Excellent advice on daily social interaction from Vox Day:
I try to avoid bringing up political subjects very often - I've learned that most people aren't capable of a friendly discussion on such matters, let alone an interesting one - and I usually try to offer the person an easy way out after making it clear that I disagree with them if they happen to bring one up.
What Les is missing, I think, is the fact that it is the mere fact of his disagreement with people that is intolerable to them. They don't care that you can back up your opinion, they only care that you're not backing up theirs! Most people really aren't interested in anything that requires abstract thought, they have no idea why they think what they think and they're merely looking for something to provide post-facto rationalization for their emotionally derived positions.
So leave them alone. You're not the truth police and unless you're being directly questioned, there's no onus on you to straighten out their quirks. I basically look at it like a language issue, I speak Normal Retard when I'm with normal people in the same way I speak Italian with an Italian-speaker. And I'm perfectly content to do it, I had an interesting conversation with a weightlifter about the pros and cons of hammer curls with and without a twist halfway through just yesterday.
Everybody is an expert on something that interests them, if you want to get along with people, the trick is to let them pick the subject and just roll with it. You can learn something from everyone; stop trying to argue with the idiots, start learning whatever there is to be gleaned from them instead and you'll find that they like you a lot better.
These words of wisdom come in especially handy with coworkers and relatives.
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