Question of the Week: How Hard Do You Argue?
Posted by A.C. Rhodes on November 5, 2007
James Baldwin once said, “I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly.” I interpreted this as bristling at people whose demeanor is overly officious, or those of the new school of “debate” a la Bill O’Reilly or Tucker Carlson.
We’ve all had friends or colleagues who either run on or try to discredit other’s opinions, but how far should one go to emphasize a point and what’s your tolerance level where others are concerned? In other words, how much is too much?
Alex V. Cook said
I will stand my ground if I can still make my larger point and sound clever doing it, but I try to back off when it reduces down to Socratic posturing.
Renaldo said
For me it completely depends on the subject being discussed. Since this is a “rock critics” web site, I’ll presume first that you’re referring to arguments about rock music.
I refuse to argue about music. If I like something, I’m always willing to explain why I like it. If you disagree, that’s fine. Once we’ve heard each other’s opinons, I see little point in taking it further.
Occasionally certain facts may be relevant to the subject. For instance, I might think a certain act of music shows great originality – but if you can show me that those ideas were stolen from some other musician, then I’m very interested in knowing that and it might change my opinion.
Otherwise, I know very well that if you like a piece of music, I’m not going to argue you out of liking it. And the same applies to me. Obsessive nitpicking arguments about the merits of a particular CD strike me as boring and immature. Life is much too short for that.
As for arguments about other subjects, how hard I argue depends entirely on the importance of the subject and the degree to which it’s subject to rational discussion.
There’s an old cliche which is often repeated by foolish people: “One should never discuss politics or religion.” That’s a bit like saying one should never discuss anything that actually matters.
In the case of politics, I think it’s imperative that after we inform themselves, we must rationally discuss and argue the issues of the day with our fellow citizens. Without that, you can’t have democracy.