. Even more importantly in science, the investigator’s job is to try as hard as she can to disprove her hypothesis and to have other people try also. That’s a great way to chisel away false assumptions, so that all that is left is the beautiful truth. (like sculpting)
A beautiful conversation contains both building and tearing down, if it contained only building, you would end up with a lopsided, haphazard structure. You need to trim away some things in a conversation.
Of course both parties in the conversation must agree that this is the kind of conversation that they want and that they won’t take the ‘turning overs’ of their ideas personally. Some people go into conversations expecting to have their already-held beliefs reinforced and will have hurt feelings if their beliefs are challenged.