Don't Argue to Win—Argue to Engage

Jonathan Herring, How to Argue: Powerfully, Persuasively, Positively

I used to teach argumentation theory in my freshman comp classes, and I could see the curtains lowering behind my students’ eyes. I thought, all this about coalescent design, Toulmin models, and case construction is so interesting to me, surely my students must share my excitement! Only when I saw them putting my lectures into play did I realize that advanced theory mattered little to anyone not ready for the brass tacks of legitimate argument.

Jonathan Herring, prolific British law professor and ethicist, steps into that gap with a good, brief, spirited introduction to the process of testing ideas through argument. His guide does not provide clues on how to win a quarrel or best somebody in a brannigan. Rather, he demonstrates the best way to speak well, pitch your premise, bolster it in a persuasive manner, and defend it against routine attacks. I wish I’d had this book in my teaching days.

Herring’s guide has many advantages. First, it’s slim. Readers could slip this book in a briefcase, purse, or outside pocket of a backpack for easy consultation. This jibes with its straightforward organization, so readers can find what they need. Herring divides his book into two parts: ten “golden rules” of productive argumentation, and ten situation-specific approaches to customizing argument. Together, they form a good introduction to primarily verbal debate.

To begin, Herring asks readers to know whether they really want to have the argument at hand. Are you prepared, in command of the facts? Is this the right venue to have this argument? Will this argument do more harm than good for the relationship? Is this argument even worth having? Surely we all share, at least somewhat, the experience of winning the battle and losing the war when we encultured resentments, made ourselves look ignorant, or lost a job.

This isn’t blue-sky theorizing. Herring asks us to ensure that, for instance, we know what we’re talking about, and present it in a way audiences can comprehend. Especially in a political season like this one, some people argue with nothing but a strongly held feeling, and resent it when they get trounced. Meanwhile, brainy people like me come with so much information that hearers feel deluged. This isn’t argument; it’s using facts like a club to beat hearers into compliance.

Jonathan Herring

For Herring, the point of argument is not to win—which is just as well, since outright victory is rare. Instead, we should strive to reach some shared goal that lets us move forward. Therefore, in addition to what we say, Herring takes time to coach us on what we don’t say. We should listen more than we speak, he says, because only in hearing the other person can we meet their needs. And we should value maintaining healthy relationships over short-term triumph.

Herring also recognizes that not all arguments are the same. I appreciate his discussion of how to argue when the participants have unequal power. We cannot approach an argument with our kids, who are essentially powerless, the same way we approach an argument with a spouse, who should be roughly equal, or a boss, who has extreme power over us. We must customize our approach depending on the distribution of power.

Often, Herring says, arguments have little to do with the surface trigger. We can often increase productivity, heal relationships, and resolve deadlock by moving past whatever we think caused the current dispute, and addressing what lies beneath. This may mean giving up on the current dispute, or leaving some minor controversy unresolved. But if we can answer the real argument, we make real contributions to our job, marriage, or whatever.

And Herring accomplishes these goals in plain English. Back when I taught argumentation, I used a lot of technical terms, like warrant, dialectic, and topos—words I now realize I didn’t really understand. Herring writes in plain English, taking the time to flesh out his ideas with examples that should ring familiar to most readers. Even as he explains tough concepts, his language reads with the ease of a novel.

If you often find yourself going in circles when trying to sort out differences, or make little headway getting others to take your needs seriously, you need this brief entrée to simple argument. Herring makes short work of a complex subject, in a way that doesn’t bog down in extraneous detail or terminology. Hopefully, if a few people in key places follow his advice, we’ll see an improved level of discourse in our time.

Spiritual Psychotherapy for the Sickened Soul

Tim Clinton and Pat Springle, Break Through: When to Give In, How to Push Back

Many ordinary people, plagued by ghosts of the past, bring the fractured relationships we grew up with into the present. The desire to care for others or be cared for, to trust blindly or withhold trust altogether, to forgive flippantly or bear grudges for years, tends to repeat over time. But modern secular psychology has begun to catch up with the ancient truths of Christian tradition, that we can heal if we place our trust where it belongs.

Clinton and Springle assert that many of us have flaccid boundaries and codependent relationships because we have placed others in the position reserved only for God. We may give in, rescuing the object of our devotion from the consequences of their actions, or we may dominate and micromanage their choices, or we may even flee from them; but the source remains the same. Damaged relationships are a form of idolatry.

This thesis, sure to be controversial in certain circles, manages to smoothly unify the worlds of Christian theology and psychotherapy. Both are historically based on the belief that we as humans naturally have things out of balance. And, as these and other authors have noted recently, the latest discoveries in human psychology have served to ratify the bulk of Christian insights on the soul, from Paul and Augustine to Erasmus and Calvin.

Much scientific thought has poured disparagement on Christian psychology as naive. But when you read the insights of the Church Fathers, their metaphysical discourse sounds remarkably similar to recent discoveries made using fMRI and PET scan technology. True, Christian psychology got spongy when Protestant theologians tried to stay hip with post-Enlightenment philosophy. We need to reclaim the older tradition, not throw it out in the craze for modernism.

For instance, the Church Elders knew what we know now, that the homes in which we grow up determine what kind of adults we become. Homes that rob us of power may leave us feeling permanently needy and desperate, which make express itself in mewling passivity, or in a wrathful desire to control others. Just as bad, from a Christian perspective, how we view our earthly parents has an inevitable influence on how we see our Heavenly Father.

When we identify how we make idols of the people around us, we identify the tools at our disposal to correct the problem. However, because we make idols in so many different ways, any one-size-fits-all solution will fall flat. Clinton and Springle collate the various ways we as humans manufacture idols out of the people we love, and force us to ask ourselves hard questions. Only then, they say, can we address the problems.

And address them we do. Through a mix of anecdote, Socratic dialogue, and counseling, they make us take stock of how we reached the point we’re at, and only then guide us on how to get back on track. I don’t recall seeing a better integrated piece of Christian counseling than this. Most books lean to either evangelism or therapy, and use the other to bolster the chosen central track, but these authors treat Christianity and counseling as two halves of one whole.

Moreover, they address the one problem I see most often ignored in books like this: most people don’t want us to change. They receive the benefit of our illness, whether as the beneficiaries of our rescues, willing targets of our control, or controllers of our passivity. Clinton and Springle require us, as part of our healing, to confront those who would hold us back. They even provide a guide for how to prepare for, navigate, and recover from that confrontation.

Adulthood can be a scary time for even the best of us. This is only worse for those who hit physical adulthood without the healthy passages that families and adolescence should provide. Too many people have jobs, homes, kids, even grandkids, before we have the chance to pass into real adulthood. But we have a Heavenly Father and an earthly family who will support us as we go through that time of changes, no matter when it finally arrives.

No book, of course, can replace good, guided therapy. Clinton and Springle even remind us of this periodically. But as a supplement for one-on-one therapy, pastoral counseling, or support group participation, this book makes a good guide to reconcile our lives to God’s vision. The authors don’t pretend this will come easily. But, as survivors themselves and guides for others, they show that good Christian healing is possible.

One Possible Cure For Small Town Malaise

Ever since Sinclair Lewis diagnosed the “village virus” in his 1920 classic Main Street, America has remained deeply divided in its feelings about small town life. On the one hand, we often treat small towns and rural areas as bastions of earthy virtues and interlaced community. On the other, small towns often produce small minds, and serve as seething cauldrons of resentment. Unfortunately, both views are right, which means both views are wrong.

Anyone who has lived in America’s small towns recently, however, knows our rural communities are certainly one thing: marginal. This has been the state of American village life since at least the Eisenhower era, when cheap cars and postwar prosperity led to a concentration of industrial might in metropolitan areas. Small towns became stopovers on American transportation routes—and, with the rise of Interstates and cheap air travel, became not even that.

Nowadays, John Mellencamp serenades his happy memories of small town life, though his tours stay in cities large enough to support arena venues. Bill Clinton touted his birth in tiny Hope, Arkansas, while eliding that, when he was a boy, his mother moved the family to the resort suburb of Hot Springs, or that he left Arkansas altogether to commence his career. People tout small town origins, but have to leave to make something of themselves.

Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, describes studies that have indicated why some of the world’s largest cities have also proven the most creatively fertile. Where large, diverse populations interact, people have the opportunity to discover new points of view, prod others to greater accomplishments, and test each other’s capacities. Simply put, as the population increases, productivity increases, geometrically.

This thesis has its limitations. Were size the only relevant variable, Lagos, Nigeria, would be as creative and prosperous as London, which is about the same size. But if we look at those cities and neighborhoods that have proven the most productive over the years—Greenwich Village, Haight Ashbury, Bloomsbury, the Left Bank—we see they aren’t just populous. They’re also arranged to facilitate interaction among diverse populations.

Manhattan’s White Horse Tavern, famous for Dylan Thomas’s fatal drinking binge, began life as a longshoreman’s watering hole. Hampstead pubs famously draw artists, laborers, businessmen, and tourists. People meet one another across economic and social lines. Even the streets favor interactions, since crowded main roads slow traffic and advantage pedestrians. How many novels, paintings, and business ideas were conceived in Paris Metro stations, I wonder?

By contrast, the small towns where I’ve lived have a self-segregating tendency. We have working class bars, professional bars, student bars, sports bars, and their clientele never mixes. Different coffee shops and tea houses, different restaurants and businesses, cater to distinct customer bases, deepening divides. Too often, small town dwellers never meet anyone particularly different from themselves.

This is heightened by village layouts. Low land values and minimal space competition means towns sprawl. Without a car, small town dwellers are stranded, but with cars, they never meet anyone they don’t want to. People can ensure they only frequent businesses that cater to them, not ones near where they live or work. One of my town’s major coffee shops is drive-thru only, so you can enjoy your mocha frappe without any messy human entanglements.

Where communities have economy enough to encourage new building, that tendency becomes more pronounced. Single-use developments include similarly sized houses on identical lots, forbidding mixing of economic strata. They also seldom have restaurants, bars, shops, or hangouts where people can meet. They may have a few lots zoned commercial, but building costs ensure only chain businesses, like fast food franchises, can afford to move in.

In Nebraska, where I live, politicians invest much hair-pulling in wondering what it takes to keep ambitious, educated young people from leaving the state. Yet large-scale economic development funds exclusively create pedestrian-hostile towns which minimize human interaction. Even for those whose education and connections ensure economic mobility, social mobility has dwindled to insignificance. Free flow of ideas just doesn’t happen.

Shifting design priorities to boost interaction would alleviate at least part of the ennui that blankets many small American towns. If people could sit down to eat and drink in the same space as a callused tradesman and a necktied attorney, they would encounter new ideas, which they could then experiment with, until they created something truly new. If people had to walk to work, they could enjoy the surprise of simply saying hello to people they don’t see every day.

Such changes wouldn’t be a silver bullet to save America’s small communities. Many towns need to modernize their infrastructure and overcome cultural habits that defy the times. But if people could meet newer, more diverse groups, such towns would be well on their way to achieving such much-needed goals. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to overcome inertia.

Russell T. Davies, the BBC's Own Godmaker

Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.
—John Calvin

David Tennant as the Doctor (BBC photo)

Even before he gained international renown in resurrecting Doctor Who, Welsh-born TV writer and producer Russell T. Davies had a reputation for dealing in religious issues. Shows he created or oversaw, like Revelations, Springhill, or The Second Coming dealt with the complexities inherent in transcendent belief in an increasingly secularized Britain. It was an impressive output for a self-described atheist.

So it perhaps comes as no shock that religion crept into his take on the Doctor. The first overt consideration of religion I recall was in the 2005 episode “Boom Town,” when the villain Margaret Blaine, seeing the interior of the TARDIS for the first time, describes the Doctor’s vessel as “the technology of the gods.” The Doctor, played then by Christopher Eccleston, explains why he would make a poor object of worship.

Eccleston’s successor, David Tennant, displayed no such false modesty. In his very first regular episode, “New Earth,” several characters call the Doctor “the lonely god.” This is only the more blatant because some characters using this title are nuns. Then, having been identified for what he is, the Doctor proceeds to uncover the sin concealed by righteousness, heal the sick, and cast the mighty from their temple.

This establishes the Doctor in a strange dichotomy: identified as God, he also becomes his own prophet. Though the Doctor fudges what he actually believes in the episode “The Satan Pit,” he never denies being “the lonely god.” Indeed, in his repeated self-made appointment as dispenser of justice, he elevates himself to godlike status. Savvy audiences may recall Daniel 11:36-37.

John Barrowman as Captain Jack
Harkness (BBC photo)

We should note that the Doctor never calls himself God. In the episode “The Sound of Drums,” the Doctor explicitly rejects divine status—an action not shared by the Master, who uses mock biblical language after cracking open the sky and sending his angels down to establish an apocalyptic empire over Earth. Like the Son of Man, the Doctor does not proclaim his divinity; like Simon Magus, the Master claims someone else’s godhead.

But like Jesus, the Doctor does not stop his own humility from permitting others to proclaim his status. The subsequent episode, “Last of the Time Lords,” features the Doctor’s companion Martha traveling the Master’s shattered world. In the climactic scene, Martha reveals that she spent her travels evangelizing the Doctor as Savior of the world, and urging the nations to call on the name of the Doctor for salvation.

The Master calls this what it is: prayer. But the Doctor goes further, demonstrating the one triumphant power he has over his opposite number: forgiveness. The Master harbors powerful grudges, lashes out at small offense, and encourages others to nurse petty grievances. The Doctor overcomes the Master by whispering “I forgive you.” This not only breaks the Master’s dominion, but to undoes the damage his empire has wreaked on Earth.

I could continue. In “Voyage of the Damned,” the Doctor asserts control of the angels and has them ascend him to the highest deck. In “The Satan Pit,” he personally casts The Beast into a black hole. In “School Reunion,” he is tempted with absolute power, but rejects it because he will not arrogate such power to himself. But the repetition gets tedious.

In fairness, Davies did not invent the idea of the Doctor as God. In the original series, which ran from 1963 to 1989, the Doctor was variously mistaken for a god, a wizard, and a prophet. This came across most aggressively in the 1977 episode The Face of Evil, in which half-remembered myths of the Doctor present him as a totemic idol for a primitive tribe. This story channels Sigmund Freud’s elegant but unprovable Totem and Taboo.

Russell T. Davies

Since Steven Moffat took the reins of Doctor Who, this theme has diminished significantly. But Davies retains control of the spinoff series Torchwood, featuring Captain Jack Harkness, the man who cannot die. The most recent season of this show culminates when Jack’s blood defuses an earth-shattering threat. Having made the Doctor into God, Davies makes Jack God’s risen son, whose blood takes away the pain of the world.

The prophet Isaiah complained that “the people worship things they have made with their own hands.” I doubt anybody seriously worships the Doctor, but Davies proves that even people who claim to have no god still seek divinity. And when they believe they cannot find such glory on high, people will manufacture it for themselves.

Lean, Finely Textured Bull

Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE)

Late last week, Nebraska Third District Congressman Adrian Smith sent an e-mail to constituents under the headline “Setting the Record Straight on Lean, Finely Textured Beef.” Sent from his house.gov e-mail account, presumably at taxpayer expense, Smith’s message sets a new low for cash-and-carry politics. And despite Smith’s limited representation and low profile outside his district, this message reflects what’s wrong with part of today’s mismanaged politics.

Start with the title. Throughout the message, Smith repeats the mantra “lean, finely textured beef.” If this awkward phrase doesn’t ring any bells, think back two months to when ABC News more memorably called it Pink Slime. But Smith never mentions this name, or any details of the controversy. He simply refers to “the recent, baseless media scare,” as if national news sources conjure bugbears to torpedo businesses in his district.

Then he confuses the issue further by calling Pink Slime “a perfect example of the disastrous, real-life consequences of straying from sound-science to determine product safety”. I don’t know enough to say whether any claims or counterclaims about Pink Slime hold water, scientifically. I do know, however, that, as Rampton and Stauber demonstrate, “sound science” is a buzzword that often speaks less to scientific rigor and more to whose money greases the wheels.

Smith cannot bother to provide any countervailing science, cite sources, or define what he calls “science-based standards.” Perhaps because science, as understood by heroes like Newton and Einstein, doesn’t enter into his reasoning. Much more of Smith’s space goes into the jobs lost when the chief producer of Pink Slime had to shutter three plants, idling 650 workers—few of whom, notably, live in Smith’s district.

Job losses have become the latest political catchall whenever moral outrage threatens a given industry. Offshore oil drilling, clear-cut logging, and strip mining have all rallied defenders around the people who would lose their jobs if environmental advocates have their way. And in fairness, these industries employ a lot of workers in rural areas that have little other economy to absorb large numbers of newly unemployed people lacking portable skills.

Pink Slime arguably lost market share because it is extruded
from a tube, not carved from a side of beef, and looks gross

But extend that logic for a moment. Many other workers lost jobs when outrage led America to stop producing whale oil, napalm, and DDT. Can you imagine if stonewallers had kept these industries open based on jobless workers? The American economy proved elastic enough to absorb the temporary dislocations created when particular industries did more harm than good. Even the workers must surely admit their products didn’t advance human well-being.

By contrast, Smith has proven a mighty foe to efforts to create jobs through, for instance, repairing America’s road network, subsidizing green energy, or stimulating entrepreneurship. Government involvement in these areas, to Smith, smacks of creeping Soviet-style collectivism. But propping up factories that feed kids chemically treated scrap meat rendered from tendons and glandular tissue—that’s right up Smith’s alley.

Smith’s strange lament reaches its peak when he finishes with a survey. The two-question questionnaire would be merely patronizing if he stopped with his first question: “Do you believe controversy over lean, finely textured beef was justified?” Politicians ask this kind of ho-hum stemwinder just to let constituents feel involved. The second question is much worse: “Do you believe the USDA should work to correct the public record about lean, finely textured beef?”

We in the logic-chopping business call this a “loaded question,” because it involves stacked assumptions. Though structured as a yes-or-no question, nobody can answer without conceding the asker’s premise. Serious debaters consider loaded questions a dirty trick, because they force speakers to give credence to assumptions they would ordinarily deny. The classic example of a loaded question is: “Do you still beat your wife?”

Attempts to rebrand "lean, finely textured
beef" included this patronizing slogan

Smith assumes, for instance, that the public record should be corrected. That premise is still debatable. Scientists remain conflicted, even if we exclude media scaremongers and corporate shills. He also assumes that the USDA has not worked to “correct the public record,” although it has aggressively defended the status quo. But this doesn’t accord with Smith’s narrative of a beleaguered local employer, a fake media scare, and an absentee government.

Though I lack resources to check, Smith’s message could have been written by Pink Slime’s press secretary. Back in the Gilded Age, crooked politicians concealed that monied interests were slipping money in their pockets. Smith and his ilk don’t even try. This lowball message just looks oily, and even if Pink Slime ultimately proves safe, Smith should feel ashamed for his blatant lack of discretion.