I have a habit of thinking I am right. All the time. Regardless of evidence to the contrary. It's not unusual for people to be this way. In fact, it's becoming more and more common. Being that I am normally very timid and not one to start an argument with anyone, the advent of the cyber-world has given me a wall to hide behind. It lends itself to a semi-anonymous existence. It creates, in me at least, a bravado that doesn't normally exist.
With my friends on Facebook I tend to be more like my real-world self but with those I encounter on fan sites and forums I tend to let loose. If I think I'm right I will push and push and push. If you've read any of my other blog posts you will notice the same sort of thing. I know I do it but unless it's specifically aimed towards my personal friends, I just don't care. Of course, I want people to like me, but I also like for people to agree with me.
And this leads me to the point of this blog: this habit of speaking my mind also extends to the defence of others. I have been known, more than once to step into the middle of a cyber-argument with hope of achieveing two things: the end of the argument and the backing up of one side over the other.
My thought is, though, at what point does my interjection stop being mediation and start being meddling? It's a fine line in some instances. I do try to stay out of arguments concerning things I have absolutely no knowledge of. Sometimes I let myself get sucked in but it tends to be rarely. The ones I find myself in the middle of, thought no-one's fault but my own, are the ones where I am friends with one of the participants in the argument and/or respect their point of view. It might not even be that I agree with one person or the other, it's just my perception of their attitude towards the subject matter or the person they are debating.
As far as I can remember, there has only been one instance where I have stepped into an argument purely to tell both participants off for being childish. I purposely put myself in the middle to diffuse what looked like an argument that could turn ugly. Well, as ugly as a cyber-argument can get. I did so thinking that the best I could hope for would be that they would stop arguing. The worst I expected would be that they would both continue and drag me into it by trying to win me over to their point of view. What I did not expect was that I would wake up the next morning to an apology from both parties.
I have always, I think, been seen as a bit of a mother hen and that has shaped me a lot. It has made me want to stick up for my family and friends and to want everyone to be treated fairly, with dignity and respect, regardless of their opinion. I have been the one to whom friends have come with problems, either as a listening post or as someone to offer advice and potentially "fix" the situation. When I was younger (and I'm talking a teenager, here) I did not ask for that responsibility. Now, I don't necessarily like being put in the middle but will not back away if friends are in trouble.
I have been called diplomatic more because I have a way of wording things calmly than anything else. I have an ability to take the hot headed ramblings of one side and make sense of them and turn them into a forceful argument. I can also tell someone to peddle their shite somewhere else in the nicest of possible ways. It's a tone of voice more than the actual subject matter. It's that "mum" voice. It works on the kids I teach, it works on my son and it, apparently, works on random internet people.
All said and done, I do have a sense of humour about the disagreements I get myself into. I think it's quite amusing that I have argued with someone over the height of a TV host's chair. Even as I was in it, I was thinking how absurd it was but I just couldn't help myself, I wanted to see what it took for the other person it either give in or give up. I also think it's quite amusing that anyone, myself included, would bother with such a stupid subject matter.
This is not to say that all the debates I get into are petty or have humour attached to them. I have been known to lash out at religious practices, ideology, social welfare, prejudice, politics and various other subjects which are, by anyone's standards, serious. When it comes to those subjects I can be extremely focused on my point of view and will argue it to the death. Being somewhat educated (I have a university degree) and someone who has an interest in the news and current affairs (by which I mean interesting happenings in the world, rather than whatever the latest scam or shoddy practice is or who's marrying/divorcing/sleeping with whom) I like to think I have an understanding of certain things and can articulate myself when needed.
I enjoy a good philosophical debate and, when both sides are willing to accept that different people have different points of view, they can be quite enjoyable. It's closed minded people that iritate me and get me most fired up, even in the real world. I remember having the most astonishingly atrocious arguments with my scripture teachers, going right back to when I was 7 years old. Even as a young child I was more open to a non-specific spirituality rather than a diety-specific religion and this was because of the closed-mindedness of those religious instructors. The whole reason why I attended scripture at school, even though I had the option of attending non-scripture (or what they are now calling moral guidance), was because I was fascinated by the idea of religion and wanted to learn about it, to debate it, to discuss it with people who believed. Not having the experince I have now, the debates turned to arguments and then just to me trying to convince them they were wrong.
My dad is the same way, I think I inherited it from him. My mum has often told me how he'd invite Latter Day Saints in when they came knocking and would then argue the Bible with them (my dad was schooled in a Lutheran boarding school and knows the Bible pretty well for someone who doesn't practice any religion at all). I'm not sure if being told it's ok to question religious authority led me to question it or whether I would have done it regardless but the outcome was that not only did I question the religion I was being schooled in but all religions and made an effort to learn about the different religions so I would know what I was arguing for or against.
Education, I think, is vital in the debating process and why I try to steer clear of subjects I don't know anything about. All to often I have been challenged on things because the other person hasn't done their research. Mostly, as soon as I lay out the evidence, they back down. It's the ones that don't back down in the face overwhelming evidence that annoy me. If I were in a debate with myself I would be fuming at myself, because I am very much (though not completely) that person.
In conclusion, I don't mind whether you agree with me or not. I don't mind if you believe in purple fairies or aliens or God. I don't mind if you have rationality or reason behind you. If you enter into a debate with me, as long as you are prepared to either convince me of your argument or declare defeat, that is all I ask. If, in the event that neither of us changes our mind, as long as you conceed that we can agree to disagree, then that's ok as well.
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