Two different opinions, opposite, irreconcilable, like antonyms. A heated argument, futile attempts to convince the opponent. How often do we enter into a verbal skirmish, defending our truth and not hearing the opponent. What will help to reach a consensus?
Heated discussions on television, quarrels between spouses, heated debates between colleagues … Often their fruitless or destructive results are as far from the truth as the times of Socrates, to whom this aphorism is attributed, are far from us. What prevents us from extracting the truth in a reasoned dispute?
Sometimes — an elementary unwillingness to look for it. We are driven by the desire to insist on our own, to assert ourselves or devalue another, and not to discover what is “true, authentic, fair” (this is how Vladimir Dal defines truth in his dictionary). Example: A student accidentally breaks glass in a bookcase. The teacher is tired, irritated and does not want to find out the truth: if he broke it, it means he is guilty, he must be punished.
He does not listen to explanations, does not seek to look at the situation from the point of view of the student, take into account his opinion and insists on his own. There is no dialogue between them, no equality of relations, no desire to discover the truth.
Truth is always the birth of the new. What was not between these people. For example, understanding and accepting the reality in which the disputants find themselves, with its possibilities and limitations for everyone. Truth is future oriented. It opens up a perspective, allows you to see a clearer, wider field of reality. This creates more opportunities. And when I try to prove to another that he is a fool, I do not discover a new meaning, I do not expand our capabilities. Rather block them.
Truth is not born in most disputes because we are often captured by strong emotions — anger, indignation. These emotions signal the violation of boundaries and protect us in a situation where we are negatively evaluated, hurt. But these defenses do not allow us to hear ourselves, the inner voice and prevent us from understanding the other. How to break the vicious circle?
Try to step back and take a break to see what is happening to me. Do I want to be the way I am now? Do I want to give in to these feelings? Or do I want to be different and understand what’s wrong? This pause may look like weakness, a sign of defeat, but in fact it is strength and independence, because in this way we create for ourselves the opportunity to act not automatically, but meaningfully.
The ability to hear oneself, as well as the ability to speak without judgment, and respect for the other are the conditions necessary for genuine communication. What is respect? This is when the other is important to me — not as an enemy that I follow, but as an interlocutor in whom I try to find interesting, good, worthy.
These principles of communication, described by Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, are now successfully implemented in mediation, a method of constructively resolving disputes and conflicts.
If we can distance ourselves from what hurts us and not succumb to irritation, if we try to hear ourselves and perceive the other as an equal — and if this other responds, striving for dialogue, then perhaps something new will be born in the dispute that will turn out to be true. .