Imbolc Woodpecker Moon
Deborah Tannen was on NPR yesterday. She has a new book out called The Argument Culture. I listened to most of her presentation as I did my rounds to pick up the sub-woofer and learn more about the Great Scanning Project. I just bought the book.
She made me stop and examine my own complicity in this culture. Too often, she said, we escalate our arguments with war metaphors or dualistic thinking, seeing only one side of an argument or, at best, two sides when, in fact, some arguments only have one side and most have many.
As an example of an argument with only side, she cited the rage of holocaust denial that surfaced in the US a decade or so ago. It happened, in large part, she said, because we believe every argument has two-sides and needs balance. Especially journalists hold this view. In this case established history leaves no room for doubt, no room for deniers, so there is, in fact, only side to this question. The reality of the holocaust. It distorts the reality of holocaust to have it “balanced” by the views of those who deny it happened.
Another example of an argument with only side, she said, is climate change. I cheered here. When 98% of scientists agree and the 2% are on the fringe, there is no argument to be had.
Here’s my admitted complicity. When I enter the argumentative space, I set out to win. Not to listen. Not to consider the other point of view, but to beat it down, defeat it, send it limping, head-hung out of the arena. In some cases, on deeply held moral and ethical perspectives, this has justification Tannen says, but in most cases, it defeats the mutual seeking of a new answer, containing truths and critiques from the many sides that can be brought to bear on most issues.
Her example was the Taoist symbol, the taijitu, showing the inner-penetration of the yin and yang, how yin contains yang and vice versa. She sees Asian cultures as seeking harmony, which is, I think, simplistic, but her comparison of the argument cultures of east and west is thought-provoking. In my case I see the value of this way of thinking, but have a lifetime of inculturation that goes against it.
Let me count the ways. My father was a journalist and at times an editor when he, by virtue of his job, to state his opinions over against those of others. That’s what an editorial is all about. I learned this style when very young.
In classrooms all through even seminary the style of critique and reject argument, based often on logic chopping, prevailed. I don’t think I even knew there was another way, though Tannen made it clear in her presentation that often women students will not present their views at all in this kind of atmosphere.
In political thought I began as a Democrat in a Republican environment, the Eisenhower years, when, perhaps political argumentation was its height of civility, after McCarthy that is. Once Kennedy died, Lyndon Johnson got into office and Vietnam led to a highly polarized political divide, one that has not, to this day, left us.
The old rage against the machine/establishment/whatever-was-available mode worked 
pretty damn well for many years, keeping energy high in movement politics and folks turning out for march after march. That’s not to say it ever made any sense except as a collective cry, a cri d’coeur at being raised with bomb shelters, Kruschev/Nixon, Vietnam, a legacy of poisonous race hatred and the politics of assassination, not to mention rigid gender roles and a “what happens in the closet stays in the closet” attitude for sexual preference.
But some of us swallowed it whole, ingested a poison pill that always lies just below the surface ready to be awakened by some injustice, some wrong, some hurt, some mistake. Maybe it’s like that poisoned apple eaten by Snow White, it keeps certain parts of us asleep, encased, a la the Disney version, in a hermetic glass case, not unlike Lenin, Mao and Kim Jong Il.
I came away from Tannen’s talk convinced that I represent, i.e. am, a certain male cliche in this regard. There are times, as she says, when balls against the wall red neck mother politics are righteous, but they occur in the main in the larger injustices of life, e.g. the Iraq war, immigration issues, economic justice, and happen only infrequently (never?) at the domestic level.
Anyhow, I’m saying here I recognize an aspect of my personal style that needs modification, a turn toward embracing multiple perspectives, toward turning down the heat and the volume, while listening hard for the good in another point of view. Is it reasonable to expect I can do this? Hell, I don’t know. I’ve been this way a long, long time.
I’m going to keep it in consciousness, the best I can imagine to affect change.
