The Cherry Orchard

In two recent posts, we discovered that the term “argument” cannot be logically defined at all (similarly to “game”, which Ludwig Wittgenstein once famously proved can not be defined by any single essential characteristic or meaning). An argument usually represents a state of conflict, but not always. An argument is usually rooted in a difference of belief, but not always. An argument is usually considered an undesirable thing, but not always. The term “argument” is basically a knot of interconnected meaning, and it’s probably pointless to try to define the word any further.

But that’s not where this inquiry will end; rather, that’s where this inquiry must begin. Here’s a surprising fact the previous case studies turn up: we all spend a hell of a lot of time arguing. We do it more than we’d like to admit. We do it at home, we do it at work, we do it in the car, and we do it in the supermarket, at the bowling alley, in restaurants, at parties … we do it with loved ones, with strangers, with imaginary adversaries, with people in books or on TV. We argue like we breathe. And since we do it so much, maybe we should try to understand it better.

Basically, what I’m planning is a new exploration into the discipline known as “ethics”, the branch of philosophy that tries to find meaning in intuitive human concepts like “morality”, “justice”, “good” and “evil”. This was Plato’s specialty, of course, and my other favorite ethical philosophers include Jean Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, William James and Jean-Paul Sartre. The field of psychology is closely linked to social philosophy, and Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung also addressed these topics with powerful insight.

Sometimes I talk “meta-argument” when I hear friends and family engage in arguments. I like to stop the motion in the middle of a heated controversy and ask everyone to examine what the hell it is we are doing. Usually, people just think I’m crazy and tell me to shut up so they can continue arguing. I don’t particularly want to know what we’re arguing about, but I want to know what we’re arguing for.

So, the inquiry will go on. I’m going to keep covering news and international issues here at the FruitStand, but I’m going to make a point of looking for the 10-mile view, the philosophical angle. The big picture, as they say. Because when I hear people argue … and even when I hear myself argue, I don’t get the feeling anybody’s getting to the heart of the matter anywhere. Let’s see if we can’t do better.

I’ve recently been observing people around me who are arguing, trying to discern behavorial clues as to what motivates a person engaged in an argument. What exactly are people doing when they argue? Let’s look at some case studies and find out.

1) A married couple who fight every night after they put the kids to bed

Mr. and Mrs. X love each other, and neither want their marriage to end. However, they bicker bitterly about everything. They can barely get through a dinner in a restaurant or a movie on TV without insulting, demeaning or pointedly ignoring each other. They put on happy faces for the children and for friends, but in private they are locked in an endless cycle of blame, disappointment and anger. Why are they doing this?

In one sense, for this couple arguing is a form of communication. It makes both of them feel vulnerable to express any kind of happiness or satisfaction with their lives together, as if doing so might reveal too much to the other. The “grouchy face” has become a permanent mask for both of them, and they have settled into bickering as a form of confortable equilibrium. In this sense, their fights are not actually arguments at all.

However, at least once or twice a week they move from snide bickering into full-blown, horrifying battling. One might conclude that they are cruel and love to inflict pain on each other, but this is not true. In fact, it might be that they are engaging in a form of territorial negotiation. There are a number of ongoing unresolved issues between them (say, she feels he doesn’t help enough with the kids, he feels she is irresponsible with money, they each want to be able to go out with their friends more than with the others’ friends, both fear the other will have an affair). Each is constantly afraid of losing the advantage on any of these issues — and so they argue constantly to let the other know that they will still not yield on anything. Despite the fact that their fights are emotionally devastating to both of them, these fights have become functionally necessary to this marriage. It is with these fights that they define the rules and boundaries of their everyday lives: argument is a form of both communication and negotiation.

2) Politicians in a televised debate

Debate season has opened early for 2008 Presidential candidates in America, and if you watch one of these broadcasts you’ll see that each participant is engaged in a performance for the benefit of an audience. They are not attempting to directly persuade each other, because to do so would be pointless (after all, Barack Obama knows there’s little chance he’ll get Hillary Clinton’s vote). Instead they are competing to impress viewers, and so in this case the so-called argument is merely a framing device for a roundtable of rehearsed performances.

But there are rare moments when politicians do challenge each other directly on meaningful issues in a televised debate. In these cases, what are the individual politicians actually doing? On an intellectual level, it seems they are attempting to establish an interpretation of reality, attempting to make a case for a particular position by presenting evidence, supplying metaphors or presenting logical conclusions. It’s during these moments that the debate will seem most substantial to viewers — though, ironically, it’s almost always against the rules of a televised debate for one candidate to directly challenge another, due to the sanitized format our bloodless modern politicians always insist on.

But when they do clash on an issue, what each politician is doing is attempting to create a complete picture of a reality for the audience to accept as “the” reality. A pro-choice politician says a fetus is not a human being, a pro-life politician says it is. Both want to “establish” this point in the mind of each viewer. Furthermore, the politician is attempting to prove his or her ability to continue to create persuasive realities that others will follow, and they do this by appearing forceful, confident and assertive. They are each trying to control the discussion, and they will use rhetorical touches such as raising their voice, interrupting each other and psyching each other out with veiled insults to do this. If they succeed, viewers will intuitively notice that they are controlling the conversation, and will think of them as having strong leadership skills. This final result is probably the most critical of all. In all the above senses, though, for a politician an argument is a form of performance.

3) A bunch of baseball fans in a bar

A bunch of loudmouth Mets fans are sitting around arguing about whether or not Willie Randolph just blew it by letting reliever Aaron Heilman pitch the middle innings in a close game (note: the answer to this question is often “yes”). There are some Heilman believers in the crowd, though, and the tone of the discussion gets a bit hostile. What are these people doing? Simple: they’re having fun. They are speaking loudly, calling each other names, bringing out all the insults they can think up, and despite the displays of ferocity it really all amounts to nothing more than a verbal hacky-sack circle. They are relishing their chance to exercise their knowledge of statistics and/or their comic skills (assuming they have either, which they often don’t) and they’re enjoying each other’s bon mots. For these guys, an argument is a form of entertainment.

I think I’m going to stop this sample here, and present a few more cases in my next post (hopefully tomorrow). And yes, I am building up to a point with all of this, though I can’t describe exactly at this moment what that point is going to be. That’s what an inquiry is for — if I knew the answers now, I wouldn’t need to inquire!

Stay tuned for installment #2, coming soon.

I started this blog last July, because I was disturbed by the wars raging in the Holy Lands, frustrated with the lack of useful debate in America over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and disgusted by the news from Darfur. Despite the cozy weather, I remember last summer as a moral nadir, a season of hopelessness.

In the nine months since, I’m glad to say the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas has mostly held up (though a cease-fire is a far cry from a peace settlement). I’m also glad that a majority of sensible politicians in both the Democratic and Republican parties have made the smart decision to stop backing the Bush/Cheney position on Iraq, and I have much more faith in our legislative branch since the November elections (though the season of hopelessness is far from over in Darfur, and we’ve got stuff like global warming and nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran to worry about).

I’m also glad that The Cherry Orchard is regularly finding more readers, and that I’m doing a better job of figuring out how to write about political topics (after years of writing about fiction and poetry on LitKicks I thought it’d be easy, but it’s not). A post I put up immediately after the Virginia Tech killings was cited in an article by Graeme Hamilton in Canada’s National Post, which is nice, even though it inspired an excitable fellow who writes for a blog called Weapons of Mass Discussion to call me an asshat and question my honesty when I say I would not sit quietly and pray for salvation if a crazy person entered a room I was in with guns and started shooting.

How does it feel to have somebody call you an “asshat” on their blog? Honestly, it feels just fine. I stand by my words, and I think it’s amusing that this person calls me “cowardly and idiotic”, and then goes on to say that I have a point. Yes, my name-calling friend, I certainly do.

I was also pleased to be cited in a post-Dems-debate roundup by Michael Weiss at Slate. I especially like it that Weiss refers to this site as a “nonpartisan political blog” because, despite the fact that I feel such deep rage at the Bush-Cheney administration that I sometimes want to call them “asshats”, I do tend to be a moderate on most issues, and I think the best political writing recognizes the validity of all sides of an argument. That’s why the blogroll on this site lists everything from Firedoglake to Little Green Footballs, from Sabbah’s blog to Solomania. I want all the viewpoints, because anybody who believes in a position strongly enough to argue it in public must have something valid to say.

What is an argument? Why do we argue, and more interestingly, what exactly do we do when we argue? I think I’d like to take a break from my news-oriented postings here at the Fruitstand, and begin another “inquiry” (yes, that’s right, it’s time for another multi-part series of postings on a single topic). The subject of this inquiry goes back to my days as a philosophy student studying Plato and Hume and Nietzsche and James, but I hope I’ll also show some wisdom from the years I’ve lived since then. The inquiry will begin shortly, and the topic is: “What Are People Doing When They Argue?”. Yeah, it sounds like the title of a Raymond Carver story, and maybe we can even argue about the title of the inquiry, if you want. You asshat.

Before I dive into the following inquiry, I’d like to clear up why I think I’m qualified to write about history even though I have no training as a historian (though I have degrees in philosophy and computer science and consider myself well-read).

The fact is, our “experts” aren’t getting the job done. History is an absolutely critical piece for anybody trying to understand modern politics, and in fact a good understanding of the past and present is probably the single most important tool in the toolbox of anybody engaged in a political field (as a journalist, a candidate, a commentator or a supporting player). When it comes to strong popular coverage of the stunningly important debates of the day, though, it seems like we’ve let the room get taken over by yammering monkeys. There’s a lot of noise, but nobody’s saying much at all.

I think we should do better. In the series of posts I’ll be writing for the next few weeks, I’m focusing on one particular question, and I hope you’ll help me figure out the answer by posting comments if you’d like.

It’s a simple question, the kind only an amateur would ask. What is genocide?

What is genocide? Well, let’s see what some of these events share in common. Thinking about, say, the Turkish murder of a million and a half Armenians during World War I, the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, and the monthlong killing spree in Rwanda in which a million Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus, one big fact pops out right away. All three of these events occured during wartime, and the victims were ethnic minorities who were considered likely to betray their nations to invading armies.

The nation of Turkey (during the last years of the Ottoman empire) was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary against France, Britain and Russia in the First World War. After Turkey lost critical battles to the Russians, the government resolved that the minority population of Armenian Christians were likely to welcome the coming invaders, and planned to kill them all. They carried these plans out for three years.

The Jews of the varied nations of Europe were already reeling from the incredible discrimination and dehumanization of the German Nazi regime when the death trains began rolling in 1942. The Nazi brand of anti-semitism has deep roots, but the German drive to clear Eastern Europe of Jews during its vicious war against Russia was rooted in military strategy as well.

The Rwandan million-person massacre of 1994 was, incredibly enough, a carefully plotted and insidiously executed political maneuver. Hutus form the majority population of Rwanda, but remained in many ways economically and politically subservient to the wealthier minority Tutsis. In 1994, the weak Hutu-led government seemed about to collapse to a powerful invading force of Tutsi exiles when a Hutu radio station began broadcasting instructions that all Tutsis must die (the machetes had already been distributed).

What is genocide? Well, it seems to have a hell of a lot to do with war. Ahh, those masters of war! Genocide belongs to them too (no, to us, all of us, since we are all to blame).

Here’s a slogan more people should hear: War Causes Genocide. War causes genocide like cigarettes cause lung cancer. Something to think about the next time you’re about to reach for a pack, or call up some troops.

More on this subject to follow, of course! Please feel free to comment and tell me how you think this inquiry is going so far.

Last night I met six friends for dinner and debate in the West Village. We had all agreed beforehand to spend an entire dinner discussing future Middle East policy in a structured format. This group was largely made up of software developers, and had an interesting makeup:

• three Christians and four Jews

• two born in Lebanon, one born in Israel, four born in U.S.A.

• five men, two women

This was the second time we arranged a dinner debate, a practice occasioned by the fact that our friend Fadi tends to express himself a bit loudly when possessed of an opinion (and, to tell the truth, some have said the same about me, and I have an opinion or two myself).

Previous social get-togethers had devolved into anarchic yellfests, so this time we agreed to take turns speaking, 90 seconds at a time, with interruptions forbidden. 15 second rebuttals were also available, but everybody had to wait their turn to speak, and each person was assured equal time. We appointed Yaniv as moderator and Dave as time-keeper, and managed to make this format work for an hour and a half.

We learned something amazing during this conversation: when you take the time to structure a discussion and direct it towards a single topic, highly intelligent ideas and solutions can emerge. We listened hard to each other, we tried to understand each other’s viewpoints, and by the end of the dinner we were doing nothing but laughing, high-fiving and tossing around side arguments such as which web development platform is better, PHP/Javascript or Java/Struts (the answer, of course, is PHP/Javascript) just for fun.

If you tend to have loud political arguments that lead nowhere with your family or friends, I suggest you try a structured approach. Why are unstructured arguments always so bad? Well, people like to talk more than they like to listen. Do the math — if you put five or more people who want to talk together, you get a mash of half-finished thoughts, and it doesn’t matter what you say anyway, since everybody is too busy thinking about what they want to say to listen to what you’re saying.

A structured argument can have very unexpected positive results. Now that I see that Evan, Fadi, Sabine, Dave, Amy, Yaniv, Carl and I can survive an hour and a half of this and end up smiling, I wonder how many other problems can also be solved in this way.

Dear Mel Gibson:

Please stop talking about Jews. Despite what you may have heard, Jews are not actually responsible for all the wars in the world. We do seem to often play a starring role, in fact, and while I assure you, Mr. Gibson, that we are very pleased about this and that it’s all part of a big conspiracy, the truth is that JEWS WOULD LIKE TO STOP BEING IN WARS. Can you comprehend that? On behalf of all my people, Mel Gibson, I assure you that we would like to stop being in wars.

Where are you from, Mel Gibson? Oh, got it — Australia, by way of Malibu. Yeah, I’m sure you know a lot about the real experience of war and racism and ethnic hatred. Go back to Moonshadow and have another margarita, asswipe.

There’s the dialogue with Jews you asked for.

Dear The Rest of the World:

Please stop talking about Jews. You may find this hard to believe, but Jews are just regular people. Really. Just regular people. Why is this so hard for everybody to believe? Why can nobody talk about the horrible war in the Middle East without whispering or making faces about “those Jews”? Why are Muslim schools and mosques still teaching children that Jews are mystically demonic? Can we please discuss this war without bringing in ancient mythology, and see if maybe we can’t come to some kind of resolution that way?

Fuck nations, and fuck religions. Israel is a place filled with people, Lebanon is a place filled with people, Palestine is a place filled with People, Iran is a place filled with people, North Korea is a place filled with people.

Everybody: can you please start getting over the fact that Jews exist in the world? And can we all please resolve to settle our differences with honor and find a way to peace, like now?

Sincerely,

Levi Asher
Queens, New York