What’s missing from this?:
I don’t think most disputes get “resolved”. I think one
person simply gives up. Maybe they don’t think the issue is that important, >maybe they
feel that they don’t have the time to argue it, maybe they feel that the other person
involved is too unpleasant to want to try to engage with, maybe they’ve found that no
matter what they do, they never make a difference.
Give up? It’s “maybe one person
realizes the other person was right, and does it their way from then on, without any hard
feelings.” It has happened to me quite a few times. That’s the sort of outcome I was
talking about.
Of course, I think of these in terms of pure content disputes (should we or should we not
mention something? how should we format this table? and so forth ...) because that’s what
most of those I’ve been involved in have been. Disputes over someone’s conduct are
something else entirely, because it’s harder for people to admit they were wrong in that
department. And why I always say it cannot be repeated enough that, when you realize the
argument is no longer about what you were originally arguing about but has instead become
a meta-argument about the argument itself, you should stop immediately as it will no
longer accomplish anything constructive to continue.
Daniel Case