Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same.

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.

When people realize that in the long run you may be turning off the audiences more, even though they will look temporarily--in the end they turn away, we really need to develop other metaphors and not talk about two sides, but talk about all sides.

The argument culture urges us to approach the world - and the people in it - in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as 'both sides'; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize.

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord.

But if you parry individuals points - a negative and defensive enterprise - you never step back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true - a positive act.