Joseph_F wrote:
Just a comment on what you all are talking about here:
I'd say religion is the touchiest subject to discuss, somewhere just past politics. So it is inevitable that at some point (or more likely often) someone will end up offending someone else in the course of expressing their opinion.
There are two key things to remember about this:
1. Try not to offend people. You're welcome to your opinion, and it's yours to express, but try to remember that the key to polite discussion is respect. Even if you think the other person is completely wrong, offer them the respect of a fellow human being and express your disagreement politely, not in an attacking way. If you lay out your own beliefs in a respectful way, and they get offended simply because you don't believe the same thing as they do, that's their fault not yours. Which leads me to:
2. Try not to get offended. The line between strong disagreement and attack can be very thin, and the person you're discussing with might easily slip over that line. Be charitable and understand that it's difficult to express yourself perfectly in situations like these. Just politely ignore whatever they said that could be taken as offensive, and respond to their ideas in a way that demonstrates to them how to be respectful.
These are the best guidelines I can give you, but it's likely situations will come up anyway, and we'll try to handle them as they come up. Discussing religion is inherently tricky, but I hope we'll find a balance.
Thank you for this post, Joseph.
I will, however, add one twist from some of the work I do. It is the concepts about whether we do or do not control our feelings. One view is that feelings are the one aspect of ourselves that we each, and each alone, can control, indeed that we "choose" our feelings. Another is that our feelings simply arise or occur and that what we can control is how we act or respond to those feelings. This latter view seems to call out for us to have perhaps inordinate awareness and sensitivity to our own feelings (and hence oftentimes for those of others) rather than hiding or camouflaging them behind reason or logic, as many of us are quite skilled and well trained to do.
I.e., I guess what I am saying here is that it is legitimate at times for us to share our feelings, but we need to be able to distinguish such sharing from other types of discourse. I do also think that there is "truth" embedded in the first view of "choosing" our feelings as well -- e.g., we can indeed "choose" not to be offended. But I do believe there is more honesty possible when we acknowledge, at least to ourselves, when we are offended, for example, and then decide what to do about that.
(Again, I'll refer those interested in these concepts about sharing feelings as a part of communications to Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, although there are others who suggest similar relationships between feelings and actions. I am not intending to be on a soap box, only to give credit to one source of these views for myself.)
Pepper
"Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here." -- Leo Tolstoy
