Folks on this site come from many different backgrounds and worldviews. And very often the threads - especially those about religion and politics, of course - just become vicious food fights. People talk at each other and past each other instead of with each other. I'm guilty of this, too.
How do we have more mature conversations with people we disagree with on these issues? If your answer is, "It can't be done because X group of people are just beyond reason/evil/blind/stupid/etc," this thread isn't for you, so please don't reply.
I'd like to hear some ideas from members about your strategies for having better conversations: ones where both sides feel heard, respected, they understand one another's perspectives more clearly, and where disagreement does not give way to malice.
I look forward to your wisdom.
According to the teaching books my wife have on the subject, it is not that simple.
It includes time and the ability to make a personal relationship with a person. Then you might and that is just might get somewhere. But if you can't, then there are also techniques you can use.
But in general it involves the following: To accept another human as human and don't judge them for their worth, but still explain to them that you do it differently.
In practice it has a limit for those humans, who how they doing do right and wrong as universal/true/rational/objective or any other variant to that effect.
Yes, you can learn to do critical thinking about values as for in the end good and bad, but you can't avoid having values that are without truth or any of those other variant.
So as you note, for those who believe that, you are in a sense dead in the water, because they in general consider their worth including to that they hold the truth and so on. And the moment they realize that they might have to reconsider, they go feelings and attack or lock up and defend.
So here is an example of that in philosophy:
"The first of these claims asserts the relativity of truth, obviously an essential element in this form of relativism. Oddly, though, this is not the most controversial part of the doctrine. After all, even committed realists might be willing to conceive of objective truth as equivalent to “true from a God’s eye point of view” or “true from the standpoint of the cosmos”. It is this second claim, the denial of any metaphysically privileged standpoint, that most provokes relativism’s critics. A brief look at the role of this thesis in the thought of three leading relativists–Kuhn, Rorty, and Foucault—will help reveal why it should be so controversial."
iep.utm.edu
In short both for truth and what the world really is, a lot of people connect their self worth for that they know the correct version of understanding the world and what it is.
