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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

There is no personality more appealing than an agreeable one. Agreeable people are well liked wherever they go. Disagreeable people, on the other hand, are a pain in the you-know-what. You want to stay here? They want to go there. You want to move forward. They want to go back. This personality type seems to be inherently disposed to be disagreeable. It doesn’t matter what you say or do, they will always disagree with it. Disagreeable people enjoy verbal repartee and often play “the devil’s advocate” just for the sake of argument, much to the consternation of others.
Because of the bad reputation that disagreeable people have given the principle of disagreement, many of us have come to look upon disagreement as a distasteful thing of little value or virtue. Accordingly, for the sake of social harmony and to escape the inevitable ill feelings of those with whom they disagree, disagreeable people often tend to feign agreement with others on matters of trivial importance even when they actually disagree with them. This practice can become habit-forming and may even cause the erosion of one’s moral spinal column. After all, there are surely times when we all ought to stand up for right and justice and disagree vehemently with the morally bankrupt paradigms of the day. For this reason, I think it is unfortunate that disagreement has acquired such a bad reputation.
Nevertheless, disagreement makes most people uncomfortable, if not downright angry, especially if the disagreement is over an issue of personal values, like, for example, religion or politics, two renowned topics, which can rarely be disagreed upon without arguments or even physical confrontations breaking out. Money and property rights also rank high up as volatile disagreement issues. Fortunately, we usually only punch one another in the nose, spread slanderous gossip, build fences, or poison our neighbor’s dog when we disagree with him. At other times disagreement leads to murder, war and even genocide, especially in less civilized or less sophisticated cultures and societies.
The rule of law and an equitable system of jurisprudence is meant to help resolve disagreements between individuals and groups. The law does indeed seem to keep the peace most of the time. Still, it may be observed that the loser in many legal proceedings may be compelled to comply with a ruling of law, but rarely will he concede complete agreement with it. Somebody seems to always walk away angry and unconvinced and the very same issue arises again and again in the guise of wholly different disagreements. For example, how may separate fights and shootouts did the Hatfields and the McCoys have over several generations over that one allegedly stolen hog back in 1878? How many wars and broken peace treaties have taken place over several thousand years between the Jews and the Arabs because two brothers disagreed about which should have been his father’s heir?
I perceive that a common thread in disagreements, which leads to anger and conflict is a lack of complete confidence on the part of one or both parties to the disagreement in the premise that they are putting forth. For example, if I believe to a point of certainty that my position in a matter is true and correct, I am less inclined to feel agitated toward those who disagree with me. Even as Jesus uttered as he was crucified, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), absolute confidence in the knowledge that one possesses is a calming influence. On the other hand, many people adopt intellectual positions and base their consequent behavior upon propositions, which they have not put a great deal of effort into studying or thinking about. We often build our entire lives on defective foundations. Then, when another person challenges those positions and lays out valid evidence that they are flawed, it is not simply a matter of conceding error, for conceding error may involve ripping out old misconceptions with deep roots and changing one’s entire infrastructure of beliefs. It is the sudden realization that we might be wrong and that corrective action would necessarily involve dramatic and uncomfortable change, which stirs a person to anger.
Many years ago my father assigned me to build a fence one day while he was away at work. I spent the entire day in the hot summer sun digging postholes, carrying the fence posts to the holes, putting them down and tamping them in. I stretched the wire and nailed it in. When I was finished, I looked at the fence, and by golly, it was crooked as a snake. Nevertheless, after pondering the matter for a few minutes, I concluded that my work was “good enough.” In fact, the longer I looked at that crooked fence, the straighter it got. My father, however, took one look at my crooked fence that evening when he got home from work and immediately disagreed. I spent the next two days tearing that fence down and rebuilding it to make it straight. I did not agree with my father’s decision and I argued with him some about it and I was angry when he ordered me to fix my errors. Still, I knew all along that my father was right. I just didn’t want to rebuild that fence!
Sometimes a neighbor might ask our opinion on his fence, and we might take a look at it and see that it is as crooked as a snake, while our neighbor grins proudly and declares that he is the best fence-builder in the land. What to do? Well, we can agree with our good neighbor and lie that this is just about one of the best fences we’ve ever seen or we can tell him the truth and disagree, in which case he will probably get angry with us, tell all our mutual friends that we are a critical and disagreeable jerk, and the two of us will not be good neighbors anymore. One thing’s for sure though, no matter what we say about that fence: our good neighbor is not likely to rip it all up and straighten it out. He is much more likely to keep telling himself that it’s a fine fence until he believes it is true. Unless, of course, his father sees the fence and makes him do it right.