The Professional Opinion

The Art of Arguing:

Written Correspondence

Recently I have noticed an uptick in the written word being bandied about to air grievances. Oftentimes the intent of the argument is well meaning and the discussion an important one to have. The problem is that you all bicker like five year olds disputing whether or not it’s your turn to sit in the front seat of the carriage while resorting to name calling, crying, and incoherent rambling. Then when the dust finally settles and nothing has been solved but at least you’ve all shut the hell up, someone comes along and necros a three day old argument for no bloody reason other than that they just wanted to make sure everyone knew they also had an opinion. This repeats until we either get bored, a new argument takes its place, or the ‘correspondence constables’ arrive to collect the entire fucking stack of papers and throw it directly in the damn trash.

It would seem that most of the written arguments that pass my desk are often quite ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean that people are not passionate about their opinions on said absurdity. Being passionate about that which you fight for is a good thing. If you aren’t passionate about it then you are fighting just to fight which is something only trolls do, presumably while they are bored under a bridge. That passion, however, can make your arguments sound irrational and ill conceived. Someone recently complimented me on my ability to separate myself from the emotions of an argument. It felt like an odd thing to be commended for, but perhaps my heart of stone is a benefit when it comes to navigating social discourse.

Arguing via the written word is quite different from arguing in person, and some are better at it than others. The folks who seem to be the best at it are, unsurprisingly, writers. We are used to reading, rereading, and then rereading again. We look for typos, repetitive wording, and awkward segues like it’s our job because it quite literally is. We understand that tone is difficult to convey through a written medium and have found ways of circumventing this problem. We are also good at disconnecting ourselves from our own work and looking at it as the reader will and that, my dears, is crucial.

So how do you avoid the pitfall of acting a fool when emotions are running high and you want attention for your own notions towards whatever the majority of the Realms is arguing about today? You might feel as though a particularly preposterous idea is dangerous to the community as a whole and what does one do then, you wonder? You cannot simply ignore it and allow the problem to fester, you must do something about it, and surely you could not make the problem worse by trying to make the Realms a better place right? Oh my love, how very wrong you are. You might be a hero in your own mind, but to someone else you’re the villain and trying to convince them otherwise is an art, my darlings.

You can convince anyone of anything if you frame it properly, but proper framing needs to be tailored to individual situations. I’ve made a living convincing men that they are the best I ever had, and then in teaching others how to do the same. Every man is different in what they need to hear, and how and when they need to hear it. Knowing what those things are requires empathy, an understanding of how that person thinks and feels. You then need to reconcile those thoughts and feelings with your own and create a delicate balance of honesty, conviction, and perhaps a little pandering, to compose a rational and well formed thought put to words.

Empathy is defined as ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.’ So often we understand words wherein they only work in our favor. For example, empathy is something others are supposed to have for you, and if they misunderstand you then they clearly lack compassion and insight. But the very concept of empathy conveys mutuality. If you want people to respect your opinions you need them to be respectable. If you want to sell people on your opinions they need to be marketable.

Thinking of it as a marketing campaign, edit your thoughts down to something consumable by the masses. Before you send your letter off to the post take a step back and reread it from a different perspective. If you are angry, take a deep breath, have a drink, a smoke, a good prigging, or whatever it is you do to calm down and center yourself in rationality. How is the person you are conversing with likely to interpret your words? Does it come off as a personal attack? Does it seem like you are trying to push some sort of agenda? It is on you to convey your own thoughts and feelings properly, not on someone else to play therapist and attempt to dissect whatever the hell goes on in your mind.

You should always assume neutral intentions in the other person until they give you a valid reason not to. Assuming good or bad intentions leads to heightened emotions which then leads to personal attacks and the entire discussion breaks down into an unwinnable argument on all sides. There is a reason young children argue irrationally, and it is because they haven’t yet developed the analytical skills required to quickly rationalize and control their emotional responses. You are all supposedly adults who should be able to process information and react to it in a more mature manner than a young child.

If the discussion has reached a point of no return, step away and stop adding fuel to the fire. Don’t try to put the fire out with gasoline and then complain that the fire consumed you and everything that you ever loved. Either use proper dowsing tools or walk away and let the adults handle it. If you and another individual have irreconcilable differences that disrupt your daily life, divorce yourself of the situation and of them. Unsubscribe from their newsletter of offensive opinions. Don’t think of it as ‘trying to win an argument’. This isn’t about winning and losing, though if it was the real losers are the ones who have to read the whole blasted argument.