People who get mad at you when you disagree with them or make the disagreement a bigger deal than it has to be
It's easy for a disagreement to get emotional and with each participant to be out of sync with each other's intentions and implications of each point made.
I am insistant on pushing my point forward when I am sure the other person has a few concepts required for the point to be understood, missing. I shouldn't care, but at the same time, I can't continue a conversation when it's predicated on something I know is wrong.
In the end it doesn't even matter (linkin park). However, people should still accept my wisdom because I have all the answers.
It depends on the disagreement, certainly. Some subjects are personal or inherently volatile and it's understandable that people get upset from time to time. But that's not what I had in mind. It's more of a 'how dare you disagree with me' or 'you don't love me if you don't agree with everything I say' sort of thing instead of a 'I understand your position and it upsets me that you have that position' sort of thing.
This is a pet peeve of mine, too, or rather, something which I devote a lot of intellectual energy to in the course of my work. Solve this problem, and we solve the problem of political polarisation more generally imo.
The root of it seems to be in the psychological assignment of causes to persons, which is especially problematic when it comes to ideas. Essentially there is a deeply held sense that
your ideas are deeply rooted in
your fundamental character, and their shape and form is a reflection of
you. I'll quote from a paper by Fritz Heider (one of the originators of social balance theory), which I'll also attach if anyone gives a fuck (though this particular question comes in under attribution theory):
Heider said:
II. PERSONS AS ORIGINS That animate beings, especially persons, are the prototype of origins has been amply demonstrated by many writers. In earlier and simpler ages men knew little and frankly referred the explanation of what they could not account for on the basis of concrete experience, to the world of spirits which, as they, conceived of it, surrounded and permeated their existence. In so doing they regularly sought for an agent rather than a cause (54, p. 654).
In the development of the child's causal thought "the original union of doer and deed forms the schema according to which causal thought can develop" (51, p. 409; this sentence has been omitted from the English translation). The child has the conviction that "all changes that concern me (actively or passively) are 'made to happen'" (51, p. 410). The tendency to attribute changes to personal origins is, of course, related to what Piaget calls animism, that is, the tendency to attribute life to inanimate objects. Animism, or personification, has been explained in different ways. The most common explanation refers to an inference based on analogy and is similar to those theories which contend that we understand other persons' minds because we conceive them as analogous to our own mind. Similarly, it is said that in personification the child attributes to " things properties which it has experienced as belonging to his own person, or to persons of his environment.
To some, because there is this link between ideas and the personalities which generate them (so for example, 'bad man = bad ideas'), they tend to relate to them as if they were persons, and so it is quite possible to get into a situation whereby you, another person, and an idea form a triad which would need to be 'balanced' as if the idea were another person. If you both like the idea, that's not a problem and the triad is balanced; if you both dislike it, same again - it's balanced. However, if one likes the idea and the other dislikes it, then this invokes a
loyalty mechanism whereby the triad needs to be balanced by a change of opinion. If the triad were three people (and not two and an idea), you can see how this forms a natural evolutionary response - loyalty and balance is critical to survival (knowing who your enemies are, &c.).
I've experienced this personally, where my mum (bless her) holds certain delusions about people coming into her house and 'swapping things'. She will demand that I believe her out of 'loyalty', and if I object, withdraws her assent from things I've asked her to believe, which usually goes like this: 'if you don't believe me that my neighbour is stealing my gas, then I don't believe you that your wallet was stolen'. There's a transactional, loyalty-based colour to the exchange of ideas, rather than a more collaborative 'let's find the truth' approach.
It invokes a loyalty mechanism that can become very dangerous indeed, because this kind of thinking is generated by (I believe) more basal and primal survival instincts.
Breaking this personification of ideas is key to our political health as a civilisation imo, but the example that at least you two have been able to do it is heartening. Personally I think the trick is to regard all ideas as transient and provisional (as 'positions' - and this is good language), and try to completely separate them from the persons who hold them.
