Making better friends

From Rational Morality

Did you know that you have no enemies? Friends are your friends - sure. But how about your enemies? They are your friends as well, they just repress it due to a misunderstanding. If that does not make sense to you, you probably have to rehash the Moebius effect.

Clearer now? Great! Ok - so what you perceive as your enemy is actually a friend plus a misunderstanding. Once you realized that you can start to look for the probable cause for the misunderstanding, find a compromise between you and the other and start to further improve your relationship from there. Its called diplomacy - always be diplomatic.

But where to start? Well, identify your friend with the biggest misunderstanding. Some misunderstandings are larger than others and in some cases your friend wont even talk to you anymore. That of course is rather bad. Sometimes the misunderstanding is so fundamental, that it causes an open conflict. Maybe a fight, a brawl and even wars at times. Then it becomes a real challenge. But let us not start with the difficult cases - we shall come back to them later.

So you found a friend you have a misunderstanding with. The least you can do is let him be. Do not attack him in a any way shape or form - just let him or her be him or herself. Maybe you feel hurt as well and are angry maybe even mad as hell. But since you understand the Moebius effect, you will begin to realize that you can only hate yourself, will slowly calm yourself down and eventually bring yourself to realize that it is time for signaling the other that you are not angry anymore, that you do not mean the other any harm or ill will and that you hope the other could feel the same.

Maybe your repressed friend does not understand at first and continues to hurt you in one way or the other. In that case just ignore it and protect yourself from attacks but always be open and let the other know that you prefer to communicate and solve whatever misunderstandings led to the situation. Be diplomatic, suggest a compromise and above all do not threat the other. Focus on the inside and how to protect that without deceit. If you see no benefit in communicating then remain silent but always present the full picture when you communicate. Do not knowingly let another come to harm by not volunteering information. That would be deceitfully and deceit makes no sense.

Eventually your friend will realize that you mean what you say and will become more open for an exchange of ideas. Tell your friend why you did what you did and how happy you are that it worked. At some point you may even mention the Moebius effect as the source of your understanding. Your better friend will be your friend forever.

Now that you understand the basics, we can try a more difficult case. One of your friends is so mad at you that she wont even talk to you anymore, you may even be in a fight with that person. The first you you must do is stop fighting. As soon as possible. Negotiate a compromise and leave the battlefield. If that is not possible then never attack and focus only on defense. As next step seek a diplomatic link. You will be good friends with someone on the other side and if not then you will be friend with someone who has a good friend on the other side. That will be your link because the friendship chain will be straight from you to your worst friend and all you need to do is follow the bread crumbs.

Let say you are in a group that is at bitter war with another group. Is it clear what you have to do? First build a chain of friends to the leader of your group and help him realize the consequences of the Moebuis effect. Then explain how the conflict your group is in is really just a big misunderstanding. The leader of your group will understand and then follow the bread crumbs to the leader of the other group.

Making better friends can be a delicate matter and you should start small before you move up to your worse friends. Start in your immediate vicinity and resolve the small misunderstandings first and move outward to ever bigger challenges. It will train your diplomacy skills and good home harbor. People do change - you see - but for others to change you first have to change yourself. Doing so will make you as well as others much happier in the process. Once you resolved the big misunderstandings outside you in your social circle you can continue to resolve your inner misunderstandings through self improvement.