Disagreement is part of the human paradigm. The human paradigm is like nature. In nature, there are plants that support life and there are plants that destroy human life. If you haven’t been trained to eat healthy plants in nature, you can easily eat a plant that will poison you. And there are plants that can help and harm your body, depending on the amount administered. Mainly speaking, the same is true of the element relationships of the human paradigm.
For example, disagreement is believed to be part of the paradigm. Disagreement never travels alone. It is usually accompanied by other implicit elements. In other words, if you disagree, you are also likely to defend, validate, invalidate, prove, justify, do the right thing, do the wrong thing, win and lose. While some of you may disagree, I ask you to consider that all of these elements are closely related to disagreement. To disagree, you are taught to validate yourself. Other times you do not agree with anything that corroborates your point of view. You only seek to invalidate the other.
Validation is a big part of the human paradigm and there are many other areas in which you are taught to validate yourself. When you get good grades in school, you validate intelligence and the ability to move to the next level. Therefore, you are rewarded. In addition to good grades, the rewards come in the form of being a well-behaved student. There are others who seek validation by being the class clown. Others turn rebellious. Even the rebel receives validation from other rebels. When these three groups interact, the rebel, for example, may overrule well-behaved students to justify their rebellious behavior. And in the mind of the rebel, they are right.
Two additional elements that have enormous power are the need to dominate and the need to avoid being dominated. These are such an important part of the human paradigm because some people believe that success can dominate their life. They believe that they will have to work long hours or change friends because existing friends will not understand them. In most cases, the fear of being dominated is a perceived threat. Some will even dominate to avoid being dominated.
That said, disagreeing can be like eating a poisonous plant. It can sabotage intimate relationships and careers. How? You may disagree because someone brings up a topic that you don’t understand. Instead of asking questions or saying you don’t understand, you try to validate yourself by disagreeing. And the disagreement is made with nothing to support it. The need may be to validate yourself or to avoid being dominated by an intellectual discussion. In other cases, hearing something new or unfamiliar could make you believe that your past philosophies were wrong. Therefore, you must defend them.
As you can see, disagreeing is almost never as simple as disagreeing. The accompanying elements can be so intoxicating that they become blind spots. When your brain is wired to indulge in those poisonous items or blind spots, you may become addicted to them. Like all addictions, the feeling of euphoria is hard to let go.
Before you disagree, make sure you’re not intoxicated by one of the poisonous elements of the human paradigm. When one of those elements becomes the goal: to be right, to validate, etc., the original intention of the conversation is lost and sabotage may be just around the corner. Instead, participate in the speech. Through speech, two people can express opposing points of view. However, they must first listen to the other without worrying about being right, defending, proving, etc. What you can find through the discourse of opposing points of view is that you can create something that neither of you could have figured out on your own.