Disagreement

People keep telling me they disagree with me. Most of the time they do not. What they mean is that they do not like where the thought leads. That is not disagreement. It is a flinch.

Real disagreement requires separation. You have to say where you part company, on what grounds, and in relation to what. Simply saying “not that” does nothing. It leaves everything exactly where it was, except now with a faint whiff of injured dignity hanging in the air. We have somehow agreed to treat this as intellectual engagement, which explains a great deal about the state of things.

Art is the easiest place to see it. Someone puts a painting on the wall. You think it works. A visitor says it does not. So far, so good. But then comes the move that kills the conversation. “Art is subjective anyway.” At that point nothing can be distinguished. Craft, intention, history, failure, success, all melt away. The painting is no longer judged against anything except the sofa. That is not a disagreement with your view. It is a refusal to have one.

Wine makes the same mistake obvious. I like Malbec. I like depth and sweetness. A lot of expensive wines leave me cold. That is not because the wine is bad, or because I am ignorant, but because it is doing something I do not particularly enjoy. Someone else may prize austerity, acidity, restraint, the intellectual pleasure of something that takes work. Fine. But if they tell me that my preference proves all wine judgement is meaningless, or that price alone settles the matter, then we are no longer talking about wine. We are talking past each other.

Taste is real. But so are distinctions. Saying “I don’t like this” is not the same thing as saying “there is nothing to be said about it”.

This is why Brian Sewell mattered. Not because he was always right, but because he forced differentiation. He did not hide behind subjectivity or consensus. He told you exactly where something failed, compared with what, and why. You could argue with him properly because there was something there to argue with. He treated the reader like an adult. That now feels almost eccentric.

Once you notice this habit, you see it everywhere. People say “I disagree” when what they really mean is “this makes me uncomfortable”. They cannot tell you which assumption they reject or what alternative account they are offering. They are not engaging with the claim. They are reacting to the implication. The statement has social content but no intellectual one. It is a posture.

This becomes more than mildly annoying once you leave the gallery and wander into politics. Populism runs on disagreement without reasons. Assertion is enough. “They’re wrong.” “You know it’s true.” “Common sense.” These are not arguments. They are badges. The moment you ask what, how, or compared with what, the spell breaks. Which is why explanation is treated as elitism and scrutiny as hostility.

It is also why so many people attack “leftists” without ever explaining what they think a leftist actually is. The irony is that their own position today is largely the product of left wing policy rather than paternalistic feudalism. Secure work, weekends, paid holidays, workplace safety, pensions, the NHS, universal education. None of that drifted into existence because landlords and employers woke up kind. It was fought for, legislated for, and enforced. Furlough during Covid was socialism in practice. It certainly wasn't free market economics.

Before that, what existed was not freedom but dependency of a much harsher sort. Lose your job, get injured, fall ill, and there was no safety net, only charity. Charity came with conditions. Gratitude was mandatory. Silence was expected. When people rail against collective provision while enjoying its fruits, they are not defending independence. They are unknowingly defending hierarchy.

The temptation, especially for people who like ideas, is to treat political conflict as if it were a seminar. As if the goal were simply to get the right answer. It is not. Politics is a negotiation of shared space between people who want different things, often without being able to say why. You can explain until you are blue in the face why a wine will shut down after ten minutes and taste like regret, and your dinner companion may still want it. At that point you are not failing intellectually. You are negotiating reality.

The mistake is thinking that ever more refined argument will resolve that kind of conflict. It will not. Worse, it can be self defeating. You end up arguing with an imaginary, rationalised version of your opponent while the real one carries on regardless. You congratulate yourself on being right while quietly losing any influence over what actually happens.

There is another trap here, and it is more personal. We flatter ourselves by pretending all disagreement is peer to peer. It is not. Sometimes you are out of your depth. Sometimes the other person is. Equalising those positions is not humility. It is self harm. It blocks learning. People who stop growing feel it, whether they admit it or not.

So yes, disagreement matters. But only when it differentiates. Only when it locates the break properly. Otherwise it is just noise, dressed up as virtue. That may be harmless when discussing what should go on the wall or what should be in the glass. In public life, it is how slogans replace judgement, and how we end up loudly disagreeing about everything while saying almost nothing at all.