~ why are you here? ~

"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."
-- Stephen Covey

Answer me this one question: why are you here?

Some will have come to teach. To see if there is any place in which they can interject their hard begotten truths. They read through these chapters and constantly analyze them while asking themselves the question "where can I refute? Where can I correct?"

Some will have come looking for drama. Drama is addictive, and sitting back in their seat with a bag of popcorn while there's a comment section breakdown can be a tempting activity.

Some will have come merely out of curiosity. They look for engaging mental stimuli, something to make them think. To make them question themselves and strengthen their own opinions by encountering the new and diverse reasonings of others.

So which one are you? Which one am I?

Chances are, whilst some fall point blank into a single category, the majority of us are a complex mix of the three. I myself am plenty guilty of engaging in the first two, I willingly admit. We all are. It is my intention, however, that only the third kind will be encouraged here.

~ hearing vs listening ~

Listening is a practice that seems to be falling out of style the more time passes. We use it interchangeably with the word "hearing", but they aren't even close to the same thing.

Definition #1*

hear
/hir/
verb
perceive with the ear the sound made by (someone or something).
"behind her she could hear men's voices"

Basically, we can gather that "hearing" is the physical act of perceiving sounds. You "hear" someone's words, you gather the surface meaning of them. You "hear" them. But do you listen?

Definition #2*

listen
/ˈlis(ə)n/
verb
give one's attention to a sound.
"evidently he was not listening"

There is a distinct difference between the meanings of the two words. We've already parsed out "hearing", but "listening", as can be gathered from the definition, you are paying attention to a sound. You don't just perceive it, acknowledging its existence on a physical level. You put in the added effort of attempting to analyze the sound. In this case, the sound is someone's words, or more specifically, their written words. We can keep the definitions of listening and hearing even though, literally, there is no sound involved in this process, considering this is the internet and we're typing. That does not, however, invalidate the point:

Hearing is to acknowledge someone's words. You may pick up on the surface meaning of them, but listening is to consciously search the meaning of the words, intentionally picking up on more than what is on the surface. The difference is in the passive and the active.

* - definitions courtesy of Google.

~ the identity crisis ~

There's an issue that I notice in nearly every debate and discussion that I come across, and it aggravates me to no end.

We all do everything we do because there is something to get out of it. In the case of debate, the most common reason people seem to come is to heighten a sense of elitism, affirm to themselves their own "rightness" and the other person's "wrongness", and so on and so forth. All this seems to show through in the manner in which we speak to each other. There is no respect. There is a block, a cognitive and emotional barrier we subconsciously throw up. We can't seem to comprehend that the other person is as passionately convinced of their side as we are of ours. From their perspective, they're right, and we're wrong. We throw up the aforementioned barriers because this forces us to confront the very real question: "what if, thinking in objective hypotheticals, I am the wrong one?"

Scenario: A girl argues with their siblings over something rather trivial, convinced she is right. Maybe she blames them for taking something from her room. The argument goes on forever, and she won't listen to them when they try to convince her that they didn't do it. But then, in a short window where she takes a breath, the sibling is finally allowed to present evidence that very likely proves they were right all along. However, the girl is still so hyped up on her anger that she chooses to ignore this information, and continues to berate them for something that, upon further examination, she might realize they didn't do.

This whole situation could have been avoided if the siblings had chosen to, instead of leaping head first into what THEY wanted to say, listen open-mindedly to what the other had to say.

This applies on every scale of debate, from sibling squabbles and petty arguments to politics, religion, and war. From an objective viewpoint, there is always some chance that any one of us could be (and probably is) in the wrong to some degree, no matter how convinced we are of our points. Considering the numbers, what makes us think each think we, of all the people who have ever lived, are the most righteous of them all? Even if we don't consciously say that to ourselves, we act as if we believe it, with our main goal being to convince everyone else of our rightness. It's the root of all the problems with discussion that we have.

~ the elitist's outrage~

If we are so convinced we are right, then why do we act like our opinions will crumble at the first blow? We keep our opinions so close to our heart, that when they are challenged, we can't seem to handle it. We blow up, a massive ball of anger and indignation throwing every low blow imaginable to defend our points. But why? If it were something like whether a certain pair of shorts were technically considered brown or beige, we would likely not get nearly as frustrated at the person who disagreed with us. So why do we react this way? What is it that makes these "controversial" topics so controversial in the first place?

There are a few different things that make us different from one another, which explains why we aren't all exactly the same. These things are our brain structure, our experiences, our values, and our perspectives. All these meld together to create our worldview, which is often the defining trait of our beings.

Brain structure is something that we have the most limited control over, and debatably, we have none at all. We are born with it, and it is the way it is, with the changes we can make to it being the most difficult. We each have different levels of different hormones, brain section sizes, and chemical deficiencies, which cause us to feel different ways about everything we encounter. We base our entire selves on how we react to and perceive these things, and all of that is affected by our brain structure.

Experiences are also something we have a limited control over, as they are synonymous to our circumstances. Everything that happens to you teaches you something about how the world functions: the catch is that there's no guarantee that what it teaches you is accurate. We grow up in whatever place we grow up in, and by the time there is anything significant we can do to change that, we are already crafted by those experiences in ways that will define the rest of our lives. Everything we see, do, feel, touch, taste, all of it, is constantly analyzed and used to define our reality. We are constantly taking in information to build our internal model of reality, but we are limited to whatever it is that is within our reach, and what is within the reach of one person may not be within the reach of another.

Perspectives are linked strongly to experiences. They are, by definition, synonymous to your point of view, your interpretation, and your stand-point. All of these are also limited, to some degree, by our experiences. We view things from the perspective of our place in life, naturally, but when we become aware of the boundaries of our perspective, we are more than capable of changing it.

Values are what we come to perceive as the hierarchy of importance. Our brain structure and our experiences teach us about the world with whatever information they can reach, and with that information, we construct a tower with the most important things (according to our perspective) on the top and the least important things (according to our perspective) on the bottom. Each person, again, has a different set of information they take in throughout their developmental years, and this is how we come to have different perspectives, different worldviews.

Everyone has that aforementioned hierarchy of what concepts they think are most important, not just to them, but what they think should be valued most by society. They ASSUME that everyone shares their hierarchy and this causes the "how could you even think that?" arguments. We assume everyone has the same values as us, failing to see that everyone's Valuation Hierarchy, being tied to everyone's different circumstances, is going to be unique. This hierarchy has great influence over people's opinions. If you value "a woman's freedom/autonomy" over "the possibility of affecting an unborn child's life", then of course you'll be pro-choice. If the reverse, then you'll likely be pro-life. If you value freedom over safety, then you'll probably be pro-guns. The list goes on and on and on.

All of these experiences are held close to our hearts. Our experiences are what define both our worldviews and our identities. If someone questions our opinions, our worldviews, then they must be questioning our experiences. And if they are questioning our experiences, then they must be questioning our identities. We are normally so insecure in ourselves that a perceived question to our identities must be repelled at all costs, even the cost of logicality and reason, so we move toward anger and indignation and finger pointing and elitism and all of the things that make having a discussion so difficult without causing an outrage.

We need to allow ourselves to hold our opinions loosely, not in clenched fists. It's then that we get tied up in our identities, and then when we disagree, the worst of the human emotion palette is let loose. We need to comprehend, consciously, that we are NOT our opinions. If an opinion is proven wrong, that does NOT invalidate the rest of us. We WILL NOT crumble.

~ the art of respectful listening ~

"When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.
  -- Stephen Covey

Over the years, I've slowly started coming into this understanding. I'm not perfect, and I'm not there yet, but I have started to relish being proven wrong, because it's an opportunity to expand upon and improve myself. If the other side makes a logical point, then I'm more than open to changing my opinion as a result. After a long time of deliberation, I very well may, or I may not. All I can do is remain as reasonable and true to myself as possible. I can't get sucked into the Relief of the Label. This has led to me very much enjoying discussion over the controversial topics, and is part of why I am here now, writing this; I don't view the other side's debate as an attack upon me personally, but rather as an opportunity to improve upon and better myself through further cognition and comprehension than I could have achieved on my own.

If you are here, these are the things that I hope to encourage among any future discussion:

- A willingness to be proven wrong. If we are all here to preach, then we'll be yelling at brick walls, not having a legitimate and reasonable discussion.
- Acknowledgement of the fact that our opinions are not divine, and that they are built the same everyone else's. We need to be willing to understand this in order to be at peace with ourselves and keep from flying into "The Elitist's Outrage".
- Respect, above all else. If you can't completely say you agree to all the terms above, respect and courtesy are the most important way to make sure you don't get asked to leave. If everyone is disrespectful to one another, then this will become an emotional slaughterhouse.

The only way discussion can be productive is if these points are agreed to by the people who choose to get involved. Anyone who doesn't agree to these is going to hit a roadblock that cannot be moved until these points are resolved. The ground we would stand on is so vastly different there would be nothing to debate, as this is the root of the problem.

Now, some might say that I am contradicting myself, in that I am using definitive statements when I just went on about how any one of us could be wrong. I want to address this concern once and for all right here, to keep it from coming up again. Basically, I am also writing this as a practice in persuasive writing, as that is frequently the kind of school essay I am assigned. To do this, I must use definitive statements to some degree: it would be exhausting to write every sentence 100% open ended. Just know that the intent behind the statement is not to assert my own reality, but to present it with an open mind and hope it is received in the same way. I am open to being challenged. But these are the guidelines for this book, in order to encourage a peaceful and beneficial environment.

~ Nik