Has one of these scenarios happened to you?
Scenario 1
You and your family are reconvened for the holidays. All you want for Christmas is peace but inevitable, after just a couple of days back, quarrels break out with arguments ranging from politics to who hurt who’s feelings.
Scenario 2
After a long week, you finally make plans to eat out with your significant other. Someone is taking a little longer than usual to get ready and what initially was an innocent request to speed up turned into an argument about last week's dirty laundry.
Scenario 3
An important decision needs to be made and you and your coworker/classmate differ on what the next direction should be. Even after a compelling back and forth where both you of you layout rational arguments, neither of you budge from your original position.
These scenarios usually end up in two ways, either one comes out “on-top” through the brute forcefulness of their argument and/or an emotional lash-out or both parties leave none the better and none the wiser.
All these scenarios are prototypical in the sense that they all share the same basic structure. Two people both whole-heartedly rejecting the other person's proposition as incorrect while adamantly claiming that their argument is correct.
This is where Divergent Theory comes in. Divergent Theory argues that in general when two people hold opposing beliefs, values, or attitudes on an issue, 90% (this number is made up) of what they are arguing on is already unconsciously agreed upon. In plain, this means that when you are arguing with someone, the big picture and the overall scope of the argument is already agreed upon but the argument gets bogged down in the extraneous. This consists of the semantics, posturing, and minuscule details that can be compromised without affecting both party's intentions.
Why this is important.
Understanding this will save you countless headaches.
First of all, you have to realize that most arguments that ensue aren’t really about the arguments themselves rather about some residual grievance. If you can identify the place where the argument diverges you will be able to sort out your squabble and tackle the larger issues at hand.
For the arguments that do involve higher stakes and the ones that are directly addressing the issue at hand, being able to identify where your argument diverges allows you to reverse engineer the issue and resolve the problem at the place of divergence (what is holding up the argument in the first place) instead of getting bogged down in the details.
One pertinent example of this in today’s society is the issue of kneeling during the national anthem. Some would argue that it disrespects the people that put their life on the line to serve the country while others argue that kneeling down has nothing to do with that and kneeling down symbolizes apathy towards the institutions that are deemed to be racist and discriminatory.
It’s not that one party is right or wrong rather they are arguing past each other. The two parties diverge at what it means to take a knee. If both parties could address in plain what they think the meaning of taking a knee is and also address the other person's complaint, both parties would be in better shape to reaching a consensus and a compromise.
~Joma
