"It's not the disagreement that breaks you. It's never getting to have it."
That line stopped me.
Because what you're describing — the pseudo-response, the shape of dialogue without the substance — is something I've spent years learning to recognise and eventually stop spending energy on.
The nod that never connects to anything. The yeah sure that evaporates. The response that feels like engagement but leaves you standing alone in a reality nobody else confirmed.
You hand someone an apple for long enough, and one of two things happens. You start questioning whether it's actually an apple. Or you get precise enough about who can actually see what's in front of them to stop handing fruit to people who were never going to tell you what they saw.
The second one isn't cynicism. It's calibration.
The ask was never agreement. It was just: be honest about what you understand. That's it. And it turns out that's the thing most people find hardest to give.
Beautifully put, as usual. One of the cultural quirks of Utah is a tendency to appear “agreeable” as a moral choice. It started out as religious instruction, “Contention is of the devil” and has since morphed into a rather intense passive aggressiveness that takes a long time for some of us to recognize on the surface, but has very loud undercurrents indeed.
Not a lot of dialogue happens, and frequently, it feels like abandonment with a smile. And I guess that’s what it is, as it’s “improper” to convey disagreement and so people grow up feeling evil for having anger.
Let us disagree. I promise it will hurt less than you pretending to be in this exchange to begin with.
There is definitely effort in every step of creating a space for differing views. When I was in the philosophy program at school, I noticed a trend, but it didn’t affect every student: sooner or later, a student would realize that their arguments were weaker if they put their own being into them. So, it became a sort of lifting out of their person, like a Pokemon, and their ideas would do battle with others’ ideas, while the humans delivering them would remain intact.
It didn’t happen for all students and I don’t think it ever happened for any of us automatically. We grew into it because we were dedicated to the rigor of philosophical inquiry. And it’s tough; it takes time and effort when the arguments are moral and have heavy implications. I credit this process and its accompanying exertion for making me the person I am today.
There is also a price: you become able to hear and hold space for others’ voices, but that doesn’t mean that hearing and space are reciprocated. So, the question of rigor becomes a human one. At what cost do you hold space for those who may not do the same? There’s real risk of isolation and existential loneliness that softens me still when I feel alone.
But for my part, I return to feeling more human by offering the space than by having it guaranteed for me. We all make energy decisions we can live with and everyone is different.
And anyway, it’s just a risk. The benefit still outweighs what I fear I might lose. This is especially important in activist spaces, I feel, as the emotions are more intense and thus the practice costs more. Rigor refines as the boundaries do. “Walls with doors,” my mother told me once.
I believe I might be able to get closer to this place now. I used to do this with less concern for myself, but that was before I understood how things worked for me.
It's likely a matter of self understanding and holding boundaries, as it always has been. I just need to redraw those lines.
As it stands now, when I open myself to others, I'm permeable. My body has been dealing with chronic HPA axis activation for 40 years, so I don't take risks like this anymore, unless they're fully understood.
Reciprocity, for me, is always a health requirement.
"It's not the disagreement that breaks you. It's never getting to have it."
That line stopped me.
Because what you're describing — the pseudo-response, the shape of dialogue without the substance — is something I've spent years learning to recognise and eventually stop spending energy on.
The nod that never connects to anything. The yeah sure that evaporates. The response that feels like engagement but leaves you standing alone in a reality nobody else confirmed.
You hand someone an apple for long enough, and one of two things happens. You start questioning whether it's actually an apple. Or you get precise enough about who can actually see what's in front of them to stop handing fruit to people who were never going to tell you what they saw.
The second one isn't cynicism. It's calibration.
The ask was never agreement. It was just: be honest about what you understand. That's it. And it turns out that's the thing most people find hardest to give.
Yes, exactly. And me too! It took me a lifetime to realize this consciously.
Beautifully put, as usual. One of the cultural quirks of Utah is a tendency to appear “agreeable” as a moral choice. It started out as religious instruction, “Contention is of the devil” and has since morphed into a rather intense passive aggressiveness that takes a long time for some of us to recognize on the surface, but has very loud undercurrents indeed.
Not a lot of dialogue happens, and frequently, it feels like abandonment with a smile. And I guess that’s what it is, as it’s “improper” to convey disagreement and so people grow up feeling evil for having anger.
Let us disagree. I promise it will hurt less than you pretending to be in this exchange to begin with.
I've found that it's very difficult and uncomfortable for people to sit with disagreement without defaulting to defensiveness.
It's a skill that not many have practiced, and very few are modeling.
But I've come to realize that's what I need to do with my platform. Show people how. Live it out loud and in the open the way I do in my own life.
That's what you can expect from me going forward.
There is definitely effort in every step of creating a space for differing views. When I was in the philosophy program at school, I noticed a trend, but it didn’t affect every student: sooner or later, a student would realize that their arguments were weaker if they put their own being into them. So, it became a sort of lifting out of their person, like a Pokemon, and their ideas would do battle with others’ ideas, while the humans delivering them would remain intact.
It didn’t happen for all students and I don’t think it ever happened for any of us automatically. We grew into it because we were dedicated to the rigor of philosophical inquiry. And it’s tough; it takes time and effort when the arguments are moral and have heavy implications. I credit this process and its accompanying exertion for making me the person I am today.
There is also a price: you become able to hear and hold space for others’ voices, but that doesn’t mean that hearing and space are reciprocated. So, the question of rigor becomes a human one. At what cost do you hold space for those who may not do the same? There’s real risk of isolation and existential loneliness that softens me still when I feel alone.
But for my part, I return to feeling more human by offering the space than by having it guaranteed for me. We all make energy decisions we can live with and everyone is different.
And anyway, it’s just a risk. The benefit still outweighs what I fear I might lose. This is especially important in activist spaces, I feel, as the emotions are more intense and thus the practice costs more. Rigor refines as the boundaries do. “Walls with doors,” my mother told me once.
I believe I might be able to get closer to this place now. I used to do this with less concern for myself, but that was before I understood how things worked for me.
It's likely a matter of self understanding and holding boundaries, as it always has been. I just need to redraw those lines.
As it stands now, when I open myself to others, I'm permeable. My body has been dealing with chronic HPA axis activation for 40 years, so I don't take risks like this anymore, unless they're fully understood.
Reciprocity, for me, is always a health requirement.