Not every dialogue has to end in an argument, even if you can't agree on something. And if it comes to an argument you should not want to win at any cause. Not only because you simply can not win every argument, even if you have the facts or the truth on your side, but because it should not be the primary goal of communication. Still for some people the quest that starts with finding out what the other person thinks, ends with them wanting to win the discussion that came out of disagreement. Agreeing to disagree then seems to no longer be an option.

The best example of where I feel this is going wrong is in the political climate in the United States. The election of Trump has divided people. Facebook friends have been lost over posts or likes that could indicate that your political preference is different. Friends are not getting invited to parties and family members argue about politics. There are different levels of tolerance within these examples but we can not deny there is a problem. When communication or interactions between two groups get less frequent the more isolated these groups become.

A professor at my university once told me something I still think about sometimes. ''When you want to know what someone thinks you need to provide the possibility for the other party to tell their story.” In other words, you want to make sure they talk the most in the conversation because to find out how they think and (more importantly) why they think that way, you need to let them speak. My professor would summarize that into one simple sentence: ''You want to know the why!'' The moment you jump to conclusions or accuse the other party beforehand, at that moment that initial goal of finding the ''why'' only gets harder to achieve.

Conversations with people that are not like or do not think like you, show the world in a different light. When you actively avoid people that voted for a different political candidate it results in protective bubbles getting formed. Bubbles full of people that think and act just like you. That on itself causes a problem as some people in those bubbles try to proof their place by getting a more extreme instead of a more critical view. While others simply try to hide in that safe environment.

And so you wake up one day in a world that you share with a group that you don't really want to interact with but do share a country with. When you finally meet the other side you should make sure to keep the conversation going. To get a sneak peak into the others world and maybe understand why they think or feel that way. All emotions and feelings, how irrational they may sound, come from somewhere. But instead of doing that, people that are trapped in bubbles only look for a confirmation of a preexisting bias and spend time building up an arsenal of weapons to counter the other sides opinion.

I witness arguments between people getting more and more filled with buzzwords. People clearly want to discredit the person on the other side of the debate by calling them leftist or alt right, the middle ground is rarely explored. A word used on one side of the debate is the word racist. Like an atomic bomb, this word holds a lot of power but unlike the bomb it is used to eagerly in today's climate. People use it in discussions with people that have a opinion about a group that is not their own. Sometimes when this bomb is dropped it is only being used as a form of self defense, because the person holding on to it feels overpowered or triggered by the conversation. Other times it is a well placed attack in a ''war of ideas''.

Jumping to conclusions is the new standard and winning arguments with dirty bombs the new trend. But winning should have never been your goal. To understand the other side in troubling times you must keep the conversation going in your search to find the ''why''.
That should be your only goal.

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