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Thoughts on the nature of friends arguing.
Aug. 9th, 2002 10:27 amPutting on my social pith helmet, I’m off exploring. Namely, into the uncharted jungles of the nature of friendship, and how we deal with it. Please note these ideas are my own – and may not even truly accurately reflect what I really think, as this is a difficult one to tackle…
Now, surfing about LJ recently, there’s been a lot of debate about what friends are, whether you can be friends with someone who is close to someone you hate, and so on and so forth. You can find stuff about it at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eddyfate and winterthing for starters. And I got to thinking about what friends are and how we deal with them and social situations.
I’ll start with a few assumptions.
1) Nobody ever does anything without a motive that in some way benefits them. Their motives can be wide and varied; from the feeling of ‘doing the right thing’, to cash, to reinforcing their self image of being a worthless person, there is always a gain to the person in their actions. This ‘concept of self’ or ‘internal self-image’ is core to our very being, and is very difficult to change or adapt.
2) We make friends based on these motives; our friends give us something that we want or need that makes their friendship benefit us personally. Once again, these motivations can be varied; they can give us reinforcement of self-image, shared interests that make us feel less like a freak and let us discuss them without being judged, we can just share a sense of humour – there are many benefits that this can give us, but always remember that you would not be friends with a person if you did not personally gain from that association.
3) There are 6,000,000,000 people in this world. Not all of them are going to like you, and you aren’t going to like all of them. This is natural, and trying to be liked by all is doomed to failure. Don’t bother trying.
4) Some people have contradictory motivations to others, which makes it impossible to reconcile them to each other. You will likely fail if you try.
As I propose that we choose our friends based upon personal gain, and that everyone has different internal measures of ‘gain’, I suggest that the majority of instances of people falling out and stopping becoming friends is caused by contradictory motivations. It is rare to vanishing that actions, at least in their outset, are motivated by spite or a desire to hurt or upset. Rather, they are motivated by the internal goals of one person without consideration or understanding of their effects upon others that they profess to be friends of. Often you will find that people are shocked to learn that their actions have caused unhappiness to others. Sadly, however, common human nature results in cognitive dissonance at this point, rather than attempts to make things better.
What this means is that people will justify their actions to themselves as being understandable; a reasonable reaction to events, and anyone who doesn’t agree with that is patently wrong. Why do people do this? Because their actions are based on an internal image of self, and to concede that their actions were ‘wrong’ to themselves would mean that their internal concept of self may be ‘wrong’ as well. Few people are capable of doing that. I know I’m not. As the internal concept of self cannot have been in error, then anyone who disagrees with them is a jerk, plain and simple. The fault cannot be internal, thus it has to be external. And so friendships disintegrate.
I see a lot of refusal to acknowledge internal ‘fault’ for disagreement. I’m as bad at it as anyone, so don’t think I’m pointing fingers here. It’s far easier to point fingers at others disagreements (and very tempting to do as well) and say “You’re as bad as each other!”, but that achieves nothing. If people have got to the stage of public disagreement, then cognitive dissonance as to their actions is ruling the roost completely and it is unlikely that a rapprochement can be reached – both have noted the other is in contradiction to their core concept of self, and so the other must be a jerk. QED.
So what can you do?
Not a lot. Moving on, and trying to do it with minimal argument is what I try and do, although once again I note that’s difficult. The temptation to vigorously defend the concept of “I” is a very strong urge indeed. However, you should remember that for every person you fall out with, there are 5,999,999,999 who you haven’t fallen out with yet, and you’re bound to find someone who matches your needs amongst that lot. Move on, try and ignore fighting, acknowledge that you cannot be right to all people always, and see who else is out there.
Getting into protracted slanging matches achieves nothing and will alienate others. It’s quite rare that anyone has an internal self-image of “I am a person who enjoys being a friend to those who flame others”, so taking arguments public is pointless, unless you, of course, want to cast yourself in the villain mode and lose even more people. Some people like being martyrs. It's yet another of those pesky self-image things.
Now, surfing about LJ recently, there’s been a lot of debate about what friends are, whether you can be friends with someone who is close to someone you hate, and so on and so forth. You can find stuff about it at
eddyfate and winterthing for starters. And I got to thinking about what friends are and how we deal with them and social situations.I’ll start with a few assumptions.
1) Nobody ever does anything without a motive that in some way benefits them. Their motives can be wide and varied; from the feeling of ‘doing the right thing’, to cash, to reinforcing their self image of being a worthless person, there is always a gain to the person in their actions. This ‘concept of self’ or ‘internal self-image’ is core to our very being, and is very difficult to change or adapt.
2) We make friends based on these motives; our friends give us something that we want or need that makes their friendship benefit us personally. Once again, these motivations can be varied; they can give us reinforcement of self-image, shared interests that make us feel less like a freak and let us discuss them without being judged, we can just share a sense of humour – there are many benefits that this can give us, but always remember that you would not be friends with a person if you did not personally gain from that association.
3) There are 6,000,000,000 people in this world. Not all of them are going to like you, and you aren’t going to like all of them. This is natural, and trying to be liked by all is doomed to failure. Don’t bother trying.
4) Some people have contradictory motivations to others, which makes it impossible to reconcile them to each other. You will likely fail if you try.
As I propose that we choose our friends based upon personal gain, and that everyone has different internal measures of ‘gain’, I suggest that the majority of instances of people falling out and stopping becoming friends is caused by contradictory motivations. It is rare to vanishing that actions, at least in their outset, are motivated by spite or a desire to hurt or upset. Rather, they are motivated by the internal goals of one person without consideration or understanding of their effects upon others that they profess to be friends of. Often you will find that people are shocked to learn that their actions have caused unhappiness to others. Sadly, however, common human nature results in cognitive dissonance at this point, rather than attempts to make things better.
What this means is that people will justify their actions to themselves as being understandable; a reasonable reaction to events, and anyone who doesn’t agree with that is patently wrong. Why do people do this? Because their actions are based on an internal image of self, and to concede that their actions were ‘wrong’ to themselves would mean that their internal concept of self may be ‘wrong’ as well. Few people are capable of doing that. I know I’m not. As the internal concept of self cannot have been in error, then anyone who disagrees with them is a jerk, plain and simple. The fault cannot be internal, thus it has to be external. And so friendships disintegrate.
I see a lot of refusal to acknowledge internal ‘fault’ for disagreement. I’m as bad at it as anyone, so don’t think I’m pointing fingers here. It’s far easier to point fingers at others disagreements (and very tempting to do as well) and say “You’re as bad as each other!”, but that achieves nothing. If people have got to the stage of public disagreement, then cognitive dissonance as to their actions is ruling the roost completely and it is unlikely that a rapprochement can be reached – both have noted the other is in contradiction to their core concept of self, and so the other must be a jerk. QED.
So what can you do?
Not a lot. Moving on, and trying to do it with minimal argument is what I try and do, although once again I note that’s difficult. The temptation to vigorously defend the concept of “I” is a very strong urge indeed. However, you should remember that for every person you fall out with, there are 5,999,999,999 who you haven’t fallen out with yet, and you’re bound to find someone who matches your needs amongst that lot. Move on, try and ignore fighting, acknowledge that you cannot be right to all people always, and see who else is out there.
Getting into protracted slanging matches achieves nothing and will alienate others. It’s quite rare that anyone has an internal self-image of “I am a person who enjoys being a friend to those who flame others”, so taking arguments public is pointless, unless you, of course, want to cast yourself in the villain mode and lose even more people. Some people like being martyrs. It's yet another of those pesky self-image things.
