First, let me say that I don’t mean to criticize you, but I think this is a great example of what I’m talking about. I think I can be just as guilty of things in this vein as you say you are, so I’m certainly not claiming I can’t improve in this area, either.
When your girlfriend bitches about her boss, the issue here isn’t whether or not the boss is a jerk. She’s seeking emotional support for some stress in her life. To the extent that you see the issue as, “Who was the jerk in this office situation? I am compelled to assess blame!” it is a textbook version of what that “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” book wrote about 20-odd years ago. It’s a very common social problem, not a problem of belief systems.
Men, myself included, have a tendency to be fixers and judgers. We easily miss the social cues that we also have to be able to relate to others in emotional and intimate ways, including extending trust and so on. Lots of guys react to the girlfriend complaining about her job in similar ways to you, and it really has less to do with things like skepticism, logic and reason than it does with being able to relate to others in a totally different level of social intimacy.
Now, I know this is just one example of what you may be feeling, but again, logic and reason isn’t the issue. Some really logical people like, say, Richard Feynman, were really sociable and knew how to pick up chicks. Others, like maybe Christopher Hitchens, were big crankypants people who had a few devoted friends and were distant, argumentative and alienating to many others. Like I said, most likely it isn’t an issue of how one thinks, it’s how one relates to others.
I don’t mind criticism at all as long as it’s constructive, which in this case it is.
But I agree – I am largely a “fixer” type. I’ve had similar conversations with her about it before, actually, haha. She just wants someone to listen and acknowledge her feelings, rather than try to parse and pick apart the situation for whatever reason. My logic is that I want to offer solutions to help her fix the situation so she can feel better. But for reasons I still don’t understand, this isn’t what she wants.
I also do agree it has little to do with skepticism – it was more of a side example.
What primarily bothers me is how I’ll come across a friend’s post on FB that makes it fairly clear they distrust science or hold beliefs that “we should let the banks fail” or blindly rally behind any given political figure without knowing a thing about their policies, etc. Basically, I feel like so many people form opinions without doing the due diligence of researching. I know we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but I feel like that opinion should be justified, at least.
It’s entirely possible (and likely) that I am being overly judgmental of people and causing a self-fulfilling prophecy of alienation due to my proclivity for focusing on the intellectual factors of a situation as opposed to interpersonal ones. But for me, it’s really hard to just ignore the former. I don’t know how to be social when it’s clear that people are just spouting. It just seems tough to find like-minded people.
Now see, that’s apparently my problem. I’m actually a man :eek:.
I think issues like the discussion the OP has with his girlfriend are a little different than what I, at least, was addressing in my initial post. In close relationships I generally won’t challenge the other person’s beliefs unless they are infringing on my life, affecting their happiness, or seriously offensive to me—in other words, almost never. I attend weddings and baptisms or contribute to most of the causes my relatives are collecting for because that event or cause is important to them. My husband sometimes comes home from his job in a rage because of something one of his underlings did or said and I don’t say, “You’re over-reacting and acting like a despot,” even when that is the case. I just let him rant and then help him figure out a way he can respond the next time that happens. That’s one of the things I’m here for.
Of course, if my husband and I had widely diverging beliefs in important areas like religion versus science or politics we wouldn’t be married, either. There was one dicey area early on in our relationship. He is a veteran and he was staunchly opposed to the idea of gay men serving openly in the military. He was sure it would be detrimental to everyone involved. We had night after night of mostly rational argument (not all in a row but over several years), and with those discussions, much thought on his part, and the coming out of some people he had never suspected to be gay, he eventually changed his thinking on the subject entirely and applauded the end of DADT as enthusiastically as I did.
That kind of in-depth discussion and evolution of ideas isn’t likely to happen with a casual social group in the area I live in. My skeptical and/or atheistic habits isolate me here from the general churchgoing public and yes, I do choose to continue living here. I’m quite good at being alone.
I find it alienating, but I’m not very good at keeping my mouth closed. I’m learning more tolerance as I grow up, but I’m not perfect yet. And in my college years, I alienated a LOT of religious people with my atheist witnessing. Live and learn…
That’s probably the biggest reason I stay out of GD, here. I just can’t be trusted not to turn into super-bitch. I get very competitive about being “right” and it only gets me into trouble.
I wouldn’t say my skepticism and intellectual curiosity, or the fact that I am an atheist, affect my social life at all - now. I have a lot of friends and am fairly social and people tell me how nice and easy to get along with I am; when I was younger it was almost the opposite. I’ve worked through my old irritation at how wrong/ignorant/bigoted many people are, so now I don’t feel the need to argue or correct most of the time, and I get along even better with everyone. I’ve struck a middle ground between being open with my beliefs and yet not offending or antagonizing people who believe differently; it is important to me that I don’t feel the need to hide who/what I am.
It helps that most people I spend any time talking to are likewise tolerant, although I know a whole lot of ‘spiritual’ people who strongly believe in all sorts of woo, and Christians. Also most of my closest friends are fellow atheists/agnostics, but I also have plenty who are religious and/or superstitious and it’s not an issue at all. I think this depends a lot on the area you live in, as well.
Unlike the OP I thrive on supporting people emotionally and dissecting every aspect of their relationships (and I do give advice, but I have almost endless patience for them not taking it) and many people seem drawn to confide in me. While I consider myself fairly judgemental internally (and I am fascinated by how different two sides of a story can be in social situations!), people have often told me that I am one of the least judgemental people they know, hence they feel safe to tell me anything. I agree with Ravenman that this issue doesn’t have so much with one’s beliefs, rationality etc as it does with your way of relating to people socially. And I’m a typical woman in most ways when it comes to this kind of ‘emotional support’.
Skepticism and questioning everything has its limits.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Really? How can I be sure? What’s the evidence? I can’t just accept your say-so; I have to find out for myself.”
I agree.
And one suggestion I have for the OP is to use his intelligence and his questioning mind and his desire to fight ignorance on his own behalf, by studying up on things like psychology and communication and human interaction.
Are you kidding? That’s the whole point of individuality and free will. It’s a product of our humanity. And who gets to arbitrate what “equally valid” is, anyway? Someone who is an individual and not the collective itself?
I think sometimes being right gets in the way of being able to relate to people. People who are happy in spite of the differences in opinions/values of their peers invest in listening and understanding each other. Theres also the matter of picking your battles, and learning to adapt to your surroundings.
I think part of the problem is the internet itself. It creates a hothouse environment for ideas and values. When you communicate online, you put much less effort in deciphering other people, because generally not looking at body language or social cues, simply text. I think that while the internet has great potential to fight ignorance (as we do here) it seldom helps fight social ignorance.
There’s a story Isaac Asimov tells in his autobiography about a time when he had something like an epiphany about this. He was in the twenties, in the army, and a bunch of fellow soldiers were talking about something scientific, and they were totally wrong. Asimov was just about to start lecturing them about how they were wrong, which was typical of him throughout his youth. But then he thought, “It’s not my job to correct other people’s misconceptions when I haven’t been asked to. I can’t be the teacher for the whole world. I can’t stick my nose into everyone else’s conversations just because I’m so much smarter than everyone else.”
So he stopped doing it, and his life got a lot better.
