How Do We Disagree?

Tolerance, Free Speech, disagreeing, respect, disrespect, rude offended.

I feel as though we have made things way more complicated than they need to be.

Here's the thing, I travel in a wide variety of circles. I know people who believe a whole bunch of different things and I'm friends with all of them.

I'm talking about religious, political, artistic, and lifestyle beliefs.

It gets crazy complicated when I try to add myself into the equation. I've been struggling for a very long time to figure out what I believe while also listening to the wide variety of conflicting beliefs of my dear, dear friends.

But I don't think it has to be this complicated.

I always see myself as being on the same 'team' as the people I 'discuss' with. I don't think of these as fights where I am on an opposing team trying to get the other person to agree with me. I think of us as both trying to find truth and to understand each other better. Maybe I'll change my mind, or maybe they will, or maybe we will realise that we are both part right and part wrong and we will both change our mind, or maybe neither of us will change our mind, maybe we will continue to disagree, but maybe we will understand each other better.

What I've been doing since high school, in order to keep people from feeling like I'm fighting against them, is saying "this is what I believe but I could be wrong."

I get in a lot of trouble from people who agree with me for always qualifying what I say with "I could be wrong." People tell me that I can't really believe what I say I believe if I'm not presenting it to others as the truth. They say if I care about my beliefs and find they have impacted my life in a good way then I should be sharing them with the people I love.

The people who disagree with me love when I say "this is just what I believe." They usually end up saying "hey man you believe what you believe I'll believe what I believe thanks for not shoving your beliefs down my throat."

Sometimes it almost gets to the place where it's like oh hey you believe what you believe I'll believe what I want to believe and we're all right. This is problematic on a critical thinking and philosophical level.

The truth may be more complex than we think it is. It MIGHT be a complicated conglomeration of bits and pieces of things that different people believe BUT I don't think it can simultaneously be two fully contradictory things.

So we are stuck with one truth, but we can not all seem to agree what it is and some people don't even think they know what it is.

It can be hard if you don't know what to believe because everyone tries to convince you and you try to be open to all of their ideas but you are never free to go figure out what you believe because you get stuck inside a tug of war.

However, all of this is also confusing for people who know what they believe as well. They want to be able to be confident because they are, they want to share what they think will help others, but they need to understand that not everyone agrees and they need to not disrespect those who disagree with them.

I think we all need to learn how to disagree better.

Why can't we just be like "this is what I believe is true and this is why I think I'm right and you are wrong, now please explain your view." then listen and if you still disagree why can't we just be like "Oh, well I still disagree but that's really interesting thanks for sharing and also for listening." Why is there so much pressure to agree with everyone or to disagree but then suggest that we might both be right. Why can't we just straight up disagree but still be respectful? Why do people get offended when someone disagrees with them? It isn't offensive to me if you say you disagree with me, it is only offensive if you hurt me in any way for believing what I believe or attempt to force me to agree with you.

Why is this all so complicated?