Why do people get angry when you attack ideas they believe in?

The problem is that people define themselves by their beliefs. I’m a christian. I’m a communist. I’m a republican. I’m a democrat. I’m an objectivist.

Those are all beliefs: “Christ died for our sins”, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”, “Small goverment, less taxes and regulation.”, “More social services, more regulation.”, “the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self-interest”

When you start attacking those ideas, it’s very hard for people to not take them as ad-hominim attacks and get very defensive and therefore angry.

Read the book “Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me”. You are you’re ideas. For very good evolutionary purposes, you believe what the tribe teaches you without question. We are learning and believing creatures. This way of thinking has made us the fit for our environment no matter. Too fight difference and change is only human in our present form of evolution.

Actually, I think the case could be made that ideas are pretty much all we are. The ego is nothing if not a collection of ideas about what constitutes “I”, and that collection will necessarily be inextricable from one’s views about the nature of the world. Mess with those views and the ego will rally to defend itself.

For me it isn’t always that they attack the idea but the manner in which they do.

If it is with sound evidence and data. If it is with out arrogance and condescension then that is ok.

If it is with an air of “I am right because I am me and you are already wrong because you are not me” that is what gets me mad.

Because it’s like questioning them as a whole. It is criticizing what they feel to be their essence. It might be an idea, but they feel that it is THEM, like you’re questioning THEM.

An idea is a form of a person’s beliefs. When you attack an idea, you are attacking a belief, and are destabilising a person’s view of the world. This is a traumatic experience for most people, so they attempt to defend themselves to help secure their perception.

There are far more effective methods than attacking though, as an attack implies that you take offence at the idea and from the pattern above the person too. If you are tactful and specifically mention that the person is not a problem, only their idea, then your disagreement is far more likely to reach a constructive conclusion.

I would caution you about making generalizations.

In any case, if you are “attacking,” then people usually defend. Why do you (or anyone else) “attack” ideas? A lot of us; perhaps most of us discuss or argue about ideas.

When you attack, even if it is an idea, there is an emotion behind it that gets other people’s hackles up. It is not as if you are attacking an idea, it is as if you are attacking the person. There is no reason to attack an idea unless you mean to attack the person, as well.

Second, is the issue of belief. For most, belief is an unreasoning thing. It is not based on evidence or logic. Evidence and logic can be tested. Either it supports the idea, or it is mistaken. You can design evidentiary tests or thought experiments in order to see if there are any flaws in the idea.

A belief is not subject to these tests. It is based on emotions, not evidence or logic. It is based on the deep psychological needs of the person. So, an idea that is a belief really is the Person, and if you attack the Idea, you are attacking the Person.

My advice is to be polite with others in life. Don’t attack unless you have been attacked first. Never start hostilities. Approach others with respect. If they hold a belief, instead of attacking the belief, try to find out how the person came to hold that belief. Usually, things are much more understandable if you can get a person to talk about their personal experience. Further, you can then separate personal experience from interpretation of that experience.

The interpretation is the idea portion of a belief. Beliefs are made up of experience and interpretation. If you attack a belief, you are attacking personal experience. Which is to say, you are attacking the validity of a person’s experience. You are saying “you did not experience that!”

It’s impossible to tell someone they did not experience what they experienced and retain any credibility. You must accept their description of the experience as their perception of what happened.

Once you do that, you can separate experience from interpretation. You can do this in a number of ways. One of my favorites is to describe an experience that is very similar to the other person’s, but to also talk about how I got to another interpretation of that experience. Also, you can appeal to other authorities—perhaps scientists or scientific method, that offer different models that explain the experience.

If a you and the other person can not agree on the authority by which you interpret experience, and you can not appreciate each other’s authorities, then there really is no point in continuing any argument about interpretation. You are attacking the other person when there is no common ground for discussion. I don’t see the point, except to make enemies. Personally, I don’t like making enemies.

If I can understand where a person is coming from, I can translate their experience into something I understand, by applying my method of interpretation to their experience. I trust that people are accurately describing their perception of experience. I don’t call them crazy. I just try to understand the framework by which they interpret experience.

I believe that all interpretation frameworks have their own internal logic. With a schizophrenic, you have to believe that when they say they hear voices or have hallucinations, this is an accurate depiction of their experience. If you don’t believe people’s descriptions of experience, you have nothing on which to base communication. Anyway, that axiom is a matter of faith for me.

Then you can show them different models for interpreting experience. You might show the schizophrenic that no one else can perceive these voices. Or that the voices are harmful to them. Or that if they take some drugs, the voices go away, and that suggests that he or she should question the accuracy of the perception.

You can do the same thing with religious beliefs or any other kind of idea. However, if you don’t accept experience, you can’t talk. You can only attack. If you don’t accept any common authority for interpreting experience, you can only attack. If a battle is the only possibility, then you can enter battle or not, depending on your preference. However, I will point out that violence almost never changes people’s ideas. It may change their behavior, but not their ideas. The only thing that can change ideas is sympathy and appeal to alternative models that explain perception. Or, so I believe. That’s a model that is built on some fifty years of experience, some of it spent “attacking” other people’s ideas.

‘same reason people get pissed when you criticize their dumb questions!!!!

why attack anything? discuss, ponder, disect. life is too short to attack needlessly. agree to disagree.

To quote a great man, “You cannot convince a believer of anything – their belief is not based on evidence, it is based on a deep seated need to believe. ~ Carl Sagan

He probably meant theists, but I have found that a believer can be anyone. We all have our beliefs, and when someone tries to fault them, we feel attacked. It’s the nature of the animal.

Socrates great crime was teaching the youth of Athens to question the beliefs of their fathers. People take on community beliefs because it is easy and convenient not because they have thought them through and found them to be honest. When someone disagrees they are challenging you to question who you are. At least on Fluther we can’t be forced to drink hemlock. The most a ‘true believer’ can do is whine about ‘haters’, accuse the dissenter of prejudice or quote meaningless phrases from the writings that the questioner doesn’t even believe in. The common wisdom cannot abide independent thinkers.

Because everyone wants to be right.

I hate when I come to a question when @daloon has already been here. He says it all, and all I can do is agree.

Backatcha @YARNLADY

I bet you’ve gotten to a lot of questions today before me. I’ve been working all day. Sigh.

In some instances it isn’t up to you whether or not you are attacking. That decision is made by the other person and there is nothing you can do or say that will change it.

In my head ideas aren’t always beliefs but to me, my ideas matter – they aren’t just thoughts, they are things I’ve thought through and were I to toss them easily, I wouldn’t be a consistent person who values their integrity and character..when certain of my ideas get attacked, I can get angry because the ‘argument’ against it is ridiculous and this ridiculosity causes harm to others

Low self-esteem.

because some people actually are their ideas… they become them and fail to detach themselves from them

there’s a huge difference between people getting mad because you attack their ideas, and getting mad because you disagree.
i can almost always civilly disagree with someone, but if someone opposes my opinion and is an asshole about it? damn right i’m gonna be mad.

@lynneblundell loved your answer! :)

thanks x