Your precious opinion

I don’t really understand why I can’t disagree with someone without them getting upset. Is it so important that I am in total agreement with everyone’s opinion and view, such that voices need to be raised when I suggest a counter to them?

I’m not one to take things at face value, if you tell me something you’d better have a ‘for example’ to back it up and that's not because I’m being obtuse, it’s not just because I’m sceptical, it’s because I understand there’s no absolute truth, there’s (at least) two sides to every story and no one person has all the answers.

Suggesting an alternative to a viewpoint is called conversation or debate, it doesn’t have to be World War 3, but some people can’t have their opinions questioned without having their feelings hurt, their ego’s bruised and their tempers flared.

experience will differ from that and shape their own opinion thus

Also, why are people so insistent on making others see things their way? Then they’re so surprised when they fail to make a person see things their way. People are always going to differ on matters of opinion, that's a matter of fact. And no matter what experience of a situation a person has that they want to educate upon, someone else’s experience will differ from that and shape their own opinion thus.

Let’s look at the opinion that “All men are bastards” for example. This is a phrase that turns up when discussing matters of the heart with women who have had poor to terrible experiences with men. However ask a gay man who has had bad experiences with his lovers whether all men are bastards or not and how do you think he would answer.

a creature with no soul, no heart and no redeeming features called man

Where as the woman feels she has become a victim through circumstance brought on by loving a creature with no soul, no heart and no redeeming features called man, the homosexual man in my argument realises that men are in possession of a heart, a soul and redeeming features but he is a victim of love and not of men.

The above argument may seem redundant as most intelligent humans realise that sweeping generalisations like “All men are bastards” just don’t hold water. Yet I’ve spoken to intelligent humans who will stridently defend similar sweeping statements answering any attempt of moderation with sulky silence or with angry retorts.

And what is with the sulky silences? You can feel sufficiently emotionally invested in an opinion to argue it, but, at the slightest resistance to that idea you no longer have a voice to argue it. That’s poor.