A PinkBlue Rainbow (with Yura)

Trev:

Jonathan Haidt wrote a fantastic book called 'The Righteous Mind'. It's subtitle is 'Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion'. Quite often when we stumble across something really core to our beliefs where someone we care about disagrees, we choose to walk away. At the very least we don't talk about it. Yura Kaliazin is a good person. We are friends from university. Recently the SCOTUS ruling led to a tribal split on facebook of Rainbow Profiles and PinkBlue profiles. I am interested to understand how we can create a productive, mudsling-free, conversation where there is such a clear line of disagreement.

Yura:

Indeed the SCOTUS ruling has created a large number of heated debates. From my experience, as soon as you say "I do not agree with the ruling, as I believe it's wrong", most of the time you are quickly branded as intolerant, backward hater (or a fanatical religious lunatic), and the conversation stops right there, before any point of view can be put forward. I guess that's one of the reasons why people choose to walk away and not talk about it - why expose yourself to another branding as a "hater" or "lunatic" just for disagreeing on the topic?

Trev:

The normal approach is to look for the barbs of disagreement. Layering discussion with insults. I like the idea of allocating a "Bull Quota", like when you watch a movie. Good movies extend reality to look at things from a different perspective. If they extend too far, or aren't consistent, the suspension of disbelief is snapped. I believe strongly that there is a core of agreement around which we can build allowance for where people can disagree. The interesting thing with the SCOTUS ruling is the hats have changed. For years, the protesters were the Rainbow movement. Now the 'aggrieved' are the PinkBlue. There should be some empathy for the other group?

Yura:

Yet, not many are willing to give empathy to the PinkBlue (predominantly Christian) side, demanding empathy only for their point of view. There is quite a bit of common ground between the two sides, but the devil is in the detail. Should everyone be treated with respect and dignity, no matter which side of the divide you're on? I'm sure both sides agree - yes. Should you keep your mouth shut if you genuinely believe something to be wrong, just because your point of view is "uncool", "unfashionable" or not mainstream? No, I don't believe so.

Trev:

Is a Christmas analogy appropriate? Many of my Christian friends or family talk about wanting to put the 'Christ' back in Christmas. When Christianity was mixed with the State, the State started mingling many secular or cultural holidays into holy days. Christmas was one. As society has become more secular, Christians sometimes feel the cross-cultural family day Christmas has become is no longer their religious day. Marriage was also around before Christianity made it very core to their faith. The State then incorporated and regulated it. Is it a matter of religious ceremony and holiness? If there was a word to celebrate a PinkBlue marriage, and a day to celebrate the birth of Christ, would that allow the respect and dignity you talk of?

Yura:
Respect and dignity I was talking of when having a discussion or argument on the topic (like we're having now). As for Christmas, I am a Christian, and to us, Christmas is and will always be Christ's Birthday, regardless of State, trends or fashion. It's just increasingly easy to get distracted from what Christmas really means, even to us Christians. As for marriage - "is it a matter of religious ceremony and holiness" - the former yes, to a lot of people, but the latter is to me the core of the matter and disagreement the "fundamentalist" Christians, like me J, and the Rainbow movement.

Trev:
I am not religious, but I buy into the idea of keeping objects and ideas holy. Something as simple as some religious people wrapping books in a special cloth, only opened on a specific day, in a specific way, with specific people. I also like the idea of giving people space to do things that are special to them with people that matter to them. Where I get confused is why we would want the state to be involved in this anyway? The SCOTUS ruling, to my knowledge, didn't stop anyone from doing anything. There are Christians who accept marriages that aren't PinkBlue. There are those that don't. It is still possible for "fundamentalist" Christians to have their holy ceremony of PinkBlue marriage, and to celebrate Christmas as the birth of Christ. Hopefully, when the dust settles, we'll realise we aren't fighting over anything since everyone can then do what they believe is right, as long as they don't interfere with others?

Yura:
I guess the very last piece of your last sentence is the catch. Problems arise when Christian pastors, who hold firm to their beliefs, are forced to partake in Rainbow ceremonies, and being taken to court if they refuse. Is this not enforcing one's beliefs upon someone else by brute force, just because the State has given you the big stick to do so? The strong impression that I have built up over the last few years is that Christians are always expected to be tolerant to everyone and everything (it seems it is in fact increasingly demanded of them), often to the detriment of their own beliefs. Yet non-Christians seem to reserve the right not to tolerate Christians and the Gospel (and many to bitterly mock them at every opportunity). Double standards at play? And, as I said before, if you see someone you care about do something that you strongly believe is wrong, you would speak up - even though it might be interpreted as interference...

Trev:
I agree that enforcement is the heart of the problem. Tolerance does require people to genuinely accept and allow alternative views which don't infringe their rights. It gets tricky when jobs require that tolerance to need action that doesn't harm you, but appears to indicate you agree with views you don't. Silence can appear to be agreement. Speaking up also means judgement, and most people recoil at being told they are evil/bad/wrong/sinful. All those words are very loaded. Even 'agreeing to disagree' creates walls. My view is the law should keep out of it and big sticks shouldn't stop rainbows or enforce them. On a personal level, choosing when to 'interfere' is more problematic. Both sides need to care about each other first and earn the invitation to interfere.

Yura:
I guess it is a bit of a Catch 22 - stay silent and people think you agree, speak up, and get branded... Agree - no one likes to hear unflattering things about themselves, but again, to just always keep quiet? And also think it has to do with how you say it - evil - not you yourself, bad - no necessarily, wrong - yes, sinful - yes, we all are, in one way or another. I do agree that there needs to be some level of trust or relationship before you can speak up - no-one is likely to take a total stranger seriously. I am a numbers guy, I don't speak or write well, so as a wrap-up, I'll let the professionals do the talking, via these two "links" - Roman 1 22-32 and http://www.tosavealife.com/10-life-giving-truths-for-the-gay-christian/

Happily Ever After

'They were the best of...'

Although just five very common words, you are likely able to identify the quote above. This was the argument used by the inventor of the windshield when suing Ford and Chrysler for patent infringement (See the movie 'Flash of Genius'). Robert Kearns invented a blade which blinks every few seconds rather than continuously. The parts used were simple, and the combination required once pointed out was simple too. After a long, life destructive battle, he eventually won a pyrrhic victory.

I think about this when wanting to write about relationships. I spoke yesterday about how advice is really speaking to your younger self. This is probably most obvious in relationships. In each one, you learn something else. The problem is these lessons are very personal and each combination of five words while not unique is unique. We don't talk openly about relationships because there is two way trust with the person you were with. It becomes very easy to read between the lines and it is uncertain what is fair to share because any 'advice' is clearly your story applied to someone elses life. So I tread carefully in this post.

A friend, Richard, asked on Facebook the other day, 'How would you try to change a community (read suburb) when it comes to the success of marriages in that community?'

As someone who has never been married, I have far more questions than answers to this. I am hoping readers of this blog might add some thoughts. In a blog about happiness and learning, not writing about this would be odd since it is such an important part of happiness. Ken Robinson said that 7 of his 8 great grandparents lived within a two mile radius of each other. This was either an extraordinary coincidence and alignment of the stars, or their standards were basically, 'You'll do'. The world has got more complicated. Dan Gilbert makes the point that we used to do what our parents did, live where we were born, and marry someone from the neighbourhood. The world has both shrunk and expanded in that we can go anywhere but in so doing we are also further from other sources of happiness. The kind you get from simplicity.

You can't have everything, and I think we get a good deal. I would rather live today than at any time in the past. Even though we are reestablishing what the expectations are in a relationship, and that makes it harder to coordinate each others life goals, I wouldn't want to go back to a world where it was only the man's career that was relevant and our lives were almost pre-planned. It is a fairly recent phenomenon that marriages were for love. Westerners look at the eastern practice of arranged marriages with perplexed faces, but it is not long ago that marriage was a largely political construct. One interesting source of reading on this topic for me has been Elizabeth Gilbert.

I had mixed reactions to 'Eat Pray Love'. I found it very inspirational and at the same time it left me feeling like there was a problem in its message. I still haven't resolved this and it is likely close to the core of Richard's question. Liz Gilbert willingly and happily enters a marriage that reflected everything she had been looking for. The husband did nothing wrong but she was deeply unhappy. In leaving, the story ends well for both her and the husband who remarries. As suggested by the name of the book, after a year of eating, praying and loving she finds happiness. Part of that happiness is with another man. Conflicted about what marriage is all about, she wrote the follow up book which is a researched history of marriage and studies on marriage.

The reason I am conflicted about 'Eat, Pray, Love' is that I like the idea of a promise that you stick to. The pain she put her first husband through was intense. Should she have worked it out? They could have lived a happy alternate life. Although the story works out, Gilbert strikes me as a happy person. Her story would have worked out if she had taken another path too. The message is essentially that you have to love yourself first before you can love others. Even if that involves hurting someone. They will heal and you will heal. Just do the hurting as kindly as possible. What that means is that we value individual happiness and freedom over the idea of having long term commitments around which to build more stable institutions like marriage. I think that is the way I lean too, but there is a cost.

HT: Terry Alex @takecareofUUU

We don't know what life will throw at us and how relationships will evolve. The question is how much effort gets put into fixing them. If the commitment is fixed, there is always the chance that one or both of the partners stops trying. There is no fear of the person leaving and so they stop looking after themselves and stop looking after the their partner. It scares me looking at lots of relationships where the partners aren't even nice to each other. Paul Ekman claims to be able to quickly tell if a relationship will last by looking for indications of contempt. Once you lose the benefit of the doubt, and start assuming the others actions are malicious rather than being on their side, things fall apart.

The other issue I think about is whether we expect too much from partners. We look for a friend, lover, confidant, cheerleader, parent to our children, etc. etc. Most of our friends don't meet all of our needs, but they are very good at meeting some of them. Making space to invest in several friendships perhaps reduces the stress on what is expected from marriage.

Sorry Rich, I hope that is helpful but I don't know. I suspect more coaching would help. The friends I know with good marriages work at it. They also have difficult times but they make good teams. They make sure they stay fit and healthy. They work on their own happiness and they look for ways to invest in the happiness of their partner. They give their partner the benefit of the doubt and treat them kindly. They also have support from friends. Perhaps one way to look at the success of marriages may be to look at the quality rather than the length. Higher quality may lead to longer marriages, but it may also mean that some 'successful marriages' are ones that end.