Observations on argument

I'm talking about reasoned argument, not bust up fighting argument here.

I have been (and still am sometimes) guilty of making two fundamental mistakes when it comes to arguing.

Mistake 1: Not choosing your battles
I am no where near as angry as I used to be, but I used to be quite capable of exploding into a white hot magnesium flare of righteous indignation at the drop of a hat. (Especially if it was my hat you were dropping, you bastard!). Such anger would regularly get me in to highly charged arguments with people close to me, or more likely I would hold onto the anger and do nothing, being the meek little young English man that I am. We are of course a breed that never wants to "cause a fuss".

The end result was that at least an hour of every day, I was ramping up my blood pressure and freaking out, but hardly ever releasing anything.

I am now far more relaxed, I have observed, that in the vast majority of cases my anger is wasted, there are just very few situations that one person can change.

I know that in any one week there will be people I want to change the opinion of, I want to engage them in reasoned argument, but frequently I know from the attitudes or the emotional state of the person involved, that I would be wasting my time. Lets face it, if you are dealing with an arrogant person, the likelihood of you changing their mind is very low. Analysis is a wise time investment before full fledged war.

There are many situations I have been in over the years, where it has dawned upon me that the problem is not the topic of the argument, but the emotional state of the persons arguing. To give an example, as a teenager, I used to regularly get into arguments with my mother over something I had done or not done, and it did not occur to until many years later, that no mater what I had(n't) done, the problem was that my mother was upset. There was genuinely nothing that could be said or done to fix the problem, trying to apply logic to the situation would just make her more upset and in the end, even if I knew I was right and could reason it to her, I would still end up more upset.

I'm sure you can imagine the fun we used to have, bearing in mind that my mum is ultra-stubborn and I inherited the same gene from her. Oh how we laughed after we had torn holes in each other's psyches! (Not.)

In those situations, I would have been wise to shut up and listen, then apologise, but hey I was an arrogant teenager, so what did you expect. Luckily I am more contrite now. :)

Mistake 2: Mistaking bickering for arguing
Bickering isn't about arguing to resolve anything, its about arguing for the sake of arguing. This is always a waste of time, and to be avoided at all costs.

Hell that was more of a ramble than I anticipated.

Conclusion
Only argue about stuff that is:

1. Important enough to argue about,
2. Where you are likely to actually change the mind of your opponent, or are open to such change yourself.

And if you ever catch yourself becoming emotionally embroiled and becoming upset, you are perfectly at liberty to call an end to the argument or to call a "time out".

If I get time later today, I shall entertain you with one of the more amusing failures in my argument strategies, one that applies to my ex-wife.

Anyway, must push on, I have work to do don't you know!