2023: Welcoming Disagreement

Speak candidly, listen fully

Our intellectual lives and our relationships are diminished without opportunities to hear dissenting views. Disagreement is impossible to avoid if we are genuine, honest, and principled. Yet disagreement does not have to be a relationship-threatening event. Far from it. Handled correctly, engaging dissenting views and tactfully handling disagreement could enhance and deepen your friendships. To that end, I offer this brief “Strategies” video. For more depth, please see my most recent book.
 
I wish everyone a 2023 seasoned with diverse viewpoints. I hope you have a year full of fruitful, engaging, and productively disagreeable conversations with friends and family. I also hope that in this year we move toward creating environments where we can all speak candidly and listen fully. At the core, we have a lot more in common than we realize. Keeping our common humanity in mind allows disagreements to feel less existentially threatening. And as you consider dissenting views, I offer the sage advice of Christopher Hitchens: “Beware the irrational, however seductive.”
 
Happy New Year!
 
Peter Boghossian