You are doing it wrong

We are the internet people, we live in a society that prides itself of being always connected and always able to share.

And even though we tend to concentrate in the largest cities of the most developed countries, the nature of our work keep us as close to those in remote small villages as the ones in the next door office.

This makes for a very heterogenous community, many people, cultures and languages building the same web. Which I like to believe, makes up for a community full of people with very open minds and intercultural knowledge among many other aspects.

One would think that in such connected community, the communication between peers should be smooth. But we've got to a point where we think that if we don't make a big deal out of our opinion, we have no reach. If we don't attack others with our ideas, they won't listen to us.

For quite a while, this trend has become more and more obvious in everyday communication, making this a popular expression:

If you don't do it the way I do it, you're doing it wrong.

If you don't use what I use, you are doing it wrong. If you don't see what I see, you are doing it wrong. If you don't think the way I think, you are doing it wrong.

There are two issues with this way of thinking. The first one quite obviously, is the disqualification of the other. We jump to the conclusion of "wrong" before knowing if there's a story behind their choice. The second issue, is that in the long term, we are deeply hurting the way we communicate with each other as the small things that make a good discussion worth having turn into a series of monologues directed to the air.

I wish every time we want to tell someone that we disagree with the way they are doing something, we would stop for a minute and think how we can do that in the most constructive way, so our words have a better effect in the other person, and so we can understand why they do things different than we do.