Why You Can't Argue Against Something You Don't Understand
~ Undoing the logic ~
“You can’t undo the logic until you understand it.”
When I heard my history professor say those words in the lecture not only did that beautiful sentence come together, but so did my scrambled mind. You really do have to understand something if you want to fight it, change it, or argue against it. Arguing against something without looking at other perspectives to me is the same as a person getting angry because they’re lost, but refusing to ask for directions. You refuse to listen to others but it get's you nowhere, you are stuck.
Thinking about this phrase I quickly realised that it can apply to anything in your life. I started to look at the things I don’t get, and usually when I don’t get things it’s for two reasons. One I’m pretty stubborn. Secondly though it’s because something about it just makes me uncomfortable or mad.
Like how I don’t get….
The Kardashians, literally how did they become so famous?!
Why the guy sitting behind me in my lecture the other day was so amused by club penguin that he felt the need to invite everyone around him to play sledge hockey with him
Why you need so many “gains” (PSA - please don’t weigh yourself at the gym)
Why I’m not a famous YouTuber with a million fans (okay maybe it’s cause I don’t have a youtube channel but I feel like I have the persona at least.)
Why a pigeon had the audacity to hit me in the head with it's wing (one word: terrifying.)
So instead of trying to understand these concepts, petty as they may be, I let my annoyance for the subject block any kind of outside opinion, why would I make myself more mad? I was once told that everything you don’t like about a situation or someone else is a direct reflection of what you don’t like about yourself. When those things made me mad I usually just took it at surface level, let my ego block any contradictory opinion and move on. Looking beyond it though I can see why I get so mad about those thing. I hate when people whine, but that’s because I really don’t like to be perceived as needy or weak, so I don’t like when other people do it. I don’t like fake people, but it’s because for the longest time I was one of those people because I was scared that people wouldn’t like me if I had my own opinions (cause who has those these days?). As for the Kardashians, I really appreciate the value of hard work, so when I see a group of people that seem to attain so much success with such ease it’s pretty frustrating. (Now that I think about it very impressive what they do, you go Kardashian clan.)
You can also flip this concept around. When someone is being rude to you it’s usually just because they see something in your actions that reminds them of the part of themselves that they don’t like. It’s not you. It’s their own issues that they are just putting on you.
It’s made me realise I can be so much more positive about things. If I really cared about something so much that I wanted to change it, I couldn’t do anything without figuring out the cause. I would also know it’s significant to me and my morals because of how angry/annoyed it made me. I would have even more of a reason to try and understand it effectively so I could get a good position to fight it. (Ourivoir bias)
So I may never fully understand why the Kardashians are so famous, but if I really looked into it I could find out, but really why should it be something that bugs me? Honestly that families just living their life and in reality (punny because it’s a reality show! haha...okay no.) they’re killing it! I’d love to Snapchat and Instagram my new matching Fendi outfits all day, you do you, Kim K.
http://stylenews.peoplestylewatch.com/2015/04/16/kim-kardashian-selfie-book-selfish-on-gilt-presale/
Thank you to my professor for reminding me what I already knew, a huge ego will make your path to change a small and narrow one, one limited by bias’s and rarely accessible. Listen to others, and that path will be big enough for you to head i the direction you really need to to make a change.