I WOULD like to be your friend. But first, I would like you to answer a few questions.
1) Is Scottish independence a good idea? 2) Should the UK leave the EU? 3) Should trans people be able to identify their own gender? 4) Should humans eat meat? 5) Morrissey is the greatest musician that ever lived – agree or disagree? 6) Is cauliflower and, more specifically, cauliflower with melted cheese over it delicious or disgusting? And finally, 7) who is the best captain on Star Trek?
For the avoidance of doubt, the correct answer to these questions is No, No, Yes, No, Agree, Disgusting, and William Shatner, but I promise not to judge you if you got any of them wrong. I also promise to discuss these subjects with you in a calm and rational manner. Most importantly, I promise not to fall out with you, or lose my temper, or stop being your friend just because we don’t agree on stuff. Even the bit about William Shatner.
I should probably say at this point that none of this will be easy and I frequently fall short of the high standards. Take the summer of 2014 for example. I was meeting a group of friends in Edinburgh and got talking to one of them about the upcoming Scottish referendum. We had different views. The chat became a heated discussion became an argument became a furious row became me storming out and slamming the door and going home. I’m not proud of the way I behaved, although we later patched things up. We have different views. We are still friends.
The point is that friends do not always have the same opinions, although you wouldn’t always know it from the way we behave now. Take the mini furore this week over comedian Ellen DeGeneres (liberal and gay) being pictured having a good time at a football game with former president George W Bush (not liberal and not gay). It turns out DeGeneres and Bush are chums, but social media did not like this. People asked how a liberal gay person could be friends with a man with a record like Bush’s, especially over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
DeGeneres’s response was interesting. “I’m friends with George Bush,” she said. “In fact, I’m friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs that I have. When I say, ‘Be kind to one another,’ I don’t mean only the people that think the same way that you do. I mean, ‘Be kind to everyone, it doesn’t matter.’”
I think on the whole I agree with DeGeneres, subject to some caveats, one being: you shouldn’t have to stay friends with someone whatever they say. In my case, there are people I’ve stopped being friends with because of what they’ve done, or said, or in a couple of extreme cases, because of crimes they’ve committed. Essentially, you have to assess friendships as you go along and sometimes the answer is: nope, I don’t like you anymore. But equally you can like a person and dislike their opinions and actions. I, for example, like some people who do not think William Shatner was the best captain in Star Trek.
However, I fear that these seemingly reasonable rules have come under strain in Scotland in the last five years or so ¬- first, because of the referendums we’ve endured, and, second, because of the way we tend to talk on social media. Twitter in particular seems to encourage people to express emphatic views or emphatically attack other views; you must click the heart emoji or the angry face; you must love 100 per cent or hate 100 per cent; nuance is squeezed out.
I wonder, though, if there are ways we could re-tune things a little and get a bit closer to Ellen DeGeneres’s view of the world, even on Twitter? In fact, I’d like to suggest a few things we could try to encourage greater tolerance of other people’s opinions. Who knows, it might even lead to new friendships across the Yes/No, Leave/Remain, Patrick Stewart/William Shatner divide.
First, the media and social media. There’s a tendency to read only columnists you agree with, or, on Twitter, to follow only people you like, but this is Not Healthy, so log on now and follow ten people or organisations that have different opinions to yours. If you’re a unionist, follow a Yes organisation; if you’re a Remainer, follow a Leaver. You can also apply a similar rule to real-life conversations: when you’re talking to someone about a controversial subject, do not express an opinion for five whole minutes. Instead, see what happens if you only ask non-aggressive questions designed to find out more about the other person’s view. I have tried this and it works (except with people who prefer Patrick Stewart to William Shatner).
There are other rules-of-thumb that might help. Accept that you might be wrong. Try to listen more. Do not interrupt. I struggle with all of these every day and in almost every conversation, but I still like to think that, in the end, Ellen DeGeneres is right. Be kind to people who do not hold the same opinions as you, because you do not know why they hold them.
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