Stand Up For Your Beliefs And Never Apologize
The dubious way to gain respect and attract people
You have at least one opinion that most people around you would strongly disagree with. Maybe you have a secret opinion that would disgust most people around you. Or maybe, secretly, they think the same way.
Truth is, most people just want to get along with each other — and more so the higher they score on agreeability in personality tests.
As a compromise, we all hold back our thoughts sometimes. Especially in public life, we figure, we just couldn’t cope otherwise. Don’t think this comes without a cost, though!
The Cost Of Being Silent On Your Own Beliefs
The cost of not voicing your beliefs at all, or rarely, is two-fold. There is the cost it has on your personal development and well-being. And there is the cost it has on public knowledge.
If you don’t voice your beliefs in the presence of contrary thinkers, you miss the opportunity for them to prove you wrong. If you want to be ›right‹ this might be exactly what you want. If you want to grow and gain knowledge, not so much. Finally, suppressing one’s beliefs can make deeply unhappy because we lose our connection to peers for a lack of communication and build up frustration.
Then there is the effect on the public: If the more popular opinions are the only ones being voiced, group intelligence stagnates. We become deaf to valuable insights and stimuli from individuals that might prove us wrong. Sometimes, it can just be helpful to hear a person sharing their beliefs for the sake of knowing that we don’t want to have anything to do with them.
Now that we have laid out the benefits of standing up for your beliefs, let’s look at the argument against free speech.
The Benefits Of Having Speech Limitations
Let me be honest, neither am I interested in making this case nor am I going to try hard. Whoops, did I just state my opinion? Anyway, it roughly goes like this:
There are certain things that don’t add any value to the discussion when being said. Even worse, they also hurt someone’s feelings or show potential. Worst-case scenario, they might mysteriously instruct others to commit crimes without being covered by the law against instructing others to commit crimes.
Here is why you at least at a personal level shouldn’t let these concerns hold you back from speaking your mind.
Why Speak Your Mind When It’s Appropriate
I am not advocating for getting into people’s faces for no reason and trying to make their life’s harder. As a matter of fact, I think you shouldn’t do that — and no reasonable free speech advocate would. You should speak your mind when you deem it to be appropriate.
The evaluation of whether something is appropriate is largely intuitive and differs between individuals. But per definition therefore it is always already part of your belief system. If you think it’s appropriate to speak up on a matter, that already is a belief in itself.
Denying that every individual has the right to evaluate decency autonomously implies the claim that we can either collectively do it better or that specific people are more qualified to do so than others.
While I agree on the last part, namely that I think some people have greater decency than others, I doubt we can justifiably decide on who that would be. And we frankly could not even begin to find consensus, if nobody had the right — or just the guts — to ask controversial questions.
After this brief excursion into politics, I want to get into the personal benefits of standing up for your beliefs — regardless on whether we agree on the best legal handling of this issue.
Never Apologize — If You Think You Shouldn’t
Your friends are most likely very similar to you in some regards and different in others. At least in my opinion, that’s when you are doing it right. If you didn’t stand up for what you believe in, how would they ever find out?
Getting to know a person requires them to share their thoughts with you. The more they feel able to do so, the better you will get to know them. And even if you disagree with them, you still will connect with them, because they are showing themselves for what they are.
If you don’t know a person, they are no friend but just an acquaintance.
Furthermore, even strangers will not respect you because they can sense that you will cooperate no matter what they do. You can’t possibly agree with them on everything, so you must either be silent on some disagreements or you are even lying to them. None of these options make you attractive.
If you show the strength to disagree gently with someone, people will respect you. Because that’s when they begin to acknowledge you as an actual person.
If you always agree with someone you are at the same time not bringing anything to the table yourself. Only narcissists and superficial people would want to hang out with that kind of person. I’ll go further: If you act like this, everybody will just abuse you.
The reason people will talk to you won’t be about wanting to hear your impressions. Rather, they will come to you for comfort and affirmation of opinions that they themselves are doubtful of.
If you don’t speak up, you will be the leverage that gives bad ideas an advantage over reasonable ones.
Whenever someone wants to enforce their own opinion and embolden it against yours, they might use emotional guilt.
Remember, when you used to take your sister's shovel away, and she’d just hit you. Unless mom was nearby, in which case she would start crying instead until mom made you give her the shovel back? Okay, maybe the anecdote goes slightly different for you.
It’s a simple power-play to get authorities or just the masses on your side by playing the victim. (In politics it also acknowledges how our society is trying its best to help victims, but that just as a side note.) If you are actually causing emotional damage, reconsider the decency — but nobody should be able to abuse the emotional argument to bully you into an apology.
Emotional guilt that doesn’t come from within… that alone can never be a legitimate reason for you to grin and bear it.
So here’s the secret to being attractive, or at least respected: Stand up for your beliefs and never apologize.
