Get the Facts

Too many people like to comment on situations before they have the facts. This is disastrous to all parties involved. Commenting on situations without the facts, and doing so vigorously, has the potential to make whatever that situation is worse.

The more I hear people talk, the more I believe that 99.9% of what we hear is usually rumor, and that just leaves 0.01% to be the truth. You’ve probably heard of the experiment where you tell one person something and let them tell someone else who tells someone else who tells someone else, and this goes on until 20-30 people have been told. The last person tells the first person, and lo and behold, what the last person says is not what the first person said. The point is simple. The more mouths a story travels through, the more changes will take place. This happens all the time. Part of the problem is that people just don’t listen to what is said. The other part of the problem is that if they do listen, they only hear the parts they want to hear. Next thing you know, 20 to 30 people later, a whole new version of the “truth” has been created.

The problem with basing your reactions on information you don’t get straight from the source results in creating negative situations. People easily become angry to start with, so give them a situation based on a rumor that is nowhere near the truth, and they react angrily. They make statements based on the inaccuracies, and the next thing you know, people are spreading that statement around like it is a fact. And that’s where the major problem comes in. Rumors are presented as facts and everybody gets in a tizzy and things just escalate from there.

The solution is simple. Take 99.9% of what you hear with a grain of salt. Before you add something to the dialogue, get the facts, and get them from somebody who actually has the authority to give them. And after you get the facts, before you add something to the dialogue, find a respectful way to do it. Everybody deserves your respect, and if you can’t be part of a conversation and be respectful while doing it, then refrain from joining the conversation. Everybody has an opinion, and that’s their right. Respect their right to believe something different than you believe and their right to express it. If we could just get the facts straight before we jump into a situation and if we could be respectful when we jump in, wouldn’t the world be a much better place? Remember, you get out of something what you put in to it. If you’re feeding negativity into a situation where you don’t have all the facts, you’re just going to be left in one big negative mess. I’m pretty sure that’s not where anybody wants to be.

We Can Agree to Disagree

One of the great things about having freedom in this country is that you are free to disagree with others. One of the scary things about this is that it seems to be more commonplace to suggest that if one disagrees with another that equates with hatred, and that’s just not true. Whatever happened to the old adage of “Let’s just agree to disagree”? The important thing here is that you can disagree with others about a variety of things but that doesn’t mean you hate them.

Frequently when the idea of hate is presented in regard to disagreeing with someone or something, it’s presented in relation to a controversial topic. That’s just wrong. The First Amendment protects our right to voice our opinions about topics, controversial and otherwise. Just because my opinion doesn’t agree with yours, or vice versa, doesn’t mean that hate is involved. It simply means we disagree. I understand that the First Amendment does not protect speech designed to incite hate crimes; however, we have to remember that simple expression of an opinion does not equate to a hate crime. And way too often I’m seeing interpretations in the media where there are those who would like to imply otherwise.

Those kinds of implications leave us skating on thin ice. If a simple disagreement of opinions can be equated with a hate crime, we’re dangling precariously over a pit of censorship wherein the First Amendment, and our right to freely express our opinions without fear of repercussions, becomes the first casualty.

One of the things I stress to my students is that we can all have different ideas about topics. When we have a class discussion, the rules are simple. Debate the idea, but do not attack the person. It is possible to debate an idea, express a variety of opinions, and not to attack the person who disagrees with you. If you can do that, you have achieved a maturity that most never do.

There are a lot of actions that I do not support, but that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that I hate the people who carry out those actions. I can choose not to agree with someone’s lifestyle decisions, and I can still have a relationship with that person. Some of these choices are major, controversial ones, such as homosexuality or abortion, and some are minor ones, such as smoking, drinking, cursing, etc. Just because I don’t agree with the choices others make doesn’t mean I’m going to treat them differently.

I believe everyone should wear a seat belt, but if a friend of mine chooses not to, I’m not going to stop being a friend. I can’t stand tobacco use, smoking or smokeless. I think it’s a nasty habit, but that doesn’t mean I have problems with friends of mine who use tobacco products. I don’t support getting drunk as either a way to deal with a problem or a way to celebrate; I’ve just never seen the point. That doesn’t mean I treat those who do any differently. I don’t see the need to use a curse word as every other word when one speaks, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a civil conversation with someone who does.

Our greatest commandment is to “Love one another.” Very simply, that statement means that we may not support all the actions others perform, but we can still love them. We can be unsupportive of a behavior and still be supportive of a person. We can disagree with a behavior or lifestyle but that doesn’t mean we hate the person with that behavior or living that lifestyle. In order to love one another, we have to look beyond specific behaviors and see each individual as a person. That might not always be easy. That might not always be what we want to do. It’s still what we need to do.

And while we’re doing that – loving one another – we need to remember that we have the right to have our own opinions about everything. We have the right to express those opinions. We have the right to agree to disagree. We have the right to debate ideas without attacking the person. We have the right to make our own decisions. We have the right to change our minds. Expression of these rights is not – and should not be – equated with hatred.

With rights comes responsibility. A responsible expression of these rights is not an expression of hatred. We’ve all heard that actions speak louder than words. One can express his opinion that he disagrees with another’s behaivor, lifestlyle, or opinion, and that doesn’t mean he hates the other. Hatred is determined much more by one’s actions than by one’s opinions.

The key here is respect. I will respect your opinions, all of them, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. However, you must also respect mine, again whether you agree with them or not. If we could simply respect one another, love one another, a lot of issues would resolve themselves. Step one of that is not to claim that just because someone has an opinion that differs from yours it must mean that he or she hates you.