I do not Agree to Disagree
What presuppostitions does “disagreement” hide? Do “agreement” and “disagreement” help (or hinder) conversations, decisions, and understanding?
For a long time now, whenever I hear someone say “I disagree” to me, or someone else, it always sticks in my craw a little bit. I haven’t quite understood why; certainly I want folks I converse with to feel free to tell their own stories and speak about their experiences.
Marshall Rosenberg, developer of Nonviolent Communication, helped me to understand that one can violently appreciate just as easily as condemn. To call me “right”, “perfect”, to grade me with an “A+”, implies that you can also grade with an “F-”, and call me “wrong” and “flawed”. The dark side of positive labels rests uneasily behind the euphoria that such labeling produces.
So how does this apply to agreement or disagreement?
If you say you “disagree” with me, than that indicates you’ve heard me, understood my story, and come to the conclusion that it doesn’t match your own attitudes and opinions well. But what if you don’t understand my story? Only I can say whether or not you’ve heard me; only I can say whether or not I feel that you have gone the distance in understanding me so that I can relax and allow that you have a good grasp of my experience.
In other words, how can you disagree with something you don’t understand yet? You must understand it before you can agree or disagree.
But then, what about when you decide that you agree with me, before you understand me? Has this ever happened to you, where someone responds affirmatively to an opinion of yours, then takes off running, saying all kinds of (in your mind) off-base things, that they think express your opinion too?
So, do agreement or disagreement even matter? They seem so extraneous to the goal of understanding each other. Do we mean anything else by these words, other than the ham-fisted application of judgement and labels?
And what about those conversations where you argue for an hour, and then at the end realize you both “agree”? The waste of energy and emotion over…what?
I’d like to hear about your experiences with agreement and disagreement. When have they helped? Hurt?
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:31 am
Do agreement/disagreement matter?
To what? To understanding Other? Not really*.
To understanding our relationship to Other? Yeah, I think so. At least in an oblique, ill-defined way.
Because, once I understand you, then I find myself faced with the question “What now?”. Do I help you? Hinder you? Smile, nod, and walk away as quickly as I can?
In other words, I think we encounter problems when we rush to agreement/disagreement, but they seem to form a critical part of our decision making processes.
*I have noticed that some people use agreement/disagreement as sort of a driver mechanism for determining understanding. By taking a statement and forming/stating an agree/disagree opinion, they indirectly invite comment/feedback on their own understanding of the initial statement/topic. This method seems to work well for some, while infuriating others.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Jhereg, regarding your “*”:
I’ve noticed a similar use of (dis)agreement too, as a sort of belligerent litmus test for understanding. “I disagree, because of such-and-such-and-such”. “But I didn’t say that - my point involves something totally different, such-and-such-and-such”. “Oh, then I agree.”
It seems to me a person can cut out the middleman and just ask questions or tell their stories, rather than adding in this extra layer of back-and-forth. I bet this would reduce conversational noise by half. If along with no longer evaluating the “rightness” and “wrongness” of statements, one also chose to no longer agree or disagree, I think we might almost have real conversations again.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:50 am
I admit, using agreement/disagreement as a driver strikes me as a little… lazy, I guess. But, then, I generally dislike rushing to judgement on such things, so…..
And truth be known, I’ve probably done it a few times myself.
I don’t know, I think I need to think about this some more. I do think I understand you, but I’m a lot less certain how it plays out.
At any rate, you’ve once again given me something to seriously consider.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:42 am
I feel very strongly about these things at the moment. I felt lately as if discussions both online and offline as well as general communication has broken down over the last couple of years to essentially this whole “agree/not-agree” thing.
Often we already make up our Agree/not-agree position as soon as we hear the current subject of conversation. Then we listen not to the experience of the Other, instead we listen to find flaws in presentation. words talking to words indeed. We focus our attention and energy on affirming or shooting down other people’s experiences.
Thinking about this a lot lately led me to the idea that my experiencing the world really doesnt need anyone’s affirmation, though it does feel good to find yourself in the company of people that at least respect your vision or willing to listen to each other’s stories without a judgemental attitude.
Frankly i feel very tired discussing things again and again. All communication breaks down from that moment we choose to identify with the ideas we defend and attack. Id like to just sit and listen to my friend’s story.
Also, one last point, i have the feeling, the whole (dis) Agreement thing, and the heated discussions and personal investment in “being” right/wrong , happens much more often in larger groups.
simon
June 10th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I have this feeling too. Hearing someone else’s story, and having other folks listen to mine, feels like plenty of affirmation to me.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I’m not sure that “agreement or disagreement” even matters–in the end everyone goes home with the same opinion that they arrived with.
Have you ever changed the opinion of someone who was convinced that he/she was right–and that anyone who disagreed was wrong? I doubt it!
John
August 14th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I have. And others have had that effect on me.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:48 am
“I disagree” is like “ok I get it”, with problems I hope I can show:
Coming to or agreement to disagree or agreement is a two party process; “learning to be with” or “learning to be”, where someone either develops an interface, like two crystals meeting or the boundary of a dictionary, or they absorb the other language into their own, overlaying it on their own existing pattern.
Learning to be someone comes in different forms, you can learn to be me (to some degree), I can learn to be you (same limit) or we can learn to be each other simultaneously.
All those changes can be spotted when we reach coherence; the patterns of communication between us gain a level of stability, and we can pass something back and forth without confusion, change or having to check it.
That’s my understanding of communication, you know you’ve learned it when you can teach your teacher in your own way and he can say yes. (Technically this just means someone has learned, not necesserally that he’s taught you, but does he still have the same quality of coherence relation with the situation that “taught” him? Then it doesn’t matter.)
So when you say “I disagree” you say that you have reached that point of coherence, without checking it. LIkewise if you say “ok I’ve got it”.
So many people are put out at this point, because they have not seen the clear disagreement you claim exists, and they must now trust you that an interface has developed, a partial stabilisation of that relationship. It is cutting short a process of mutual understanding, and so it can be considered as undervaluing a person.
Now this is not inevitable, as people can be considered at different levels of complexity. The “simple you” that I interact with is not all of you, because we stand at a distance over the internet, and you don’t show me everything about yourself. So when I cut short a conversation, I’m saying that I am satisfied we have reached sufficient coherence for the relationship I expect between us. People can be hurt if they expected a closer relationship.
What’s a friendlier version than “I disagree” that performs the same function? Well sometimes tone of voice can do it, saying it with a wobbly unconvinced tone (—¬¬__, my goodness text is bad at this), or saying “I think I disagree” “I’m not with you on that yet” or something. Likewise you can ask “so have we got that sorted/streight?” or “awesome I think we’ve got somewhere”.
But as jhereg says stating disagreement has more purposes than that; like a child saying no all the time, someone can start by affirming their independence. Some people use it to counter “so it’s agreed then”, and actually use it to force people to talk.
September 26th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
How remarkable that someone else just blogged about this recently -http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/644/Why-Saying-I-Understand-Is-an-Act-of-Arrogance
He uses the words “I understand” rather than “I agree/disagree”, but he captures my sense of the problem exactly.
September 27th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Willem,
Thanks for posting over on my site; interesting to hear the 180-degree mirror image of what indeed sounds like the same core concept; I hadn’t thought of it that way (and as I write, I’m resisting the temptation to say ‘I agree;’–it does rise strongly in us).
The implication about stories that you raised in your comment on my site makes a lot of sense to me. I give speeches and seminars for a living, so have become keenly aware of the power of stories, of course to entertain, but mainly because it’s a powerful way to influence.
I am coming to think it is because telling a story sets us free from the agree/disagree dynamic. Something there is in us that hears a story as free of forced judgment–we are free to take it or leave it, as we may. And therefore we become open to the interpretation of another.
Thank you for a provocative piece.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Let us not forget the slightly overoptimistic: “You cannot possibly have understood what I said if you disagree with me.” Enjoyed the post and the thinking that it caused. Thanks.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:16 am
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