I am reading "Four ways to forgiveness" by Ursula Le Guin. This is how the book begins:
“On the planet 0 there has not been a war for five thousand years,” she read, “and on Gethen there has never been a war.” She stopped reading, to rest her eyes and because she was trying to train herself to read slowly, not gobble words down in chunks the way Tikuli gulped his food. “There has never been a war”: in her mind the words stood clear and bright, surrounded by and sinking into an infinite, dark, soft incredulity.
What would that world be, a world without war? It would be the real world Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality. But my people, she thought, know only how to deny. Born in the dark shadow of power misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding and unattainable light. All we know to do is fight. Any peace one of us can make in our life is only a denial that the war is going on, a shadow of the shadow, a doubled unbelief.
That made me realise that several times I perceived political correctness as "only a denial that the war is going on".
Last night I watched this video, which I felt was very relevant to this.
Indeed, I have more respect for someone who listens to me and makes a good effort to understand what I said, then rudely disagrees, than for someone who is very politely ignoring everything I am trying to say.
This is how I feel like this experience can be distilled into an actionable item:
Replying to an email is probably going to be useless, unless I am willing to make an effort to understand what the other person is trying to say, from their own point of view.