Conversation in social media
I pay attention to things I encounter that I disagree with - in textbooks and novels, in movies and in songs, in conversation, and now on the internet and social media, too. Habitually I have tended to try to engage issues rather than ignore them because that’s the kind of guy I am - a thinking guy. But I feel I am relenting in this in recent times. I suppose that for much of my adult life I have appeared to others opinionated and argumentative. But I think that what many think is argumentativeness is really my attempt at camaraderie communication.
Many people don't know this, but disagreement does not mean argumentativeness or belligerence. Disagreeing with someone does not mean you are arguing with them. It means you are having a conversation with them, a dialogue. It might sound counter intuitive, but you cannot have conversation with people that you already agree with. That is more like linguistic mutual masturbation than communication. People take it the wrong way if you don't agree with them, especially on social media because social media is not really used for communication so much as affirmation, and affirmation is what most people are seeking. Tempers flare if you are not agreeable. I guess my desire to use language, media and technology to communicate is naïve, fool that I am. Towards that end, I am prone not to let occasions go without saying something, especially if I disagree.
I am prone to adopt contrary positions just to test the soundness of others’ ideas. It's a linguistic device to take the verbal formula of a statement, observation or proposition and test it. That's not unfriendly, belligerent and argumentative so much as amicably conversational. If an idea is sound, then I don't have to support it by agreeing with it. It is already supported by its own soundness. People are also prone to think wrongly that what I say or write reflects what I really think or believe. Not so. What I really think or believe about things is a profoundly personal and private matter, whereas what I speak or write is more (not always) publicly conversational in the sense of testing propositions in an open forum through a Hegelian linguistic formula that pits a synthesis against an antithesis leading to a new synthesis. I am debating issues so that 1) I can learn better to appreciate other minds; and, 2) I can figure shit out. And that is called communication. But I could be wrong.