For some reason every time I pick up Metaphors We Live By, I return to something the authors mention in the very beginning of the book: the idea of arguments as war. The authors mention that treating Arguments as analogous to “war” rather than something different, like “dance” means we go about arguing in a certain way and have certain expectations for how arguments are supposed to go.
I put down the book and wondered what it would be like for us to view arguments as dance, rather than a war. As something to be crafted, artistically beautiful—something to be enjoyed. I thought back to my time as a high school debater. In this arena, there were “winners” and “losers” during competition, but there was an artistic aspect to argument creation and execution. We knew a good argument when we saw one. We crafted frameworks of philosophy and complemented them with empirical evidence.
We put a lot of thought and awareness into what we were saying before we entered a debate round, compared to the haphazard way we root around in our brains to find evidence when we find ourselves in an argument. We were, for the most part, emotionally detached from a lot of the arguments we read. That’s another big difference.
After that brief nostalgia interlude, I thought back to why we have arguments in the first place. It seems like everyone is in on this game where we argue even though it’ll only end up in us getting more entrenched in our beliefs, rather than agreeing with our “adversary.” But theoretically, we argue because we want to convince the other side that we’re correct, and the other side wants to do the same with us. Another difference between debate and real life: in real life, there are usually no “objective” third-party judges: the participants themselves decide who “won” the argument.
So what if we entered arguments not with the idea of “winning” them, of trying to convince someone our opinion is the correct one, but with an alternative purpose? To better articulate our feelings and perspectives, maybe. Or to make space for and listen to others. Or emotional catharsis. Or maybe something else entirely.
“The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance,” says Alan Watts. If we admit we argue for arguments’ sake, at least we’re no longer deluding ourselves.
