Conceptualizing our Disagreements
A framework for seeing why some disagreements are harder than others
Since publishing Learning to Disagree, I have been thinking about how disagreements unfold—in friendships, organizations, and societies. Disagreements shape our friendships, workplaces, and politics. Some strengthen connection, others destroy it. Here’s one way to sort through various kinds of disagreements to help us navigate conflict without losing connection.
1. Everyday Disagreements
Harmless differences that rarely threaten the relationship—food preferences, sports loyalties, movie genres. They can flare up (a heated rivalry during the big game), but most healthy relationships bounce back quickly.
2. Deep Disagreements
Ongoing, often unresolvable tensions that weaken or limit relationships. They come in two types:
Understandable: We disagree, but we can grasp why the other sees it differently. Example: I believe in God; you do not.
Incomprehensible: The other’s position feels alien or morally unthinkable. Example: I see a public figure as wholly corrupt; you see them as wholly virtuous.
3. Destabilizing Disagreements
Deep disagreements that actively disrupt the relationship. They may linger in perpetual tension unless the conflict cools into a more manageable form. Some destabilizing disagreements lead to fracture.
4. Fracturing Disagreements
Unresolved destabilizing disagreements that end the relationship:
On an interpersonal level, a fracturing disagreement ends a friendship or relationship. (Of course, relationships can fracture for reasons unrelated to disagreement—betrayal, loss of commitment, or changing priorities.)
On an institutional level (such as a school, social group, or religious community), a person either quits or is expelled.
On a societal level, a person either emigrates or is deported or incarcerated.
Four observations:
The categories are porous. Everyday disagreements can escalate; deep understandable ones can become destabilizing.
The same disagreement plays out differently in different contexts. A theistic–atheistic difference might be manageable in a friendship but destabilizing in a religious organization, and relatively minor in a pluralistic democracy.
Conversation and clarity matter. Many disagreements feel more intense simply because positions are misunderstood or unstated.
I’ve found that the deepest, most baffling disagreements often happen when we’re looking at the same thing but seeing it through entirely different lenses—usually shaped by the media we consume or the communities we inhabit. Think about two examples from earlier: (1) belief or disbelief in God, and (2) how we see the same public figure. Oddly enough, the disagreement over the nature of God can be easier to understand. We expect big differences on matters of faith or big normative questions (like our understandings of justice or equality). But we are more destabilized when we’ve all heard the same speech or seen the same video and still come away with opposite conclusions. That stark divergence over something we can all directly observe is what makes these disagreements so puzzling and unsettling.
Which disagreements have you experienced most often—and how do you navigate them? Where would you place them in this framework?
It's the ones you call "incomprehensible" that are BOTH the most difficult AND, handled appropriately, the most rewarding. That appropriate handling is largely a matter, I would suggest, of seeking to understand (by asking questions, listening, probing) rather than arguing against. But this brings up another dimension to the categorization of types of disagreements: I am both willing and more inclined to seek to understand when the person is someone I respect, someone with whom I've developed a relationship over time. In the absence of that kind of a priori relationship, it's so much easier to just write them off, walk away, change the subject. It's been helpful, in the current political environment, to talk with people "on the other side" of so many issues.
I think of Jonathan Haidt's classic book, The Righteous Mind, the researching and writing of which moved him to a more moderate position on the liberal--conservative continuum, because he realized that people "on that other side" did have some solid foundatons for different values and viewpoints--it was why we often talk past one another, which is why it's important to be able to ask questions and listen rather than simply more strongly state why that other person's position is "incomprehensible."