I also like - not quite to
disagree with people - but the process of discussing/debating with people who hold different views. Is that just being nicer about the same thing?
![Blackeye :blackeye:](./images/smilies/icon_blackeye.gif)
In fact, I consider it to be a rather pleasant form of recreation. In essence, it forces me to consider views that I would otherwise dismiss out of hand. It forces me to clarify my own views for myself and work on expressing them sufficiently well that other people will not dismiss them out of hand. For me, it's not just an unpleasant part of the messageboard experience, but the entire point of the exercise. I have previously left Internet communities because I felt I was agreeing too much with everything being said - and thus entirely failing to grow from the experience of participating in them. To be sure, it's pleasant to have people with whom you agree fully, as long as a community has a whole has a pleasant diversity of views.
Thus, it rarely occurs to me to take disagreement personally (in a Manwë/Symp/LBL style forum), and this is in one way a problem - I expect the other sides to do the same thing. Often, I can be very deep into a discussion, arguing intensely but in no way taking the exchange personally, and a third-party will have to alert me that the person I'm arguing with IS taking it personally and getting hurt by it. This frustrates me greatly - if you're in a discussion forum, surely you are willing to discuss (i.e. be disagreed with)! However, I am trying to be more sensitive to the concept of "hot-button issues" and differing sensibilities.
for the basic reality that everyone is entitled to have different views, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
But I think this is the heart of the matter. None of us thinks that every view is equally acceptable. There are some views that we can agree are simply morally wrong to hold - for example, an extreme racist perspective. Yes, you're entitled to hold such a view, in the sense that I don't think you should be legally penalized for holding it, but most people of good will agree that a belief in some people's inferiority due to their skin color is simply not an acceptable belief to hold.
The problem is when the issue is not as clearcut to everyone. For example, there are other forms of prejudice that I believe are every bit as egregious, reprehensible, bigoted, and outrageous as racism; I simply do not accept that certain discriminatory beliefs are acceptable views to hold. However, others would say that these views are justifiable due to their religious beliefs or different secular worldview. And it is in these situations where disagreeing respectfully becomes more of a challenge - where your respect for the person is called into question, because they hold a belief that you find outrageous and morally wrong AND where you cannot simply state that you respect their belief because you do not.
In essence, this is the situation that hal and I hit in our abortion discussion on b77 - and I hope he will forgive my quoting him here - where he said, "I can't say we should just agree to disagree, because I truly have no respect for your opinion."
I'm not criticizing hal for making that statement, because I think it's inevitable we will all feel that way about someone else's opinion at some point - that we will believe that their view is so morally outrageous that it defies respectability. The biggest challenge is for each of us, at that point, to continue to treat our debate adversaries with the respect they merit as people,
even when we simply cannot respect the opinions they are putting forward.
And SF,
![Love :love:](./images/smilies/th_love51.gif)
. That was pretty funny.