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In my previous News-Press commentary, “How to never lose a political argument,” I suggested that the way to never lose a political argument was simply not to get into one. Although simplistic, it does mean you will never lose an argument!Unfortunately, I didn’t tell you how to win! This is a follow-up that tells how to win in an argument.
First of all, if you argue with a crazy person, who is the crazy person? You already know the person in the other political party is an idiot, yet you still argue?When do I get upset or angry in a conversation? One source of anger is when someone says “no” to what I say. A simple no, or negating what I say, or moving toward negating what I say, makes me angry! It is a threat.
The threat can work on many levels. It can deny what I know, what I think I know, what I believe, what I have always believed, what my team believes. It is a threat! Adrenaline jumps in with the “flight or fight” reaction, and off we go! I am no longer in charge. I now have energy to defend against the attack!
One form of defending is to keep repeating the same thing over and over — and expecting a different result! (You may remember this description of insanity!) Don’t worry; your opponent is just as insane.
Understanding this helps to understand why Byron Katie says, “Defense is the first act of war.” Think about it. Not defending against their “no’s” prevents battle. It also gives an understanding of the phrase “resistance causes persistence.”
I presume that the reaction to threat is the same in most other people. How do I prevent the other person from reacting to me? It’s as simple as this: Don’t use the word “no,” don’t negate what they say, even though it is assuredly (to me) wrong. Nobody wants to be “negated.” Even if I simply say, “I disagree,” it may be taken as a negation. So don’t negate them.
How do you have an argument, then, if you can’t say “no,” or negate, or deny, or correct what they are saying? That’s the point. You can’t have an argument if you don’t do any of these things!
This is where the deeper interpretation of “winning” comes in. What if the goal of the conversation is not to win the argument, but to get a deeper understanding of the other person? If I get a deeper understanding, that makes me a winner.
To this end, what if I made that commitment to myself: to never negate the other person — no no’s, no negative words, denials, challenges? The goal of this commitment is to get a better understanding of the person.So where do you go with this if you don’t negate? How do you say something back to somebody who just negated what you said or negates what you believe?
“Oh yes. Thank you for pointing out the error of my ways! You must be brilliant. Tell me all your thoughts”! Sorry. Just a bit of sarcasm.
This new way of conversing will only work if we have a commitment not to negate. To do this, ask questions rather than telling them something. For example:
“Can you tell me why that is important to you?”
“Can you tell me a little more about why that is important to you?”
“Can you help me understand how you came to feel that way?”
“Can you help me understand what would be lost to you, if that were not true?”
If you have a concern about fact: “Would you mind if I Googled that?”
Here is an example that unfortunately may be very timely, but it happened to me back in the 1980s. The word “perestroika” was popularized by Mikhail Gorbachev. It means “a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party and/or Soviet Union.”
I asked a friend, whose parents were from Ukraine, what he thought about perestroika. He said one word: “B——t!” After a few silent minutes he said, “The Russians killed two of my uncles.” I learned a lot about him, and that conversation was over!
What could hurt with this approach? It’s not as if you were going to win the argument anyhow! The other person is not actually running for president, after all; he is just running off at the mouth!
What I am sharing is not how to win a political argument, but how to win in a political argument. In the big picture, what we are saying is not necessarily the truth. It is our story of the truth.
The bottom line in most arguments is: “My story is better than your story!” Consider wanting to listen to their story.
Frank SanitateThe author lives in Santa Barbara
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