people_shouldn't_argue teh dot :( it's terrible... everyone should just agree with me 050724 ... epithet people only argue when the word "shouldn't" gets involved 050724 ... epitome_of_incomprehensibility Personally, I enjoy a good argument from time to time. 050724 ... oldephebe Argument is vital. We need to be freed of the stigma and the pejorative associations of argumentation. Now if your railing as if I'm some figment in your delusion, some captive, some muted witness and object of verbal assault and recipient of your petty despotisms..well that's one thing. Or if one is simply responding out of anger at the incomprehensible apostacy that someone doesn't share your divine perspective or representation of reality and so you resort to insult and postures of intimidation in order to impress the merits of your argument upon your interlocutors deeply welted and mercilessly lashed back out of frustration and impotence well...that's not really argumentation. Folks think that argumentation is synonymous with bellicosity and you know flinging injurious epitaphs into the sweltering heart of the others ego. Yeah, we can deconstruct and delegitimize anothers argument and or contention simply by flinging poo at him, just throw a tantrum and that is completely equivelent with having made the superior argument, just yell and stomp and maybe that will blind your advesary from the glare of the truth - namely that you're afraid, you're afraid and slothful and your argument is inadequate to the challenge honestly submitted to you. It'll take more than the fecal smear of a verbal mirage to answer the honest words set before you. We can't avoid confrontation and the arenas of contested meaning that are part of the social contract. Argumentation can be protracted and anguished but it doesn't have to be purposefully injurious or the seed ground of some deep resentment because another has openly, honestly, and passionately given him/herself to you. ... What do YOU think? ... 050724 ... anne-girl Oh... there's nothing wrong with a good dispute now and then i just dislike endless arguments where neither party's ready to give an inch and though both sides genuinely believe what they're saying and make good points and such, it's perfectly clear that nobody's going to change their mind because they're using their arguments to justify their conclusion and not to, er logically arrive at a conclusion through fact because there's a stigma associated with being wrong, and so people defend bad ideas or conclusions that they perhaps would not have arrived at given different beginnings because maybe they have a lot invested in it and are unwilling to change axioms or something i'm thinking of religion (or lack thereof)-arguments here, as background... x versus y versus z, repeating the same thing over, and over, and over (i am guilty of all the faults described here) 050724 ... oldephebe and here's me being prosaic and banal but really meaning the sentiment though...ready? that was really well put anne-girl ... 050724 ... z argument in the logical, mathematical or rhetorical sense is useful. argument is the framework to which we nail opinion. if the argument is not sound the opinion collapses or implodes, alerting us to the need to reexamine our assumptions and our conclusions. vehemence brings momentum to the vector of an argument, sometimes changing it. when vehemence overtakes reason, then argument becomes something else. sometimes it becomes coersion. 050725 ... oE yes yes!!! elegant reasoning Z 050725 ... z thank you 050725 ... andru235 personally what i *like* about arguments is that both parties offer conflicting views with such certainty and conviction. sometimes the arguments are logical and sometimes they are not. it always confirms my suspicion that if i was coming at something from a completely different existence, there would be a completely different truth and/or reality present, and sometimes i need to remember this. the fighting, of course, i could do without. but i would rather have a thousand illogical arguments with someone and see them passionate than have logical agreement with no pathos present. and isn't it apparent that we can scarcely begin to express what we think/feel/know within the limits of language? so an argument provides an opportunity to extrapolate about someone's greater self, even if they are being totally illogical in their arguments. people don't argue if it doesn't mean something to them... even my advocates, arguing for argument alone, do so in pursuit of meaning...but please, don't tell them that. you'll only start an argument. 050725 ... z andru: relevatism is an ideal i aspire to always. i am often surprised by my own internal absolutism and by my propensity for runaway certainty. truth, as you indicate above, is found nakedly individuated, blindly constructed and broadly projected by many authors. we are all the arbiters of all truths, big and small. and most of us know we are right. and knowing, we forget the ultimately egalitarian nature of perception. emotional logic is no less logical than it's brethren and no more potentially passionate. i am passionate about some ideas, as i think most people are. nuance, for me, is the goal and the struggle. i throw stones into the well of the ineffable, watch them sink, gradually subsumed by the medium's depth. to say a thing is at once to create it and to translate it from my internal wordless thought into english. it is a process of aproximation. i struggle with this every day. i have also inverted my phobia of imprecision as a fetish for poetry. and yes, i do enjoy the way another's voice creates other truths. meaning is a human construct. see: consensual_reality , symbols_out_of_control , subsume , the death_of_language . 050726 ... duh the_death_of_language 050726 ... oldephebe "Bout a year ago, I had a narcissistic sadistic socio-path blithely rebut my accurate characterization of his frustration to de-legimize my argument through clear quantiative analysis...(I mean he couldn't unseat my argument so out of frustration he became belligerant and became more of a caricature investing his being in this uniquely stylized representation of rhetoric which had basically abandoned the locus of our disputation)..anyway what he said is "Well I BETTER have some passion about what I'm saying." Passion is one thing if it derives from a seat of subjective truth and belief in that "truth." (and yeah one could aver that well what if ones truth is dominance, what if ones truth is the subjugation of everything in the pursuit of ones primacy, that THAT truth for one of such a Napoleonic complex transcends the moral or quantifiable calculus of "truth" or empiricism.. Narcissistic/sadistic/sociopathic/control freak: "and hence..you know..I bang the gavel down hard upon your head or scrotum or solar plexus and you crumple into a sycophantic, pliable mound of subserviant flesh..." that's NOT the truth I'm talking about though, but I suspect that is what el Presidente was trying to say...) But what if that passion is merely the carraige of ones severely disturbed psyche roaring inconsolably out of its' fear, it's FEAR of losing, of not ..DAMNit..This is the music of rancor, the war rises within you, the desperate struggle to affirm ones identity at ALL costs upon the egos and dignity and backs of another. "I MUST win, I mustn't EVER acknowledge fault or responsibility, I must maintain the illusion of primacy or else they'll know the TRUTH, the TRUTH that gnaws within me, even in the deepest cellars of being that I've not yet visited, even in the winding corridors of memory, These are my implements...hyperbole, belligerance, manipulation, pathological (and I might add rather proudly, an ability to construct and sell a lie convincingly anytime I need to, I'll lie about anything and use and or exploit whoever or whatever I need to get me over) or I'll resort to plying my psuedo-homiletic soliloquys on the old primal memories..I'll say things that SOUND lofty and spiritual and poetic and while they become distracted by the rhetorical music/cadenses I've extracted a little more of thier dignity for MEEE!!! I'll make them see the Saints in the rose hued chapel light, I'll convince them that my eyes, these deep set soulful eyes cresting atop high cheek bones, these windows of my pious, oh so pious soul are filled with a sacred glow, and that the water in them is Holy." I am, Me, quixotic, pious, and possibly bi-polar and at times, and probably more than I care to acknowledge and prone to arguing OUT of fear to those I love, to preserve the image I have of myself. I AM afraid, as are others AFRAID, afraid of losing, afraid sometimes about the ominous implications of simply acknowledging the virtue of anothers point or argument. There is a line by Neruda about the shameless joy that a dog and or a child has and that they can Do nothing but be as/what they are. There was a time when we ALL had that. There's a time when you're in love and you feel it, that incandsescance, the impulse, the shameles, be filled as if with the swell of the sea...to be animated into an engine of almost manic expression. ... i'll uh clean this later... ... 050728 ... you usurped 050728 ... stork daddy observing the current "philisophical" debates ransacking blather, i'd have to agree with this blathe's title. and for once, i intend to take no part. 050728 ... DannyH You're probably right, though to be honest I was rather hoping you'd show up in one or two of them. 050728 ... stork daddy yeah...but it's just the same points rehashed earlier. obviously no communication is really taking place. 050728 ... stork daddy anyways...good luck with it...keep fighting the good fight and all. 050728 ... z i listen 050728 ... stork daddy listening is a form of engagement, sometimes it's enough, sometimes it isn't. depends on your purposes. 050728 ... z i listen in order to learn. i hear otherness. i sense the other in you. i honor it by listening. i do not argue. i listen. 050728 ... meta meta 051213 ... They call me Truth I want 2 read this page 070322 ... . "Arguably, people shouldn't." 070323 ... squeak squeak yes.... only if it's having fun... taing the piss or something.. you can laugh about it! 070323 ... gja Sometime ago - as part of my architectural studies - I read an essay called "And this will kill that" by Victor Hugo - a man, I learned subsequently, who was brave and honest, and, who my step granfather was related to (Gay perhaps too?). I read it because I saw the hotest girl in our "theory" class reading it on the bus one early semester morning. I thought we could use our mutual knowledge of this obscure mans essay to spark rampant, passionate, perfect, first year university sex. This girl had perfect skin (and I mean perfect - she didnt eat meat) but turned out to be very serious and boring (sort of the fantasy librarian type without the tossing of the hair, after work, when the leathers go on). Anyways I read it. It described the way that the printing press had killed architecture. Suddenly, with the advent of this amazing machine, the mass dissemination of information via the written word robbed architecture of its cultural import to deliver a message for all. Great for "lay" people terrible for architects. Sort of, and only at first. Because architecture, freed of its need to tell the real story could now be provacative. It could challenge the printed message. Still, the current guard (sp?) resisted and we ended up with some poor souls (who still knock about now) hankering for days gone by. But me and those architects I respect (and I think Im red hot) take a new view. We argue with the world with our clients buildings. And we believe we should argue. Its our new role. So People should argue. Dont believe you shouldnt. Arguments arent the source of conflict. They are the tool for resolving conflict. After all you should never have an argument if you are not willing to have your mind changed. Apologies readers - I never blathe longly - but this one pushed my button. Please someone - push it again. Oh, and also the girl. I saw her a little while ago. I was with my eldest son at the beach. She was lying on a large Japanese mat. Everyone else was on towels. I wandered over and said hello - using the boy as the icebreaker. It was early, sun just up and I'd had a late night and was just talking shit. I asked why the mat and no towel. She said she didnt like sand on her. I told her that was weird - after all she was at the beach. Later that week she came to work with us. We finally had sex on her first day. It wasnt that great - toilet of the local pub. But and this is where things really went odd. We'd had heads full of Charlie. She was being honest. She told me that life was getting away from her and she really wanted kids. 9.5 months later she had one. She assumes its mine. And I know it is. Thanks Victor. Argue all you like. Do int nicely and be polite. Manners count. Listen carefully to your opponent. Respond to what they say. Dont prepare answers. Respond. Argue. Dont they call the premise of a scientific experiment an argument. OK OK Im stopping. 070323 ... hsg yes, they should 100522 ... hsg "Dont they call the premise of a scientific experiment an argument. " Why, yes, yes they do. That is the KIND of argument I argue. Certainly didn't MEAN for us to simply be mean to each other. 100522 ... In_Bloom Yes they should! There's no need for cursing name calling but better to speak your mind about what you want and what isn't working than to keep it inside and eventually burnout and leave without closure. Anyone I've ever left knows exactly why and that's probably why I have few burned bridges. 100523 ... () (respectfully, people should argue.) 100524 ... () () 121127 what's it to you? who go blather from