The Art of Arguments

By Alex Allen

ddd

I'm not good at arguing. I don't mean I don't argue, rather that when I do I'm just not very good at it. If I'd been going door to door selling the Obama campaign to American voters, I could have easily have had John McCain elected, I'm just that good (or bad). Fortunately, I did my part for Barack by staying at home and only promoting his cause to people at work who either didn't care, or weren't eligible to vote anyway. Generally, I find that someone has a point to make that I hadn't thought of, it happened quite a lot in my political science seminars when one of the kids that wore a German military jacket and had a name like Tarquin would disprove one of my presentation arguments. In that sort of situation, there's rarely a plan B. I know I'm fucked. But you can't just say, OK, I've got nothing, you win. They want an argument, it's like sex to them. They spend the whole week holed up in the library with the works of Satre (such was my lack of attention to that second year politics unit, I actually just had to Google 'political philosophers' to find that) just studying for the big day of the seminar. It's not that I'm thick (hopefully), I think it's more the pressure of face to face intellectual combat that's the problem. I get flustered and lose sight of what my point was in the first place. Before I know it, I'm nothing but a mumbling mess. Fortunately journalism offers little need for this skill, you write your argument, in a professional capacity mine would be more balanced than this, and then people read it. Whether they agree or disagree, generally you don't have to defend your words, at least not face to face. You at least have time to compose some sort of defence, and there are a variety of people to prevent you from writing anything too outlandish in the first place.

ddd

I don't know if you've ever noticed, but old(er) people (they don't like being called old, trust me) can't use technology. I received a phone call on Friday from someone, I won't say who, who had apparently 'deleted all their songs on iTunes'. I just don't know how you can do that by accident, and as you're trying to talk the technically challenged through their technical problems you get more and more frustrated. 'I've deleted the internet!' You've what? That doesn't make any sense, you can't just delete the internet. This is a classic example of an instance when someone will say something that is just so wrong you almost struggle to process it. You know that they're wrong, extremely, categorically, incomprehensibly wrong, but you can't actually find the words to start explaining why. A former work colleague once commented that it was '2-1 between us and them because they did us over with 9/11, then we fucked them over with Iraq, but then they got us in London again'. There are just so many mistakes in that statement that I just didn't know how to disprove it. In that sort of situation, most people have a section of their brain that would come up with reasons why that statement is incorrect, a part of their brain that forms arguments. I just don't have it. I just spout vitriol, often incomprehensibly, at the person in question. In regard to the incident with the work colleague, he actually thought he had won that debate. And yes, in the grand scheme of things I knew this man ogre would almost certainly not win, but in this instance he had a point. He had a very irritating habit of coming up with these sort of statements as he walked in to the lift, which then imposed an enforced time limit for a response before the doors closed and he smiled gormlessly as it carried him to another floor. He seemed to know it too, he'd regularly save particularly ridiculous statements for the lift. 'I think the whole world should just speak English and use the pound' (doors close). Or 'I think everyone should be allowed to drive monster trucks on the motorway'(doors close). Perhaps other respected figures deal with giving unpopular news in the same way, maybe Alistair Darling should just give his next budget from the lift in a House of Fraser, and when he comes to an unpopular point about increasing tax on alcohol, just pick a floor, any floor. In short, please do not disagree with this article, because as I have previously revealed, I would have absolutely no ability at all to counter your criticisms.