Get Your Smart On
There is good in arguing, even if it is not persuasion. Here is me riffing-off of Arguing Is Bullshit by David Pinsof @everythingisbullshit
“Arguing has little to do with persuasion; it is an agonistic contest of wills and wits. …that is not quite persuasion, and so we may now want to ask: What is persuasion, really? Does it even exist? And if it does, what is it good for?” — From my response to “Arguing Is Bullshit”
Agonistic argument is not without merit. Consider the TikTok lives where those who oppose feminist views are invited to spar with a feminist. (I looked for an example, but the creator I am thinking of doesn’t publish their lives for replay.) This is the purest form of argument, but what is its point?
For one, the feminist is exercising her ability to stand her ground, testing and sharpening her arguments against random opponents. Second, she is doing it on her own turf, which provides a spectacle for her audience, one in which she is in control. She can drop or mute opponents at any time and often uses this power to underscore a point. Of course, she must appear fair so as not to alienate her own audience, often overcompensating by letting someone go on and on. But even this is strategic, as she can appear to be generous with her opponents.
So why would anyone go on such a live? Because they are arrogant and think they can outwit the feminist? They don't care what her audience thinks of them. They, too, are testing their arguments and opinions against hers. Because this happens on a social platform, there is an audience watching. That audience learns how to spar, and they also get to exercise their feelings of disgust toward the interlocutor. From either perspective, each side often feels it has won. And in a way, they have — each gets some form of catharsis. I don’t think anyone comes away from these debates, and there are live TikTok debates on many controversial topics, with a changed mind. Does this improve our society, to be able to air our differences publicly like this? Or does it deepen division? I don’t know, but I do know that agonistic arguments are not about persuasion.
When we present arguments in academic writing, the goal is to take readers through the journey we took with our thinking, a journey that led us to our interpretation. This falls short of trying to persuade, although it may influence, and facts don’t play a big part. (The things about which we can have cold, hard facts are often much too boring for conversation.) And actually, more often than not these arguments lead to misinterpretations which, when interesting enough, can represent a new turn in thought.
Take for instance Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that "God is dead." Originally, Nietzsche used this phrase to describe the decline of traditional religious and moral values in the modern world. However, many misinterpreted this statement as a literal declaration of atheism or as a celebratory statement. This misinterpretation sparked numerous philosophical discussions and significantly influenced existentialist thinkers to explore the implications of living in a world without absolute values.
The thing about good writing (as with good art) is that it serves as a prism through which different people will see different things. Even the same person will see different things at different times. It all depends on what we bring to a reading, and to a reading of a reading. When we argue about ideas, we are adding our voice to a long chain of readings. It’s a conversation that spans the whole of human history, and if what we have said is well received and remembered, we can become immortal. Immortality is one of the few ways we can conquer death, nthe work of life is to conquer death.
Art critique is also a conversation, but through art objects. In my time as a student in the Photography M.F.A. program at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, the chair of the program was pretty amazing, and our weekly art critiques with him have left a strong imprint. His was a difficult task of teaching us how to think about what we were seeing and doing — mind you, not all artist want to think or talk about what they are doing. His passion for thinking about art made a good compliment to my own interests. In the case of aesthetic objects, an art critic can influence us to see in specific ways, and to “read” a work of art in its art historical context.
Take art critic John Ruskin praise of J.M.W. Turner’s controversial painting, The Slave Ship (1840), for its emotional and moral depth. The painting, depicting enslaved people thrown into a chaotic sea, stirred the art world with its wild brushstrokes and intense colors. While some saw it as messy, Ruskin argued in Modern Painters (1843) that Turner's abstract style captured the event's horror more effectively than realism. Ruskin described it as "the noblest sea that Turner ever painted," underscoring the painting’s powerful commentary on the transatlantic slave trade. His critique established Turner as a revolutionary artist, highlighting the effectiveness of emotional abstraction in art over mere realistic depiction.
Arguing about ideas or about art falls short of persuasion — persuasion is not its immediate goal, but it may end up influencing us anyways.
Say you are in a cult and believe your leader is going to save the world, and you feel compelled to support their mission. What I’ve learned from listening to podcasts about high-demand organizations (like cults) is that persuasion requires facts, repeated over time, with patience and love. Your loved one who is trying to pry you from the indoctrination, may or may not turn you around, but they would not argue with you if they want to persuade you. They would ask to be heard, and hope you would eventually be able to hear them.
Dr. Steven Hassan, a former member of the Unification Church, commonly known as the Moonies, now a well-known cult deprogrammer with a podcast called The Influence Continuum, tells his own story. His family orchestrated an intervention where trusted family members and a skilled exit counselor helped Hassan see the manipulative practices of the cult. They did this by presenting him repeatedly with facts that contradicted his beliefs, creating cognitive dissonance. They did this with patience and love. Through heartfelt conversations and exposure to critical thinking, Hassan gradually realized the psychological control he was under. Deprogramming involves establishing a shared set of facts, through repetition. Repetition is key, as we tend to believe what we see and hear repeatedly.
So you want to persuade someone you know — or even a stranger at a bar, a party, or wherever people still talk to strangers these days — that you are right and they are wrong. You want to move them closer to your side, if possible. But why? What do we care if a friend or loved one believes differently? We want to stand next to people who share our views and values, because the beliefs of those around us affect us. It’s hard to accept, but we are subject to other’s whims because what they do can ricochet back on us. In fact, it is guaranteed to do so eventually, since we are all connected.
Maybe the passion we feel when we argue with another reflects this reality, the fact that we are tied to others in ways that make us feel our social and political vulnerability. When someone close to us holds a view that clashes with our own, it can feel like a threat to the stability of our shared reality. This is why arguments with family and close friends often feel more emotionally charged than debates with strangers — the stakes are higher when the disagreement touches our intimate social world. Persuasion is personal, and as always, the personal is political.
I have seen a lot of accounts on social media of people either going home for the holidays and not talking about politics or other divisive issues with other family members, or deciding not to go home at all. The third option is less common — to choose to go home and come armed with all the facts and ready to have the arguments. Sometimes you have to get in there and mix it up. I think being good at arguing, not being too conflict averse, serves you well in this situation.
The aversion to heated and passionate debate over politics is culturally specific too. It is healthy to be able to argue, in the agonistic sense, with those you love — in some cultures it is even a sign of respect, while not challenging a loved-one’s stupidity is negligent and disrespectful. Arguing is one way to build a shared reality, and to test this reality against competing ideas.
It may be an unpopular view, but I think we need to be able to get into it with people with whom we have serious (and less serious) disagreements, because that is how we build shared realities. It is this, or be rent apart by external forces.
I think we actually do know how to persuade people. Repeatedly presenting them with “facts,” but these “facts” don’t need to be true, unfortunately. This is why attention and focus is the currency du jour — whomever has the power to capture your attention can put their "“facts” in front of you more effectively. Also, presenting a picture of how a life could be after a desired transformation can motivate someone to seek that transformation. Augmenting some pain they are in, and selling them the solution. These are all strategies from sales, to which we are all pretty susceptible.
Or take what we know from gaming and gambling industries: being rewarded intermittently and in unpredictable patterns, to keep you engaged; near misses that make you believe your win is right around the corner, to keep you waging; becoming addicted to loosing because it is more powerfully felt than winning. We now know that the technology we are using and the social media that we are participating in is using marketing, gaming, and cult-manipulation tactics to capture our attention and to keep us bought into the technocratic vision of not only our current reality, but of possible futures.
Persuading is about moving people, if not to act then to make a shift in their minds. We do know how to do this, and maybe what this feels like? (What does it feel like to be acted upon in a way that debilitates us, but gives us intermittent pleasure or relief from pain? How does this feel different from having our minds expanded and our views augmented through discussion? Very different, right?) Critical thinking is how we stay grounded in the truth of our own experience (keep us believing what our own stinking eyes tell us!), and in our shared reality across worlds.
Arguing is an agonistic contest of wills and wits, and it serves many a purpose. Trying to persuade someone of your viewpoint, in earnest, is more like deprogramming than arguing. And making an argument in a philosophy essay, or offering a critique of art, is about taking a ride on another’s train of thought.