You may win the Debate but Lose the Person !!

I want to share a short story which I came across while reading the book "YOU CAN WIN". The author has presented a situation, where, how people understand your explanation according to their comfort, is explained.

A medical doctor who was invited as a guest speaker to address a group of alcoholics. He wanted to make a demonstration that would be powerful enough to make people realize that alcohol was injurious to their health. He had two containers, one with pure distilled water and one with pure alcohol. He put an earthworm into the distilled water and it swam beautifully and came up to the top. He put another earthworm into the alcohol and it disintegrated in front of everyone's eyes. He wanted to prove that this was what alcohol did to the insides of our body. He asked the group what the moral of the story was and one person from behind said, "If you drink alcohol you won't have worms in your stomach." Was that the message? Of course not. That was selective listening--we hear what we want to hear and not what is being said.

The listener in the story was so blind (we can say as many times listeners are) that he understood the exact opposite meaning of what the Speaker was talking about. And this is what I am going to discuss here.

Different people, different areas of work and interests and above all different approaches of people towards the topics and the person they are discussing with. Many times knowingly or unknowingly we get in to a discussion and are the part of debates. However the way debates differ from discussions is, they have a "WIN OR LOOSE" situation at the end. In discussions, most of the times we talk about the same side of the topic agreeing each other’s. Whereas in debates, we keep explaining our views about the topic and want our views to get approved by all the listeners.

So there are more chances of getting the situation complicated when you are talking about one side of the topic and the opponent is talking about the exactly opposite side of the topic.

I have tried putting some of the situations which may occur while someone is in debate with others.

1. When all the debaters in the group are having common area of interest and when they are discussing about the same, they will find the topic interesting. They will try to take forward what they think about the topic. Both parties will finally have some good and bad points with them about the topic. And both parties may share the title of "WINNERS OF THE DEBATE".

This can be the most ideal situation while we are in debates. But, unlike following cases it happens rarely.

2. In second case, some listeners have their own point of views about what they observe. They simply put there points and listen what others are saying. They will neither be agreeing nor be disagreeing with the opponents. They are neutral about their views. So probably there may not be a WIN or LOSS situation at the end of the debate. This leads to a clash-free end of the interactions.

3. In third case, the person in the second case will calmly listen what the opponents are saying and then he justifies his opinion over the points of counterpart. He will explain how his views are more right about the topic than the views of the opponents. He agrees to all the points of opponent but he justifies what seems him more correct. He explains his views once he is done with listening all the opponents. He can make the opponents agree with his points. This situation also leads to a clash-free end of the interactions.

4. Many times people do not know the deep of the subject but still they take part in discussion to explain what they got form how the topic looks like. Here, the person in the third case is debating with a party who does not know anything about the topic. The speaker is right but the listener is justifying his views merely on his guesses about the topic. Even though the speaker is right, listener will not be ready to accept the speaker. This leads to anger in the speech of speaker. Discussion continues with no results and ends with clashes between the participants.

5. Next case is where the speaker dominates the discussion with whatever he is telling. He wants his views to be accepted by everyone regardless of the results of debate. Here the dominating person will not allow u to speak but rather he will talk exactly opposite meaning words of your points. These are most unhealthy discussions with mere waste of time and energy.

What happens many times is, people forget the original topic of debate and they keep discussing other things which do not have any relation between each other. The topic jumps from here to there and introduces more confusion between the debaters. Neither the speaker nor the listener will come to a conclusion because they are busy proving the opponents wrong. Slowly the environment gets heated with words and they come up with NOTHING.

Remember, someone has said, “you may win the debate but you will lose the person".

Our intention should not just be to win the debate for instance but it should be long enough to win the debate and the person as well. Unlike above situations every discussion should have a result of it at the end. Either of the party should listen or speak depends on how strong and true their opponents are. Strong opponents do not necessarily represent the truthfulness in the speech. So one should not stop discussing his views until he finds the debate is going out of his hands.