issue1 consenters or dissenters?

xmbjowlUID: 2182375

TOPIC: ISSUE1 - "We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose views contradict our own; disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning."
WORDS: 566          TIME: 上午 12:44:00          DATE: 2006-7-25

We live in times when every individual interacts, interdepends, and intercommunicates. Undoubtedly, the conflicts or melting of different ideas occur everyday. Then, from whom could we learn more, people whose views we share, or people whose views contradict ours? From the perspective of mine, one could gain much more from the person whose views contradict his/hers, despite the stress emerging from the idea conflicts.

To begin with, the dissenters could equip us with strong impetus pushing us to review, advance or even revise our initial ideas. It is the human nature etched in the humanities' genome leading one to have a strong desire and ambition to debate the contradicting ideas, in order to reject and overturn them. This course, if works, could avow one's success which gives one great content. Meanwhile, combined with the success, one's idea developed, since he/she has to figure out sufficient reasons either to support his/her idea, or to rebut the contradictory ideas. If it fails, one could also see the flaws in his/her idea, thus has a more clear direction toward which his/her original idea could be revised. This could be best illustrated by the example of defending a case in the court. During the holistic process of judging, the counsel successfully win a case not because of mere a package of reasons prepared beforehand, but due to the intense bouts of debating, where the attorney revise some flaws in his ideas in order to make them impeccable. While as for the consenters, due to lack of self-defending sense derived from the idea conflicts, one is less likely to further investigate the authenticity and practicality of his/her idea. Thereby, given the desire of reviewing and advancing one's idea by the anti, one could better his/hers and make them sounder.

Besides, I would like to go on with my viewpoint in favor of greater benefits from the anti, in that usually the opposite ideas could lend us some precious inspiration. Believe it or not, under some circumstances, this marvelous inspiration adding to one's views could render the initial views unique perspectives and achieving unexpected effects. Such as the born of the Impressionism, without the fierce criticism from the ruthless critics, whose ideas contradict those of Claude Monet, this new fashion of art may not even be endowed with the name of Impressionism, not to mention discovering valuable matters from the criticism and thus adding more painting skills to the artworks. Thanks to the contradictors, the Impressionists’ unique ideas of expressing the nature turn out to be widely accepted by the public. In a word, sometimes the inspiration could only be motivated from the outside. But who could assume this role? The persons whose ideas going opposite to us.

Compared to the opponents, the consenters, if possible, could provide us with some courage. This courage derived from others is useful, since sometimes the voices from the identical ideas could serve as the spiritual pillar, without which one cannot go on sticking to his/her original idea because of the outside overwhelming pressure, either from the authority or from the demos. It is the common belief that humanities would ultimately fight off the SARS that held everyone together and at last kick the new bacteria. Again, it is the same believed culture and goal that instill the great courage and considerable economic profits into the Wal-Mart, a famous chain shopping mall throughout the world. Opposite to the great courage, I admit, the stress from the contradictors could sometimes be counterproductive and inhibit learning, if one was in minor and vulnerable.

Simply put, being endowed with inspiration as well as the impetus to advance our ideas, we could learn far more from dissenters than assentors, though there may lies some stress ahead temporarily.

xmbjowlUID: 2182375

judgement
[5dVQdVmEnt]
n.
审判, 判决, 判断力, 意见, 看法, 评价
judge
[dVQdV]
n.
法官, 审判员, 裁判员, 鉴赏家, 鉴定人, (J-)最高的审判者
vt.
审理, 鉴定, 判断, 判决, 断定, 认为
vi.
下判断, 作评价