"You Are Inferior"

2036:

If I think your views are inferior to mine and if I try to tell you “you’re wrong”, your hackles rise, maybe mostly because it feels like a criticism of you as a person (“So, you think I’m inferior?”) If I believe I’m right and you’re wrong it seems like I’m brighter than you.

In any discussion about ethics, when I win the point, I also lose the point. No true advancement has taken place. All we have is a satisfied feeling that we ‘got that one across’. We said it strongly. We proved our point.

Confrontation and emotionally-charged one-upmanship gets us nowhere, as communicators. All the time we can see a tight lipped intention not to change we aren’t making the connection. We haven’t got a fair-minded exchange of views happening.

Perhaps there’s something we ‘righteous’ vegans have in common, when talking about our favourite subject - we are NEVER wrong. That more than anything else makes people dig their heels in.

But if that ‘better-than-you’ isn’t there then everything changes. Each side can let rip. Each knows this isn’t going to get ‘personal’. We can indulge in the most outrageous disagreements. It can all seem like fun even though the subject is so deadly serious. It can, in a zany way, seem quite constructive, as if our ‘jewels of wisdom’ may be tasty enough for ‘take-away’. For later, private consideration.