(This is from my book of essays being released later this year).
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Consider this a sequel to another thing I’ve already written. Those that have been following my work for awhile are aware of my stance on arguing with other human beings. To sum it all up quickly, my point of view is: all humans suffer from blind spots, which means everyone is dumber than they think they are. There’s also the issue of communication and how unreliable of a method it really is at conveying what we mean: language is merely a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of an idea, which ensures that whatever points we think we’re making are not actually being made (or not 100% anyway). Then there’s the issue of the person arguing: each person has different motivations that may be questionable.
There are a lot of factors that render arguments with other people almost entirely useless. I could go on and on about this, but like I’ve said elsewhere, there is really no point in arguing with anyone. You’re most likely not gonna change anyone’s mind. Even if you do, it’s very rare that winning an argument will actually result in some kind of monetary or substantial benefit that makes it worthwhile. The most that will happen is you will feel good in the short-term, but who knows, you might also end up accidentally upsetting someone without realizing it. Then you have them harbouring some kind of resentment against you, and that might present itself in an unfortunate way for you later on.
Like life itself, arguing is a meaningless endeavour. It’s more likely to end in misfortune than positivity: you win and you really lose, and if you lose you’ve obviously lost. It’s like harmful drugs: too risky and illogical to be worth doing. I’ve never understood people who do cocaine, for example: you may feel good temporarily, but at what cost? Like destructive drugs, the mature thing to do is simply stay away from arguments, period. Or a better analogy might be a foolish activity like sky-diving or bungee jumping: why risk your life in such a fruitless endeavour? Even after you do it and it goes well….so what? You have done something that helps no one but yourself temporarily, congrats.
My strategy has always been a couple of things. First, the best thing you can do is to disengage with your antagonist. If this person isn’t your boss or responsible for your paycheck or livelihood, your spouse or lover, you can easily just cut this person out of your life. It’s a bad thing to say that probably sounds a bit cold, but most people are interchangeable. If you get into an argument with someone you don’t have to see everyday who isn’t too important to you, just don’t bother talking to them anymore. I don’t think I’m a very social person usually, so I like to keep the few exchanges I do have in my life as positive as I possibly can. Life is too short to be annoyed by supporting characters in your life. With technology these days, it has never been easier to get rid of someone that is a detriment to you and your overall goal(s).
Most people are not that radically different from each other; I sometimes picture humans like rats crawling out of a box. Or like a big pile of bugs on a sidewalk somewhere on a sunny day, all chasing after the same scoop of fallen ice cream. People in general are predictable creatures who are mostly happy being painfully average. Most of them do the same things, watch Netflix, scroll around on their phones, etc. You could have a conversation with someone about Tiger King or whatever popular thing of the day is, and then a week later have that same conversation with someone else with very minimal changes in detail at all. There are very few real personalities and deep thinkers out there anymore. There are exceptions to this, like cool people I look up to, or the minor 10% of people in the world with unique stories/perspectives, but for the most part, people are all the same. I don’t mean to sound callous there, it’s just something I’ve noticed. I also don’t exclude myself from that either: I am quite painfully average myself.
Obviously that strategy won’t work for everyone, because if someone starts an argument with you and they happen to be a person you can’t really cut out of your life easily, you might unfortunately have to engage. The second best thing you can do after not engaging at all, is to remain calm and reasonable. I think that’s the secret to arguing with people or talking to people in general: the moment you lose your cool or show any sign of irateness in the slightest, you’ve lost all credibility. Because it shows that your emotion is tied to you winning or losing the discussion, and that makes you look weaker overall. Remaining calm and levelheaded means not using coarse language, and not changing your tone of voice at all. Try to be jovial in your disagreements for the most part.
In popular culture lately there’s been an odd acceptance of coarse language in mainstream self-help books. They’re everywhere: aggressive titles with the F-bomb on the cover urging you to better yourself. Books like Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck come to mind as an example of a trend that seems like it wouldn’t have happened as recent as 10 years ago. As a result, more people are probably now okay with coarse language in places and situations they wouldn’t have been before, like professional settings and places of work that aren’t construction sites.
Personally, I don’t think the proliferation of swearing in mainstream stuff like that is all that great. While harmless, it also doesn’t feel like it’s good for society either. I know that swearing is not a big deal on an intellectual level, but I also can’t deny that it feels incredibly immature when it’s so excessive. Swearing is okay once in awhile, but being an adult is about knowing when to do so during an appropriate time. You can’t just go around constantly dropping F-bombs because it’s harder to take you seriously. Excessive profanity gives the impression of someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing. (This example can be seen in foreigners who try to learn English and swear more than necessary to seem cooler than they are, or high schoolers that are overcompensating). It just screams “try hard.”
The reason to refrain from coarse language in a society that now largely embraces it is that if you get into a dispute with someone and you’re not swearing and losing your cool, you seem so reasonable that you just look like you make more sense. I’ve found that people are more inclined to mirror your attitude if it’s calm than if you’re matching their crazy energy with more anger. If two people are yelling at each other it will naturally get louder and louder. But if one person is remaining at the same level of energy, there’s no gasoline to keep that fire going. You can calmly state your case and try not to engage further than that.
When the first two options fail or cannot be done, the third best strategy to employ in a situation of conflict is to just pretend to agree with the other person. You obviously couldn’t do something like this in a scenario like war where it would mean life or death, but for unimportant matters of disagreement you can always lie by pretending the other person is right. As I’ve mentioned, most people are incredibly predictable. They love to hear that they’re right, so sometimes if you just let them have that they’ll stop being annoying. Remember that the very nature of a dispute is absurd and meaningless, so when you go down that path further and further you’re not really “winning” or “losing” anything, so to speak. It’s just two idiots talking that has no great repercussions in any real sense, so there’s no real harm in not defending your point.
I’ve been in situations where it felt like the other person was trying to instigate some kind of fight, and I’ve found the not saying anything or simply just agreeing approached to be quite useful. The good thing is that you’ll save a lot of time, which is the only thing noteworthy about any exchange between two people. The real loss of an argument isn’t your opinion or viewpoint being incorrect, it is the fact that you’re wasting your time on someone else’s nonsense. Being right or wrong isn’t worth anything really, time is the only real resource that matters in life.