We have all been there. That point in time when one realizes that one is on the losing side of an argument. It is a crucial point when, depending of the importance of the argument and one’s egotistical perspective of the person being argued with, one considers one’s options for continuation.

It tends to all happen in the blink of an eye - our subconscious self provides it’s recommended course of action and the conscious mind acts upon it.

Does one fight, flee or trick? If one should fight, should one try to do so through intimidation or should one reiterate one’s arguments stubbornly? If one should flee should one simply drop the argument mid-path and walk away or should one put an end to the argument itself through a dismissive statement? Or perhaps one should take a more roguish approach and take the argument towards an unexpected tangent, leaving the argument behind?

All of these approaches have their merits but they also have their short-fallings. Most prominently they all are typical of arguments where individuals clash with other individuals. This is representative of intellectual exchange as we know it.

However such egotistical clashes end up empowering the individuals rather than any sides of the arguments concerned, the arguments themselves being lost to the egos concerned. This is very much a part of the formula that makes wars - the ultimate clash of egos where other people are drawn in as if to a black whole - a possible reality.

There is another approach that proves harder than all the rest and that is an admittance to self that one’s argument is actually errant (when it appears to be so). It is through such an admittance that whole new vistas of possible courses of action become open to the individual concerned, but let us pause here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 8:21 pm and is filed under A matter of perspective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.