The Culprit of Ineffective Discussions: Emotion

Are you having effective discussions?

It is important to realize that not all discussions are productive, a fact that I am sure most of my readers can attest to. I strongly believe that the key to effective discourse is the control of emotions. Many aggravated arguments tend to arise from being emotionally affected by something that someone else has said. Many may initially disagree with this, but upon introspection of this disagreement, I believe that most people would come to a similar conclusion.

Where do we have the least productive discussions? Instant messaging tends to be a bad platform. One can spew off several points of argument, each triggering an emotional response. The recipient of these arguments are then forced to focus on one and reply to it immediately while the other points are temporarily neglected. After the reply of their first point, before one can reply to their second point, the rebuttal of the first reply has already been sent. Eventually, different ideas are lost in an attempt to multitask and the argument ends with all parties feeling like they achieved something but nothing is truly learned. How can one provide for effective discourse by controlling emotion? Let us try to answer that tomorrow.