I love going home to see my family for Christmas. But over the past year I’ve noticed my uncle posting on Facebook about politics and conspiracy theories that are completely different to what I believe. I’m worried he might make an offensive quip about the news over dinner. How do I defend my point of view without it erupting into an argument?

Unlike most of the year, where we can comfortably reside within our own social bubbles, Christmas is when we’re thrust into the midst of that diverse range of personalities, generations and political persuasions that make up our extended family. This means we’re often faced with views we don’t normally encounter, and sometimes forced to defend our own views in the face of staunch opposition. 

So, if you’re dreading the prospect of a stormy argument at the holiday dinner table, here are some tips for navigating the perilous territory of contentious topics and steering the conversation towards calmer waters. 

Why conversations go bad

If humans were truth-seeking robots, then we’d welcome criticism of our views and thank others for showing that our beliefs are in error. But we’re not robots. We’re vulnerable social creatures, absorbing ideas and norms from our peers and those we admire, all while defending our identity and status from perceived attacks.  

Compounding the complexity of how we form our beliefs and attitudes is that emotion often leads the way, with reason lagging behind, and we scramble to find arguments to support the way we feel. This means that many of the arguments we offer to support our views are actually not the cause of our belief, but the effect. They’re post-hoc rationalisations that we use to defend our underlying attitudes. 

You can tell when someone is arguing using a post-hoc rationalisation, because if you surgically dismantle it, showing that it’s false, they still don’t change their mind. You might have knocked down one post-hoc rationalisation, but you haven’t challenged the actual reason they hold their attitude. 

All this messy business of not being a robot means that disagreement about an issue where we hold strong feelings – and ethical questions are often the things we feel the most strongly about – can easily slip into conflict, where we rapidly find ourselves defending our turf and fighting back against threats to our identity and desperately trying to change the other person’s mind. 

How to not spoil the dinner table conversation

The good news is that there are some techniques you can use to lower the temperature in contentious conversations, and possibly even walk away with a stronger relationship and some new perspectives to consider. 

The first step is to stop trying to win! If you think about it, it’s strange that we even think that we can change someone’s mind in a single heated conversation. When was the last time such a conversation changed your mind? Instead, it takes a different kind of conversation – often multiple conversations – to encourage someone to adopt a different perspective, especially around topics where they already hold strong views. 

So, when you hear someone state a view that you believe is wrong, try to resist doing the natural human thing of stating an opposite view. Doing so immediately locks the conversation in the Thunderdome, where two viewpoints enter, and only can survive. It’s even worse if the views battling it out are post-hoc rationalisations, because then you’re both just whiffing at ghosts. 

Instead, pause. Take a deep breath. Then ask a question. And really listen to the answer. This does two important things. The first is that it actually gives you a fighting chance of understanding the detail of the other person’s view. We usually only get a chance to express a fragment of our full beliefs on a topic. And often others will fill in bit we leave unsaid with an uncharitable interpretation, sometimes even outright misrepresenting what we believe. Asking and listening allows them to fill in those gaps themselves. 

The second thing that asking and listening does is arguably more important: it signals respect. Listening to someone is like giving them a gift (possibly an even more valuable one than they got out of the Secret Santa). It shows you actually care about what they think and that you want to know more. Sometimes, all people want is to get something off their chest, and giving them a chance to do so will cause them to temper their beliefs in the process, landing somewhere more reasonable.  

The respect that listening generates becomes the bedrock of a good conversation about a contentious issue. It means they are more likely to want to listen to you in return, and it reduces the perception that their identity is under attack, so they might even be more willing to take your perspectives on board. 

Story time

Once you’ve had a chance to listen to what they have to say (and hopefully had the chance to be listened to in return), then a next step can be to tell some stories that can shed light on your point of view.  

You can talk about how you formed your belief, or share a perspective that you found surprising but persuasive. You can even invite them to share a story about how they came to their view, or ask if they know someone who has been affected by the issue you’re discussing. Techniques like this have been shown to humanise what can be otherwise abstract or dehumanised perspectives, grounding them in the real world and shifting the conversation away from stereotypes and glib generalisations. 

If the conversation is getting heated at any point, there’s no shame in backing out or changing the subject. This is supposed to be a harmonious family gathering, after all. And relationships are fundamentally important to a good life, so it can sometimes be more important to preserve a relationship than it is to be right. Plus, reinforcing that relationship is precisely what is needed if you ever want to continue the conversation down the track and have them be receptive to your point of view. 

Christmas dinner is not about changing minds. It’s about coming together as a family or a community to engage in ritual activities that are supposed to bring us together. At least, that’s the ideal. For many people, Christmas can be laced with tension, simmering resentments, power plays and drunken debates. While the techniques here won’t solve all those problems, they might help to lower the temperature, build some stronger relationships, and hopefully allow you to enjoy your post-meal nap in some peace.  

On February 16, 2009, local police in Stamford, Connecticut received a highly unusual, and deeply horrifying 911 call – Sandra Herold, her voice hysterical, told them that her pet chimp, Travis, had attacked and was eating her friend. In the background of the call, along with the screams of the friend, police could hear the hollering of an enraged primate.

Sandra had purchased Travis over a decade prior. Their relationship was extremely, perhaps unnaturally close – she raised him as a human child, and after her own daughter died, Travis became her everything. Travis, who showed high levels of intelligence, ate with her at the dinner table. Each night, they slept side by side in the same bed.  

There has been much speculation as to what flipped Travis into a rage. Sandra’s friend, the victim of his attack, was holding his favourite toy when he mauled her – an Elmo doll. Perhaps it was an instance of territorial aggression. Perhaps it was his unhealthy lifestyle, or the drugs that Sandra sometimes gave him; she had mixed Xanax into his tea, just before the attack. Regardless, the attack raises questions about the ethics of owning exotic pets – and what exactly makes them different to domesticated animals. 

Animal ownership: Rights and wrongs 

We live in a culture increasingly fascinated by the ethics of owning exotic pets. The pandemic-era Netflix smash hit Tiger King and the recent series Chimp Crazy take an outrageous look at the often eccentric people who choose to own lions, tigers, and primates. More often than not, these investigations into exotic pet ownership show the dark side of the industry – Joe Exotic of Tiger King fame was repeatedly accused of abusing his animals.  

Private owners of exotic animals frequently commit clear ethical wrongs. “Many private owners try to change the nature of the animals by … mutilating them, or beating/electrocuting them into submission,” writes animal welfare expert Bobbi Brink. There is a fundamental attitude towards the animal that underpins these harms. Namely, the animal is being treated and defined wholly by its relationship to human beings, and what they can do for us. It becomes an object that owners can do what they wish with. Ownership of this type transforms a living being into what philosopher Immanuel Kant described as a “means” rather than an “end” – it is indistinguishable from property.  

This is, in fact, the argument made by philosopher Gary L. Francione against all forms of pet ownership. Francione argues that there is no way to not see your pet dog as anything other than property – you control it, own it, reduce to it to a mere object. “As a practical matter, there is simply no way to have an institution of ‘pet’ ownership that is consistent with a sound theory of animal rights,” Francione writes. “‘Pets’ are property and, as such, their valuation will ultimately be a matter of what their ‘owners’ decide.” Elsewhere, writer Karen Dawn notes that solitary confinement is used to punish humans – according to her, for pack animals like dogs, life without others of their kind can arguably be considered solitary confinement. 

However, there is a mutually beneficial nature to some forms of pet ownership. There is much to suggest that human evolution was shaped and moulded by our relationship with dogs – there is a mutual appreciation that goes both ways. We give them things, and they give us things back. This in turn builds an emotional connection that can give both humans and pets lives worth living. At least, some forms of pets. 

The allure of power 

The ownership of exotic animals is troubling because of the lopsided power dynamics at play. The mutual beneficence in the case of dogs simply does not apply when it comes to lions or chimps. They do not gain anything from being taken from their homes, locked away, and having their needs systematically and brutally unmet. Travis the chimp might have eventually committed an act of brutality – but his life before that point was filled with what philosopher Michel Foucault would describe as diffused, rather than acute, forms of brutality. It was the brutality of being separated from his species and his needs. 

The question remains, then – why do people want to own exotic animals? What is the appeal? And what does that say about human nature? 

Exotic animals represent the unknown; the other; the distinct. The drive of taking the other, “dominating” it and making it our own, is what philosopher Nietzsche called “the will to power.” According to Nietzsche, the dynamics of those who take, and those who are taken from, exist in all things – it makes sense they would also exist in our relationships with exotic pets.  

There is some sense of perceived glory in taking a wild creature and bending it to your will, and often, unable to cater to their complicated needs, owners tend to restrict or harm exotic animals in some way.

This kind of domination is about the success of one way of living; proving the excellence of the recognisable, by making the unrecognisable more like it.

One of our most admirable traits as a species is our curiosity. Being interested in exotic animals, and in pets, speaks to that curiosity. We are drawn to what makes them tick. That in itself is not a problem. But we must ensure that our relationship is one defined by that curiosity; to that openness to a creature, and all that it wants and needs. In short – we don’t need to change the nature of the other, or what is different to us. We need to respect it.

Image: Tiger King, Netflix

Some psychologists believe that we become the average of the people we spend the most time with. However, this can make things complicated for our own morals, ethics, and values.

In the middle of 2020, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai was harassed on Twitter for endorsing her conservative friend at Oxford University. It made headlines around the world, with thousands of people commenting on who they felt they could and couldn’t be friends with out of principle. 

While friendships often transcend differences of opinion, most people have limits on what values and beliefs they will tolerate in the people they spend time with. It’s important to ask ourselves: does being friends with someone mean agreeing with all their values and beliefs? Or can we be friends with someone we disagree with?

There is more to friendship than simply sharing values and beliefs

When we enter into a friendship, we are agreeing to a set of duties and expectations of what it means to be a good friend. These duties can involve providing support during difficult times, celebrating accomplishments, being caring and empathetic, and so on. 

However, it’s unlikely we’ll have friends who we agree with 100% of the time. This could mean disagreeing with a choice they made, or realising that you have differing values about something. It is perfectly reasonable to disagree with a friend or hold an opposing view, and not be hypocritical in your own beliefs.  

It’s important to interrogate, though, what this means for us. When Malala was harassed online for having a friend with different political views, it wasn’t because she herself expressed those views. Rather, it was because she supported a friend with different views, and that support supposedly had to have indicated something about her own values and beliefs. 

Friendships, however, are so much more than shared values. Having people in our lives with different values and opinions can broaden our perspective on the world, while also providing us with the opportunity to question the reasoning behind our own beliefs. 

Even though there is more to a person than both their views and the views of their friends, it is naïve to claim that our friends’ values don’t have an impact on us.

So, there has to be a threshold of tolerance in what we are willing to understand in our friends’ values. The ethical dilemma we find ourselves in is where we draw the line. 

There is no doubt that some categories of opinions and values shouldn’t be given the same airtime as others. One way we can discern this is by asking: what are the implications on others in expressing or acting on this belief? 

Some beliefs predominantly impact the individual who holds them. Food preferences, opinions about what clothes look good, or what music sounds best are unlikely to have a significant effect on the people in this person’s life. 

However, expressing or acting on other kinds of beliefs can have obvious, negative impacts on certain groups of people such as racist, sexist or homophobic rhetoric, disinformation, and hate speech. Understanding that expressing some kinds of beliefs has an impact on the broader community characterises the harm of unchecked intolerance. 

When we overlook a friend’s more severe hateful or discriminatory belief, we can become complicit in allowing a belief that harms others to go unchecked.

Overlooking a hateful or discriminatory belief the same way that we might overlook a difference in taste or preference makes it seem like we are condoning, if not supporting, that belief. For example, if your friend was continuously espousing hate speech and you didn’t call them out on it, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t partake in hate speech yourself. By letting it slide because it’s a friend, the harm of expressing these values is still being done. Challenging and speaking out about that belief doesn’t mean that we are being a bad friend – in fact, it usually means the opposite.

One possible solution: deal breakers

Even though we can’t expect to have all the same values as our friends, we might expect that we have the same deal breakers as them. A deal breaker is something like a value or personality trait that will cause a person to back out of a relationship or agreement. For example, one of the things that might connect us to our friends is that we all have a deal breaker that we won’t tolerate someone who is rude or unkind to strangers. Having the same deal breakers means that we draw the same line in the sand of what we will and won’t tolerate, rather than ensuring that we agree on every single value. 

The concept of a deal breaker can be helpful with ethical value differences in our friends, too. For example, it could be that we’re happy with different approaches to ethical decision making, as long as we both won’t tolerate anything that harms others unnecessarily. Instead of making sure we agree with our friends entirely, we’re making sure we’re on the same page about the “non-negotiable” values we have. 

As with most ethical issues, the answer is rarely black and white. In this case, the line we draw with what values we tolerate in our friends can often fluctuate due to external factors, including mental health and personal context. 

At the end of the day, being someone’s friend shouldn’t mean that you have to defend every single belief that they have. I would hope that my friends feel that they can challenge my beliefs, and that I can do the same for them. However, it is important that we think about the deal breakers we have and hold our friends accountable for how their beliefs impact the broader population, and be willing to look inward when they do the same for us.