Difference in opinions

I wrote an article a while back on why we are so divided, whether its in politics, business, religion etc and some of the key points which explained where these differences came from were; information, experiences and intellectual ability amongst many others. Sometimes we don’t all have the same amount of information, and so we create our opinions based on the limited amount of information we have which means this opinion ends up being different from that of another person.

The opinion I have after reading one page of a book can’t be the same opinion I’ll have after reading the entire book. So thats how we often end up with very stark differences in opinions, we simply don’t have the same information. Even beyond just information, we also have experiences which shape our opinions. Take for example a person who has always been lucky to have his way in life. That experience will give him a positive outlook on life, which makes him think everyone can accomplish everything as long as they think like him and vice versa. This shows us that no matter the topic we are speaking on, we can never fully agree with each other since our experiences differ even before getting this opinion. Finally, you also have intellectual ability, how can you expect to get along with people who have not even gone to school? Their intellectual ability already limits them drastically as to which opinion they can hold.

These are just a few of those aspects which make it such that we have different opinions on certain topics.

Finding a solution

No matter how much I rack my brain, I really can't tell what an efficient solution to this problem is. Mainly because in order for us to understand each other, a certain level of commonality has to be reached in all these aspects. We have to share similar experiences, have the same information and be somewhat close to intellectual abilities to even begin having a semblance of comprehension between us.

Lets take for example politics, aside from the persistent plague of corrupt mismanagement etc there is a divide between what must be done, depending on your information, experiences and intellectual ability you might opt for addressing one problem over the other. I don’t want you to see just the 3 aspects I point out here as being the main, there are actually many more. Depending on who you ask, their priorities might be different, and you’ll notice that it's only when a problem starts affecting a person intimately, that they start caring about it.

How we got so far

Our differences in opinions mostly come from the fact that there are many elements at play here which are effectively going against our mutual comprehension. I can’t really name all of them here because they are quite many and it's actually amazing that we get along. One way in which most systems establish unity and comprehension is by enforcing rules which are immutable.

In most if not all areas which can be controversial, its not surprising to see rules which are immutable. The author didn’t want to leave the comprehension to simple logic but rather put in places rules which don’t necessarily have to be understood but rather have to be followed strictly.

Society has laws, religion has commandments, politics has charters etc,

Another way these could have gone would have been a simple logical explanation as to why things ought to be done a certain way. But as you can see strict rules were established that everybody must follow whether you agree or not and its unless you have rules like these that you avoid any potential arguments of divisions.Without these rules you are just left with a crowd of people all trying to assert their superiority to the detriment of common sense.

Conclusion

I’m slowly learning to accept the fact that we are always going to have differences in opinions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence people are still going to disagree with you. For me, it became a question of whether I want to spend the rest of my time arguing with persons I’ll certainly not convince or doing something much more productive with my time.

Its not like my main goal was to prove people wrong and boost my ego, far from that, not everybody engages into a political or religious argument just to boost their ego. Rather the goal is to better the country and our lives in this case and I think that’s the objective of both parties when they are genuine. That’s why for me it became about finding a way to work with others to attain the goal we are both seeking. If I can work with people of different opinions, I’ll do that. If it’s impossible to do so, then I’ll do it on my own, but I’ll not let myself be dragged in hours long debates, which really don’t do much to change any of our situations in the end.

Arguing with people is quite entertaining. It became for me so entertaining to the point where I’ll voluntarily incite arguments just to get the conversation going, but I eventually ran out of fun. It wasn’t fun anymore for me and I needed to find something better to do with my time.

Thanks for reading ☺️