system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: “Don’t talk religion/politics at a party” is just an admission that you don’t know how to navigate complex topics in mixed company

So I’m at a house warming party the other day for some late 20’s friends of mine. They’ve made an effort to make it calm and classy, there’s smooth jazz and dip and stuff. We’re drinking for a light buzz, not a blackout. So I’m chatting with a dude I don’t know, just small talk,I ask what line of work he’s in. He says he’s a chaplain in a hospice ward. This piques my interest, I’m agnostic but this is a neat corner of spirituality and we dig into the topic. 

We talk for a while out on the balcony, like easily 30 minutes, and throughout this time people are filtering in and out of the balcony and the conversation. Most of them come out to smoke cigs, they jump in the convo with ease, chat while they smoke then they go back inside. But two different people, two different times, reacted to the topic like he and I were on the brink of a shouting match. Like visibly anxious. The second one even said “pretty soon we’re gonna have to pull you guys apart”. 

I find this downright cringeworthy. It’s really not that hard to disagree with someone in a cordial way. The fact that these people need conversations kept to the most mundane, nerf topics is embarrassing. Small talk is a means of finding a topic, it does not provide the substance to get to know someone.

“Don’t talk religion/politics at a party” is propagated my poor conversationalists.

Change my view.
gpt
Part of navigating complex topics in mixed company is knowing when to engage in those topics.

Generally this means that everybody on board or listening is comfortable doing so.

There's nothing wrong with talking religion/politics with people who are fine doing so - the rule about parties so to say is because you no longer control this aspect about the potential participants in question.