20 - The power of Argument

He who engages his argument only through noise and command reveals his reason as weak.

- Michel de Montaigne

Anyone who makes an argument by appealing to authority is sparing his intelligence in favour of his memory.

- Leonardo da Vinci

Finding, communicating and sharing our similarities is a fundamental imperative of humanity. But humans are as much creatures of difference as similarity, as anyone who has attempted to share their similarities with a local member of white power whilst wearing a gay, black and proud T-shirt can attest. Difference is an essential element of cultural progress. The naming of objects is a divisive activity since the fundamentals of human language depend on the identification of difference. The recognition of difference is one of the primary building blocks of consciousness. The idea of self is based upon the I/Thou division that permits discrimination between self and other. Difference is everywhere. And it is the vital imperative that first separates and eventually permits the possibility of a more complete and universal unification of forces. Difference in the end encourages perspective because without difference there can be none, since without difference there is no subject and no object and therefore no means to sharpen understanding on its whetstone.

And difference is nowhere more pronounced than in the expression of opinion. Take any weather beaten subject and throw it into roomful of randomly selected punters and they'll find new and interesting ways to disagree with each other. Argument in human culture is as common as breath. And argument, by its nature, can be incredibly divisive. At its worst, argument can result in appalling long term rifts in relationships, with harsh words being thrown that may never be retracted or forgiven, or aggressive physical confrontation resulting.

Arguments inspire passion and that passion can often undermine reason and common sense. Most of us can recognize the impulse that arises in the heat of argument, to simply hurt the other as a strategy to achieve whatever nebulous victory we might desire at that point in the dispute. But at the other end of the scale the argument can also be potentially one of the most useful weapons in the human interpersonal arsenal. There is no better wayof acquiring insight and overcoming obstacles to mutual understanding than through the friction and grit of a good dispute. “Good dispute” being the operative term here. A good dispute can lead to useful self examination by one or both parties. But I'm not sure how frequently I've witnessed such a thing. For the most part there is no better means of hardening prejudice, inspiring resistance to reality and causing emotional harm than through apoorly handled argument, entered into for ill thought out reasons and without an adequate exit strategy.

Whenever I find myself dismally failing to argue with skill, it's usually because an intense personal investment in being correct or in winning has become my primary imperative. And this is never some well thought out strategy. It is a default setting that arises from my personal discomfort with being wrong, or more pertinently, with being seen to be wrong. And moreover the intensity of the investment depends on my personal investment and history with the other disputant and how I am seen by any witnesses. If I am holding court with some nonsense or other, and someone challenges me on my facts, the point is not so much that I am wrong, but often that someone has challenged me in an arena where I had set myself up as an authority. This challenge could make me look like a fool, I fear. And in response to this perceived challenge, I attempt to dominate the other. And it is this impulse to dominate that ends up being the most significant impediment to mutual understanding in an argument. The opponent is also likely to respond in kind, setting up a witless butting contest between two rams in a field. Or perhaps you manage to force a retreat in the other – but this is often a pyrrhic victory, since if you humiliate the other, you turn them into an enemy and if they were already enemies, you harden their enmity. Only a total maroon, makes enemies easily in this life. You just decrease the likelihood of easy passage when you ignore the importance of caution in such matters.

The concept of enemy itself requires a little unpacking here. Because it is a word that appears to be thrown around rather easily, which is odd for such a fundamentally dangerous concept. To view another human being as an enemy makes sense when you are living in a pebble hut, wearing a rat skin loincloth and competing over food or mates or other scarce resources. At such times you are gazing up from the bottom of the hierarchy of needs. The fundamental needs of simple survival and species propagation will take precedence then. But in a culture where resources are plentiful, then it makes less sense. The concept of the enemy is somewhat biologically programmed and culturally ratified, but it is a really destructive and useless concept when it comes down to it. It’s an intensely personal concept. You are my enemy. Our countries are at war. I hate you and all you stand for. I don’t like the football team indicated by your bobbly hat – You are my enemy. You are the only other penis in a roomful of vaginas – You are my enemy. And even in the context of crime then it has little applicability - The mugger trying to grab your wallet isn’t your enemy – He’s an idiot with some questionable life choices – but the only relationship between you exists while he’s threatening you with a knife. Thereafter he’s the subject of a bad memory – Little more. If you’re doing it right, that is.

You’re really not engaging with your higher self very well if the concept of an enemy has any real meaning to you at all.

Of course, that’s a joke. There’s no such thing as a higher self – That phrase is just some convenient drivel the new age hucksters like to throw around. “The sage strives always to escape from the clutches of his lower self, through embracing the wisdom of his higher self”. Another example of creating a false difference through constructing misguided symbols. Higher self – a handy bucket into which you can throw all the upper end human inclinations. Lower self, a convenient place to dispose of that part of yourself that longs to sexually assault a leather sofa, while snorting talcum powder off a cats backside. Separate and divide so I don’t actually have to take responsibility. It’s these other entities that live in me. If I can just get them to talk to each other. That would be having a bad argument with yourself.

Anywise...

When two people are arguing over some contentious issue or other, a polarization inevitably occurs. It is almost certain, if both parties participate in the polarization, that little can be learned from the dispute, since the beginning of a thing too often determines how it is likely to unfold. If you start out mindlessly, you are likely to end up in a place that is senseless.

So let’s propose that the best use of argument is two opponents engaging with each other’s points of view to arrive at the closest approximation to the truth of the situation that the participants are capable of achieving at this point in their development. The facts, stripped of all the noise and interference of personal investment, yielding some eventual insight for one or both parties. I hear the faint strains of Louis Armstrong begging to blow his horn. “I see trees of green and clouds of white…”

What we end up with, in most arguments, is some degree of a catfight between two egos, neither of which is willing to yield the floor to the other. Or even to engage fairly. Any and all irrelevancies which can be brought into the argument to weaken the others position or confuse or distract them are not only permissible, they are desirable. The true argument ended the nanosecond it started. Everything subsequently is a free-for-all contest of wills. The side that appears to be losing the battle will tend to defend his turf with a belligerence that would only be appropriate if someone were trying to plant an axe in his sainted Granny. And as we all know there isn't enough nonsense in the world. Every available opportunity to create some more must be immediately seized upon and every ounce of balderdash throttled from it. And behold, the joy that is humanity in full flight.

Take two disputatants – Let’s call them Pebbles and Bubbles. Let’s say Pebbles holds position A. Bubbles holds position B. In a bar, late at night, Pebbles utters position A with some conviction. Perhaps he read about proposition A in a newspaper and has concluded that it must be true. It’s anews-paper not a lies-paper, being the main thrust of his argument. Now this has always been a subject that Bubbles has some passionate ideas about. Bubbles firmly believes proposition A to be fallacious dribble, and moreover that the rag whose editorials Pebbles prizes so highly is fit only for wiping up a puddle of proposition A. Bubbles, feeling almost affronted by the conviction displayed by Pebbles, snorts contemptuously. And further, he asserts, the true situation is in fact, proposition B. The contemptuous snort being something Pebbles has a low tolerance for, he responds with something equally ill-advised and irritating. And the stage is set for an epic set to.

Pebbles has asserted proposition A. His ego has said that it is so. His ego will not be contradicted, especially by that pumped up chucklehead, Bubbles, whose ego Pebbles’ ego hates at this minute. Pebbles’ ego has identified itself with proposition A. And it will not yield the floor to any of this proposition B nonsense. Bubbles at first believing proposition A to be incorrect, subsequently finds his ego invested in proving its case. His ego says, "Proposition B is true. Proposition B being me".

Argument is an emergent property. It comes from having an opinion. And what is an opinion but a thought that seems to have certain properties in our heads. We can neither own nor consider ourselves responsible for creating it, since thought is responsive and conditional and a mind can only be said to have created it insofar as it is the one having it. Its origins generally lie elsewhere. So where then is the logic in our need to defend it? It does not lie in truth or falsehood, it lies more in the social and cultural currency we ascribe to it. One purpose of argument would be in finding out whichposition is more or less correct. But that would actually be useful albeit less immediately convenient to the ego’s involved, so the objective truth of the matter is generally disregarded in favour of the thrill of self righteousness. The two participants believe in the correctness of their position with utter certainty in that moment, impelled by forces other than objective truth, which, more often than not, were already firmly in place long before this particular iteration began.

The resulting “victory” often involves unwarranted digressions into a variety of distractions, to shift the opponent’s centre of balance by divertingthe argument away from the contentious meat of the matter and into safer and more superficially winnable ground. Past mistakes, personal insults andcontemptuous references to the others mother, perceived personal weaknesses and shortcomings and any other mud that can be dredged up, is cast into the pot.

And it’s not just the participants who miss the point of the dispute, generally speaking, any given observer will judge the person who bludgeonsthe other into submission either verbally or by force of will, to be the victor. This is largely because the one who is using reason is unlikely to be the one shouting the loudest and is therefore the one less heard. In this public arena, the sneering blowhard is very difficult to beat. The one whomaintains their composure and manners, in the face of another who insists on calling them a pinhead and shouting over them, will be deemed by most to have been defeated in the argument, no matter what the strength of their points or the clarity of their perspective.

If the dispute is in some way public then the arguments made are often made simply to be observed to win in that arena, (though this imperative often applies to private argument also, since it can easily become a habitual pattern). Both participant and observer contribute to this state of affairs. Perhaps the opponent is wounded into silence. Perhaps neither side triumphs. And they agree to disagree. But the argument is nearly alwaysdefined as an adversarial contest between two wills and nothing beside. The matter itself is entirely beside the point. The gladiatorial nature of the conflict becomes the point. Each standing over their fixed point of view waving their nets and their tridents. The rigidity of their stance, the degree towhich it remains inviolate is often considered, by those observing, to be the primary measure of merit. The degree of fidelity to the original ideadetermines the victory. My idea of the truth beat your idea of the truth. The further the opponent has moved from their position, or has been silenced,the greater the scale of the victory. Interpersonal power dynamics are usually well to the fore of argumentative motivations.

Rigid personal defensive strategies are the only thing I can become better at in this model. The possibility of nourishing dispute is almost out of the question. And what purpose does this process serve? Whose view of the world is advanced a jot? Further, the inflammation of the passions that the act of adversarial engagement encourages is not conducive to clear thinking. If I were to press the pointless conflict to some kind of notion of personal victory then that victory is likely to be extremely hollow and would ratify nothing but my ability to mould my verbal diarrhoea into a momentarily slightly more coherent form than that of my antagonist. In victory I become triumphant, further copper-fastening my misplaced sense of correctness. In defeat I become embarrassed, angry and resentful. The only thing served by such an argument is ill will or triumphalism or the notion that bullyingwins the day. Or indeed that being bullied means defeat. It is in every sense a wasted opportunity. Two stags on a hillock butting horns over a blade of grass.

To some the ideal consequence of an argument, especially a public argument, is the chance to sway opinion. And to those who couldn’t give a toss about the well being of their species, those who love power and consider tangential consequence irrelevant, those who want to spend their time in this potentially lush garden dropping turds in the water supply, might well temporarily achieve their ends. And those ends might seem worthwhile in the short term – political office, managerial salaries, big windows in the office and a company limo, hookers on the weekends and cocaine in the hot tub – Actually, what am I writing here? I’m off to business school.

The maximal use of argument lies in the potential for the subsequent enlightenment of one or both parties. And one who tries to always manifest and represent this principle, is likely to emerge from a dispute with more than he or she entered with. And I'm not talking about bruises and neck splints. I'm referring to the notion that if you are engaged in a dispute with a person who is better positioned to be clear on the matter, you might be best served to try and learn from them. If you are in dispute with a mouthy ignoramus, if you keep your head, avoid rising to the bait, you can develop your muscles of perspective and restraint. And you can also practice your not giving a toss about what others think, when it might well appear to observers you got your fundament handed to you in a clown hat. These are very important muscles for anyone who feels inclined to follow their own muse in life, because more often than not, that'll put you right in the firing line of ignorant or aggressive knuckleheads, who you might just have the opportunity to educate.

Argument at its best is an opportunity for the evolution of opinion and understanding. To argue a point robustly to the limit of ones abilities and comprehension is perhaps the only way to truly move that comprehension forward - because through exploring the limits of our thoughts we understand their proper context, which is always perspective enhancing. But when it becomes apparent that some aspect of our argument is incorrector inelegantly emphasized in the whole, then the reasonable brain might best yield the floor to the opponent and factor this new information into theirposition. If this brings them closer to their opponent’s position then so be it.

And so instead of thinking in terms of a winning or losing position, I think in terms of expanding and enriching my consciousness. The loss in this case, is the win. Being proved wrong, helps me to compensate, correct course and refine my understanding and the mental mechanisms it depends upon. Being proved right more often than not proves to be a great deal less useful.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

- William Blake.

The above quote might be taking a notion a little too far, though it serves the principles of poetic licence more than actual infanticide. The real meaning I take from it, which on reflection requires my own kind of licence, is “Don't nurse unexpressed hurts”. The desires he's writing of relate to the desire to respond to something truthfully and authentically in the moment. To not swallow something that needs to be said for fear of retribution or hurting someone’s feelings or simply avoiding the responsibility of honesty. This is the satisfying of a deep desire indeed, for to be honest in the moment, utterly without subterfuge or ulterior motive, is a luxury most of us come to believe we cannot afford if we want to achieve some measure of success in the world. Some of us are inherently capable of this kind of directness or indeed are incapable of any other. But most of us accede to the social exhortation to go along, to keep with the group, since we calculate that this approach holds the best chance for our success. And this is likely to be quite accurate, depending on what we qualify as success. Some qualify success by the amount of toys in their possession as they exit this mortal coil. Others judge it by the quality, range and intensity of experience available to them throughout their lives.

A great many arguments are interpersonal in nature and more often than not are dominated by tangential influences. What appears to be the meat of the argument - the subject being disputed, might be the less relevant matter, the real substance might be the underlying interpersonal dynamic at play. Some historic slight that I let slide to avoid conflict or such. There is nothing so enduring as unarticulated hurts. Whereas if I act in the moment, speak honestly and address the situation at the time, firstly the miscreant has much less manoeuvring room to palm it off. Often these kinds of strokes depend on others shock, confusion and inability to respond. And secondly I at least am respecting both myself and the other in that expression of honesty. Thirdly, I am avoiding the misfortune of the unaddressed wrong which can inspire powerful negative feelings months or even years later. When we deal with an injustice when appropriate, we avoid future rancour which can only act to poison the well of our own experience. Obviously, this is not an absolute and there are times when it is best to hold your tongue. In such times, to fail to do so, can be the result of an over fixated sense of self-righteousness. Or it can suit my short term comfort to try and avoid this responsibility. However, that is weak enough whiskey to be flavouring my tea with. For the most part, it is best for my long-term well-being, to address things firmly as they occur.

When the argument has passed the point of useful engagement then to needlessly persist in combative reaction is to utterly miss the point. Someone needs to disengage and if I remember myself and step away from my personal emotional engagement in the situation, to reflect on what isdriving the intensity of that engagement, and if I can subsequently and without concern for how it might appear to others, fess up to my personal culpability in this particular dynamic, then I effectively act to banish my personal investment in the idea of winning or losing. In this way I act to recover my internal equilibrium and increase my odds of having an unpoisoned day. This also holds the possibility of aiding the opponent to similarly have a better day.

This is not to say that I yield the actual argument purely for the sake of peace. There is rarely any value to flat out lying in this context even if the lie leads to a better outcome. But there is the idea of actually recognising the other party’s position and empathising with it rather than ignoring its value to avoid being defeated. I might lead with an honest admission of the flaws in my thinking, and encourage them to do the same, without being necessarily explicit. I therefore offer to raise the quality of the argument. This, of course, depends on there being errors on both sides and that the argument is not on something utterly indefensible. Arguing with Stalin on the value of Gulags, for example might demand a degree more inflexibility on the opposing side, but more often than not the context for these kind of arguments are layered and complex and nearly always have right and wrong on both sides.

In taking such a step I must take it irrespective of what the other party does. It cannot be contingent. I must take it with an open and uncomplaining heart and leave the way open for the opponent but let the chips fall where they may. This technique cannot be used to win the argument by other means. It's only purpose is to desist from engaging any further in an emotionally detrimental mental activity and perhaps attempt to move mutual understanding on a bit. If I happen to be lucky enough to be arguing with a reasonable human being, they will either respond on thespot, or after a certain cooling period, themselves come to appreciate this admission and might well make one of their own, having experienced theirown moment of illumination. That might be expecting a little much, but it becomes at least possible if the situation is diffused by one side refusing toengage further in pointless conflict. If neither party disengages then there is little hope of anything emerging beyond hurt feelings and further disquiet.

If the opponent doesn’t make some similar admission, or simply uses the opportunity to press their advantage, then let it be so. I might feel a minor sting but in the end I can salve this with the knowledge that I am coming ever closer to not even remote orbiting the vicinity of caring about winning pointless victories. There is great liberation in this. Because the closer I come to not really caring what others think, the closer I come to being utterly honest in the situation. The normal social modifiers that might cause me to behave questionably, no longer apply. I don’t care if people think I’m a winner. I don’t care if people think I’m a loser. I just don’t care what they think. I do care what I actually am.

To anyone who lives in the real world, this notion of effective argument to achieve greater insight might as well take place in Noddylandbetween elves, the Jaeger bunnies and the disco mushrooms. But contentious argument for the purposes of ego victory is as much use to anythingother than the ego of the victor, as a sack of ball bearings is to a fruit fly. To transcend my own peculiar ego imperatives to engage only in constructive dispute, is to dodge the bullet of my own stupidity – Which is some trick since I’ve found mine to be of a particularly high calibre.