Is There A Use To Being
The Devil’s Advocate
For Insight ?
Credit to: Forbes.com
Once again, it’s this nagging idea that has been bothering me.
Sometimes (or often)… you like to take brute pride in your own convictions. And you are then asked to be humble by certain methods of persuasion. One method the other party might enact includes playing the Devil’s advocate to remind you that different perspectives may exist. More like a fight for neutrality.
“SOME people might perceive it as that… yes… but others might not.”
How are you supposed to respond?
“Umm… yes.”
You realize this bothers you because after that “yes” is verbalized, your mind is probably going “So what the fuck is next?”
When a person is playing Devil’s advocate simply as a way to rub some neutral ground to your stated opinion (extreme as they may be sometimes)…. the only use of this tool is for halting what may come from your opinion. It’s to halt the next move towards your end game. Why? Because there is fear that you would take it too far? Because of their neurotic urge to feel right with an easy cop-out by stating the obvious?
Playing the Devil’s advocate without a proposed different solution or different insight provides no value add. It is a form of underestimating my intelligence by reminding me of what should be very much common sense.
Of course some people may see it as this and not that. OF COURSE others might view it differently. OF COURSE I might be the product of my own environment. OF COURSE it could be a strong influence of proximity, of peers, and OF COURSE.. it might not. THIS OR THAT… SOMETIMES… These phrases bother me if there is no solution after the fact.
Provide a damn solution if you are going to try and bring me back to the neutral ground I strayed away from. Purposely I left that neutral place a long time ago because I have an opinion.
My response could be, “Well, it’s my own opinion. Others might think differently. This is how I think.”
But that would be too obvious. Much more obvious than, “Some people think this way, others think that, too. Not everyone is like that, some of them are like that, others are not. Some things are that way. Often times it could be something different.”
It’s maddening because there is no proposed solution. It’s maddening because the very act of having an opinion is to take a stand away from being neutral.
Not from intolerance.
Not from bigotry.
But because you have a fucking opinion.
/End rant.