The lost art of rhetoric: how to persuade, not assault

A great find: How to teach a child to argue. Why do something so crazy? Because conflict is basic to humans disagreeing over what matters and how to channel scarce resources and energies. And because simply relying on increasingly raised voices--cable TV "debates" between actual grown-ups for example--gets us further apart not closer to useful co-existence. Jay Heinrichs tells us about it here.

...And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric doesn’t turn kids into back-sassers; it makes them think about other points of view.

I had long equated arguing with fighting, but in rhetoric they are very different things. An argument is good; a fight is not. Whereas the goal of a fight is to dominate your opponent, in an argument you succeed when you bring your audience over to your side. A dispute over territory in the backseat of a car qualifies as an argument, for example, in the unlikely event that one child attempts to persuade his audience rather than slug it...

I must admit, this hits home. I'm the product of an Oregon-born stoic, a retired US Air Force dad. But my mother was British though and through, a Merseyside/Lanacashire shop-girl who saw The Beatles when they were just a club band. I bring it up because Heinrich's makes me remember a related example of what he mentions about argument. The scene was Christmas dinner back in the mid-90s when my brother and his wife were in the states on a visit from Birmingham. Attending were Mom, Dad, my brother Malcolm, and our two wives. During the course of the meal, we lapsed into our old pattern: A vigourous discussion about some topic or other after an hour or so of dinner table conversation-lite. For us, debate was alwyas good sport and about the only non-contact way we'd found, as brothers, to have a go at each other. But it wasn't shouting, not a fight. We would argue like we were jousting, and facts and supporting details mattered.

The point of the story? It drove my dad crazy. For him, the pure-born American, watching the to-and-fro was uncomfortable--he saw the animation, heard the argument (rhetorical definition) and thought "fight!" Maybe it was his military background and a need for cohesion and measured communication. Maybe it was because we talking about something he wasn't familair with. Either way, the stoic started to get amped up.

"Dammit, will you guys quit it! This is a dinner table--I just want to enjoy a good family meal!" And here's where Mom, who's been quite happily watching her two boys of 35 and 45 bob and weave over some forgotten issue, says her piece, one that struck me as familiar to Heinrichs' point:

Jerry, I don't see my boys together very often and I like this. This is what families are supposed to do--they talk about things, argue even. Dinner comes with interesting converation. If you don't like it, go in the other room.

He did. And mum picked up her glass of wine and said, "as you were."

Read Heinrichs' piece. For me it says alot about what and why we don't say enough, or much at all very well, about what matters here in the land of "Free speech."