From my friend Brenda who (rarely) blogs at Secular Okie:
Good morning beautiful people!
Just for clarification sake, let me point out that disagreement is not an indication of hostility. It is not an indication of personal animosity. It means someone disagrees with what you said or did. That’s it.
Injecting unnecessary emotional aspects to a disagreement, especially emotional aspects that are negative or generally socially unacceptable, is not an ethical manner in which to argue your point. Accusing good people of bad things (personal animosity) in order to cow them into silence about their disagreement is itself unethical; it is arguing in bad faith and fallacious. It’s much more hostile to the other person than the initial disagreement.
Disagreement is no more an indication of personal animosity than my greeting at the top of this post is an indication that ugly people should have a bad day.
Let’s all start approaching one another when we disagree in a more ethical manner, okay? And please feel free to disagree with me, at any time. I will do everything I can to avoid taking it personally. Remember, there is value in disagreement.
Wise words, worth considering.
