How to disagree productively and find common ground | Julia Dhar | Day 32 – 100 Days 100 Thoughts

Hello Folks !!

The title was more than captivating enough for me to check this TED Talk. Aren’t we all tired of losing people over debate? In every channel, we are watching people fighting personally rather than discussing a topic. Personal attacks are carried rather than countering an idea with an idea. Facts are not thrown at each other, rather abuses are hurled at each other. When debates happen only like this, it will be impossible for us to grow beyond what we are right now. So how to have a healthy debate? Listen to this wonderful talk by Julia Dhar.

Welcome Back !!

One of the most beautiful points she mentions is finding the common ground or shared reality. By not doing so we are alienating the other person from ourselves. Most of the time, we see people debating are entirely from two different planets and have no common ground. So, the ideas are all taken personally and they feel their ideas represent their world and they want to save their world and their idea. This aspect of taking their idea and their stand personally involves a lot more and when the opponent starts attacking personally the debate becomes you versus me rather than your idea versus my idea.

This completely stops the refining of the idea and the rebuttals are nothing but personal attacks to prove our superiority. As the speaker says, “Debate is a way to organize conversations about how the world is, could, should be”. We need more debates to make the world a better place. For that, it is essential to have better debates and this is one step towards that.