Why do we debate?

[anileve]

Recently a question dawned on me while I was engaging in a heated debate with my friends. And I wasn’t sure about the answer. So let’s see what you have to say about this.

Why do we debate? Why do we try to convince or convert others into our way of thinking? People have their opinions and each one is rightfully theirs to have and to hold, they are happy with their conclusions and stand firmly on their validity, however we often feel like we have to challenge them. Why do we so often feel compelled to do this? Is our opinion more superior? What are we gaining? Where is the benefit?

Some questions to think about, see if you can come up with a satisfactory answer.

[omniscient]

The reason you debate is because you get very irritated when someone doesn't think like you. It shouldn't be that way but it is. If you're debating with someone then that means you are trying to prove a point and also trying to prove their point wrong. Since you think you are right you try to convert them into thinking like you. You can't stand it when they think in different ways. To you they are wrong and thinking in such wrong ways isn't acceptable to you.

So simply put, people rightfully have their own opinions but you can't "stand" the oppositions idiotic ways. You try to debate to prove your point so you won't strangle them instead.

[sSsflamesSs]

It's simple...just another form of competition.

By proving something to someone who initially opposes your view, you feel validated and superior.

[Anonymouse]

"There is a faculty of the human mind which is superior to all which is born or begotten. Through it we are enabled to attain union with the superior intelligences, of being transported beyond the scenes and arrangements of this world, and of partaking in the higher life and peculiar powers of the heavenly ones. By this faculty we are made free from the domination of Fate, and are made, so to speak, the arbiters of our own destinies. For, when the more excellent parts of us become filled with energy, and the soul is elevated to natures loftier than itself, it becomes separated from those conditions which keep it under the dominion of the present every-day life of the world, exchanges the present for another life, and abandons the conventional habits belonging to the external order of things, to give and mingle itself with the order which pertains to the higher life."

-Iamblichus

To realize that our knowledge is ignorance
This is a noble insight
To regard our ignorance as knowledge
That is mental sickness

Lao Tzu, Chinese Philosopher, 7th century B.C.

Being asked what is difficult, the Greek philosopher Thales replied:

"To know oneself."