I wish it was easier to disagree with people. My first reaction when I happen upon a disagreement with friends is to sweep it under the rug, to simply not say anything, or to leave a brief counter-point that summarizes my disagreement. Beyond that, disagreement is uncomfortable and awkward, and I wish it wasn’t.
But on the opposite side of this is belligerence and disagreeableness. Some people cannot accept being thought wrong, and do everything in their power to prove how right they are. It’s terrible for friendships, terrible for community, and generally destroys rather than builds up.
What does winning an argument really accomplish? I had to ask myself this many years ago, and I reached the conclusion that winning arguments really doesn’t accomplish much. First of all, the person who wins an argument isn’t necessarily right, they may just have great skills at debate. Second of all, it is always possible to be correct by accident, meaning your reason is flawed or incomplete, but your opinion still happens to be true. This throws the whole process of debate into question, as it’s entirely possible for the loser to be correct, even if they lost the intelligence game reaching their conclusion. Third of all, very rarely does the loser of a debate sit around basking in the shadow of the winner, humbly accepting the light of truth as if it were some fucking panacea to all of the world’s sufferings. When the “loser” loses, they are often likely to continue to deny the other person being correct, for better or worse. Most of the time, at best, they might consider doing more research on their own. Only very rarely, and typically over very simple arguments does somebody easily concede. Again, this could be for better or worse, but it doesn’t change the fact that debate itself doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything.
Usually, when people feel compelled to win arguments on a regular basis, it has far less to do with making the world a better place, and far more to do with that individual’s ego.
Or their anger. Many, many years ago, when I was struggling with what I believed, a young pastor fresh out of seminar taught my Sunday young adults class. He picked a rough subject, a section of Genesis, and talked about how the Hebrews were the first to have the idea of the heavenly firmament.
Oh, boy, did he step in it. First of all, the Bible says nothing about this bit of intercultural trivia, so I’m not sure where he got it from. But also, it’s not true.
I became livid. I was a very angry person at that time in my life, and my struggle didn’t help anything. He later mentioned he could feel it from me. But while my objections got shifted into a “let’s talk about this after class” situation, I drew him the Middle Egyptian for the sky (“pt”), with the firmament determinative (a little sign that appears after words to distinguish between meanings, since Egyptian words were not written with vowels). Since the Hebrews didn’t really exist archaeologically or linguistically until the late Bronze age/early Iron age (roughly 1200 BC), even just Middle Egyptian could easily disprove his assertion, since it existed well before then. I’m willing to bet the firmament determinative existed in Old Egyptian as well. So, yeah, get shrekked.
Except, of course, that the attitude of my heart was all wrong. Yes, it’s frustrating that pastors don’t receive better training in ancient history. It’s frustrating that knowledge of these things is largely non-existent in the church. It sucks when somebody boldly preaches something and doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. Yes and amen. At the same time…this dude just got out of seminary. And who the hell knows Middle Egyptian? What did I even accomplish, other than possibly ruining somebody’s day? Would it not have been enough to simply point out the error? Why did that even need to be pointed out? So I could feel like a smart cookie?
Did I “win” that “argument”? I guess. But did I really? All it did was make me angry, and nobody was better as a result. I guess I could possibly imagine that guy going home and maybe reflecting on why he should spend a little less time reading theology and a little more time reaching about the ancient world, but if that was the goal, my approach probably wasn’t very encouraging.
I regret that day. There’s no going back in time, though, but it’s always been a reminder to me that being combative and argumentative doesn’t accomplish anything.
And I don’t think people should be proud of being argumentative, either. If you really want to be that way, you should show some wisdom for which hills you’re willing to die on. Otherwise, I’d be led to believe you are simply chasing your own ego. “I must win this argument! I must prove I am smart!”
This all being said, though, I want to return to my first thought: I wish it was easier to disagree with people. There’s a time and a place for defending yourself, for speaking up for your beliefs, for presenting contradicting evidence. But a truly good debate, in my opinion, gives a large amount of space for reflection, research, and the synthesization of knowledge. You don’t get that in a 5-minute or even a 5-hour conversation, and it requires some relational dedication. Just because somebody read a book that contradicts me, doesn’t mean I’m going to instantly capitulate. That would be irresponsible.
But even this depends upon the nature of knowledge. If a doctor corrects me on some medical assertion I make, I’m likely to take them seriously. But even doctors don’t have the full truth on human health and wellness, and some doctors have rather radical ideas. If a doctor comes up to me and says, “You should be vegetarian”, I’m going to have some rude language for them. However, if a doctor tells me what my symptoms are likely to be a sign of, I’m probably going to take them seriously.
In a different vein, if an archaeologist has been plying their trade for the past 40 years, focused on one specific area, and doesn’t especially study anything else, they may be very highly qualified to talk about all of their excavations, or even a few broader conclusions about that region. However, they likely would not have any expertise in the archaeology of some area on the other side of the planet. Their egoic affiliation with archaeology may prompt them to think they have something to say there (and perhaps there are a few general things they can say), but their being an archaeologist doesn’t qualify them to talk about all archaeology.
However, we the plebes are rarely so specialized. Those of us drawn toward intellectual things may have read many books, but reading books represents a very specific type of knowledge not defined by empirical experience. If I have read 20 books on archaeology, can I be an expert on the subject? I can certainly say a few things about what a variety of books say about archaeology, but it would be a tall order to call myself an expert! Granted, personally, I’d prefer a broader knowledge in which I have less expertise, as this allows me to synthesize more knowledge, but at the same time, how far on the expertise spectrum do you need to be in order to speak on a subject with any level of authority?
Let’s say you are conservative and have read 50 conservative books on climate change, which of course tell you very conservative things. Are you therefore an expert on climate change because you “know a lot”? And to be fair, in order to “win” an argument, you could just cite all of the many books you’ve read, but that’s far from having the truth. In some senses, it’s quite lazy. But this raises another question: is the truth concise? Is it the sort of thing you can even scratch during a 30-minute conversation?
If we pretend for a second that all medical knowledge is “truth”, then does that not mean that learning the “truth” of medicine is a 7+ year endeavor? How do you condense that into a short conversation in which you disagree with someone?
The sad truth is, I can be an asshole behind the scenes. I like to be right. I want to be right. And sometimes, it’s important to try to be right, because important things hang in the balance. I think it’s only natural to want to be right, and this is why people search for the truth in the first place. But I have my own egoic desires swirling around that I simply can’t escape, and I don’t completely know what to do with them.
But at the end of the day, I’m not convinced debate produces anything truly meaningful. In this sense, I really don’t need to be “right” about everything, and if I ever start acting like that, I probably deserve a good smack.