Disagreement

There is nothing more frustrating in an argument than realizing that the person you are arguing with doesn't understand your position. The counterarguments offered up seem jarringly nonsensical, off topic, shallow, misleading, disingenuous, and a whole slurry of other maddening adjectives. We all want to be understood by one another. Those we argue with want to be understood by us as much as we do by them.

So how do we bridge the gap?

The first thing that must be done is to find common ground. A discussion on a topic is pointless if you are not talking about the same things in the same terms. I will illustrate with a conversation that my dad and I pick up and put down from time to time: same-sex marriage. I have found these discussions to be very fruitful, despite being inconclusive.

The main point of confusion is what is meant by the word "marriage." It can really be seen in at least three, distinct but connected, ways: legally, socially, and religiously.

• Legally, marriage is simply a set of rights granted by the government. It's a contract.
• Socially, marriage is how we treat the relationship among ourselves and others generally. Calling my wife my wife, rather than my girlfriend brings to mind a certain level of commitment and seriousness.
• Religious definitions vary more, but in the context of the United States, it's a predominantly Christian system that dominates. Within this context, marriage is defined semi-biblically, with the idea of one man and one woman being the most important aspect.

These are crucial distinctions. When I argue for a legalistically based form of marriage, my ears are not open to counterarguments from a religious perspective. Likewise, my arguments for the legality of the thing don't make a dent in any of the religious underpinnings for what he is saying. This is a terrible place for the conversation to end because we are both frustrated and nothing has been accomplished. It ended there between my dad and I for a long while.

A breakthrough occurred when we started talking about civil unions instead. It's a beautiful term because it separates out the legal side from the religious side. We were finally talking about the same thing! The conversation quickly shifted to become more interesting and meaningful, and I feel like we've become more similar in our thoughts on the subject. We changed each other's minds, at least on the legal front. We still haven't come to terms on the social side of things--I think that "civil union" is an unequal term to "marriage" in a social context; he thinks the opposite. The key is that we're talking about the same things now.

Expanding that thought out to a more general sense can help us lay the basis for other friendly disagreements. It is critical to take turns explaining and questioning each other until everyone there is a basic, agreed upon set of principles and terms. Then the rubber can hit the road.

We can never hope to understand another's thoughts without first finding where they intersect our own. Only then we can see where our ideas diverge and really grow as people, rather than finding ourselves dissatisfied with our disagreements.