I try to keep potentially offensive language out of my posts and recommendations in order to keep the focus on the message. It is extremly easy for many to miss the point of a conversation, debate, or argument because they do not like the words being used. It is unfortunate but a fact. Sometime there are things that can be said in no other way. Ideas that lose meaning if we water down the words. This post is, in my opinion, one of those things. I ask you to look past the chosen words and listen to what is being said.
PAX,
Jim
Even as adults, we still have to deal with bullies, at work and otherwise. Stanford Professor Bob Sutton has devoted his career to studying organizational behavior and dysfunction, and lately, figuring out how we can avoid or deal with people who demean, disrespect and drain those around them. The professor of management science and engineering draws on academic research and anecdotes included in his new book, “The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt.”
One of the projects I’m involved with is successmotivationinspiration.com, a podcast, Facebook Group and website that was the brainstorm of my friend M. Curtis McCoy. Curtis and I spent some time together a few weeks back talking about my weakest subject, myself.
If you’re looking for a place to be inspired please visit one of the links above and experience the positive side of this world. We want to see you succeed.
I spent the past weekend relaxing with old friends. While it was a busy weekend, we had plenty of time to catch up. Over the course of the weekend, we discovered how much we have changed in just a few years. We live very different lives and hold very different—I would even say opposing—views on religion, politics, and life in general.
But that didn’t stop us from having a great weekend. Nor should it have. Few friends agree on everything, but we can—and should—be willing to make friends with people who hold different beliefs and come from different backgrounds.
Maintaining these friendships is easier said than done, especially if we find the other person’s views disagreeable or offensive. But it is possible. The secret to staying friends with someone who disagrees with us lies in our attitudes towards each other. Here are three attitudes that are key to being able to maintain friendships with people you may disagree with:
(1) Intellectual Humility
We need intellectual humility—an awareness of our own intellectual limitations and fallibility and a willingness to consider new ideas—to have good friendships.
Every one of us has likely talked to someone who lacks intellectual humility. This sort of person is easy to sniff out. When confronted with an opposing view, they react in one of two ways: they bully their opponent into submission or retreat into a chilly, patronizing silence. Either way, a person lacking intellectual humility can’t handle anyone challenging their (often tenaciously held) beliefs.
The intellectually humble person, on the other hand, is a pleasure to be around. While they won’t compromise their beliefs to get along with other people, they will take other people’s beliefs seriously. They are passionate about finding the truth, and an intellectually humble person will readily change their mind if they can be proven wrong.
It’s easy to see why this virtue is necessary to a good friendship. Even the slightest disagreement will disrupt a friendship with someone lacking intellectual humility. And on the flip side, intellectually humble friends will listen to even the most eccentric theories and weigh them fairly, which allows friendship to thrive even among people with different beliefs.
(2) Respect for the Individual
If we would like to be friends with people that we disagree with, we must also recognize their individual character. It can be dreadfully easy to think we know all about a person just from knowing their race, political leanings, religion or orientation. But even if we know these details about a person, do we really know them?
Saying that we know a person just because we know a few demographic details is like saying that I know exactly what Argentina is like just because I can list off a few facts about the country. Obviously, I know nearly nothing about Argentina compared to someone who lives there.
But similarly, we can’t claim to know a person unless we spend time with them and get to know them. Even if we know their political leanings, do we know why they lean that way? And if they are from an ethnicity different than ours, do we know how growing up with that background has affected them?
Properly speaking, friendship is between two people. If we look at people as if they were just the sum of a few general details, we aren’t looking at them as people, and we will never be able to be friends with them. But by learning more about their thoughts, motivations, questions, and stories, we start to see them as they are. Getting to know a person in this way is the foundation of a good friendship.
(3) Brotherly Love
I use brotherly love to describe the general goodwill between friends, but it could also be referred to as humanity or benevolence. It consists in seeing and loving the good in another person.
Brotherly love plays a critical role in preserving a friendship between two people who disagree. For instance, if two people disagree about hot button issues, it’s frighteningly easy for one friend to get in a fit of anger, accuse the other of injustice, and storm off. But brotherly love prevents this sort of reaction among friends. Instead of getting angry, the friends give each other the benefit of the doubt because of their mutual goodwill. They strive to see the good in their friend’s beliefs. And even if they find their friend’s views wrong or offensive, they take the time to investigate why they hold these views.
While there are some things that friends may never agree on, the brotherly love they share, coupled with intellectual humility and care for the individual person allows them to remain friends despite profound differences. Could developing these attitudes help preserve our friendships with the people that we both love and disagree with most?
“Modern educators love to talk about ‘critical thinking skills,’ but not one in a hundred even knows what he means by the term.
[…]
In fact, the next time you hear an educator use the term ‘critical thinking skills,’ ask him what he means and see what happens. You get the same reaction you would get if you were to politely interrupt a cheerleader in the middle of her routine and ask, ‘When you say ‘rah-rah, sis-boom-bah,’ exactly what do you mean?’ You would get a blank stare. The words have no substance in themselves; they are meant merely to elicit positive emotions. It is the same with the term ‘critical thinking skills.’ It is the educational equivalent of shaking pom-poms.”
There is a tendency for modern schools to advertise themselves as providing students with “critical thinking skills” in contrast to the supposedly antiquated model of supplying students with factual knowledge. But as modern research is finding, there is no such thing as critical thinking without factual knowledge. According to Washington University professors Henry L. Roediger and Mark McDaniel:
“Pitting the learning of basic knowledge against the development of creative thinking is a false choice. Both need to be cultivated. The stronger one’s knowledge about the subject at hand, the more nuanced one’s creativity can be in addressing a new problem. Just as knowledge amounts to little without the exercise of ingenuity and imagination, creativity absent a sturdy foundation of knowledge builds a shaky house.”
In other words, a student simply can’t think critically about science unless he knows and can define certain terms; he can’t think critically about a foreign language unless he memorizes the vocabulary; and he can’t think critically about history unless he remembers important dates and figures.
When participating in a recent debate, Cothran was pressed to provide his definition of critical thinking skills. His answer? “Logic.” He explains:
“It is an interesting fact that the people who say they want to improve our schools spend so much time talking about ‘critical thinking skills’ and so little about logic. One of the reasons is undoubtedly that the word ‘logic’ is much more concrete. It implies learning and being able to use a specific system of rational rules that can be taught—what the ancients called an ‘art.’ Logic has an actual history of having been taught, and taught in a certain way. It is not nearly so amorphous as the term ‘critical thinking skills.’”
If this is the case, can we simply discard the amorphous term “critical thinking” and start teaching students the principles of logic once again?
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