Little_Sticks
New member
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2009
- Messages
- 1,358
Lately I've been wondering about the usefulness of arguing a claim about anything to another person that may hold a view that sees my argument as offensive.
I've come across some personal reasons why I'm starting to believe arguing does more harm than it does good.
1. Often times it's just a preference for a political philosophy for a given situation that probably shouldn't be verbalized as more than an opinion that is stated as fact and becomes the source of an argument; and this makes people argue with no end and understandably so.
2. Sometimes the reasoning for an argument is based on behavioral conditioning. But what behavior works for one person, won't necessarily work as well for another. And so we fall back into political philosophy.
3. In other instances, the object of the argument might be completely misunderstood in its intentions (if that's relevant) and then people argue about what it is they think is really the argument or can't look past that to what the person was trying to say. It's as if it would have been better just not to bother. I guess this might be more of a cultural situation.
4. There's also the aspect that some view arguments as a personal challenge to be refuted and will use any rhetoric they think will get the job done. This can be a problem if the person presenting the argument is less concerned about being right or wrong and more interested in what another could teach them about how their argument or view(s) might fail or even could be corrected or improved. And one begins to wonder why they even bother?
That's the gist of what I could think of right now. There's probably more that could be added, but I'm willing to bet this will turn into number 4 instead.
I dunno...I guess you're probably going to argue with me about this too and I suppose maybe that's really the point...but these things bother me. It's something to talk about, I suppose. I don't think it has been mentioned before.
I've come across some personal reasons why I'm starting to believe arguing does more harm than it does good.
1. Often times it's just a preference for a political philosophy for a given situation that probably shouldn't be verbalized as more than an opinion that is stated as fact and becomes the source of an argument; and this makes people argue with no end and understandably so.
2. Sometimes the reasoning for an argument is based on behavioral conditioning. But what behavior works for one person, won't necessarily work as well for another. And so we fall back into political philosophy.
3. In other instances, the object of the argument might be completely misunderstood in its intentions (if that's relevant) and then people argue about what it is they think is really the argument or can't look past that to what the person was trying to say. It's as if it would have been better just not to bother. I guess this might be more of a cultural situation.
4. There's also the aspect that some view arguments as a personal challenge to be refuted and will use any rhetoric they think will get the job done. This can be a problem if the person presenting the argument is less concerned about being right or wrong and more interested in what another could teach them about how their argument or view(s) might fail or even could be corrected or improved. And one begins to wonder why they even bother?
That's the gist of what I could think of right now. There's probably more that could be added, but I'm willing to bet this will turn into number 4 instead.
I dunno...I guess you're probably going to argue with me about this too and I suppose maybe that's really the point...but these things bother me. It's something to talk about, I suppose. I don't think it has been mentioned before.