Extremist! Bigot! Hypocrite! Racist! Misogynist! Radical! Sexist! It’s surprising how quickly a well-meaning conversation over a Thanksgiving feast can become so politically heated.
Despite what many may believe about their situation, this is no isolated incident. Families all across the nation are locked in verbal combat every year during a holiday often associated with unity and celebration.
In many cases, all it takes is someone deciding to interject with their take on recent news.
This single comment can set the spark required to launch an entire room into a thirty-minute whirlwind of passionate emotion, entrenched opinion and suspect reasoning about a topic of which they had just learned. It seems as though attacking those of the opposite opinion is the default reaction for many.
This boxing match is often unproductive; however, a great deal of value can be found in argument. Contention is what makes us human. It is a healthy part of life — to a point of course.
Instead of avoiding disagreement, we must learn how to engage in healthy arguments in a way that opens our horizon of understanding. We begin walking a dangerous line the moment we rule out the opinions of others.
A useful tool to evoke productive arguments is concession. Calling attention to the common ground between your family or friends’s arguments and your own — or even highlighting the validity of an element they are discussing — can foster relatable and civil discussion. If we remember the person across the table has just as much a desire to be heard as we do, we gain respect for one another.
In an effort to avoid ignorance by simply parroting what we’ve been told, we have to do more than simply intake information in order to form our own opinions. Mutually respective discourse serves as a means by which we test and refine what we believe.
The opinions of those around us can be right or wrong — regardless of how passionately they are conveyed — but what is important is listening to all sides to decide that for ourselves. When one chooses to partition themselves off from any oppositional information they are setting themselves up to make uninformed decisions.
An opinion formed from a single source is often not an opinion at all, but rather a regurgitation. Argument is key to challenging and refining one's beliefs and there’s no better place to practice such a skill than surrounded by family and friends — and most importantly food.
I’m not recommending burning down your childhood home in a fitful rage over a disagreement with your great aunt; don’t get me wrong.
I challenge you to dig into the tough topics, get uncomfortable, stir some controversy.
In the process, positions may be changed or convictions solidified, and that’s the point. In experiencing the world in an empathetic manner, one is not oblivious or ignorant to what surrounds them. Set aside the insults and attacks, pick up a fork and knife, and engage in one of the most human things you can do this Thanksgiving: argue.
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Ben Piett, freshman in industrial design, is an Opinion columnist for The Auburn Plainsman.
