Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I'm Pretty Argumentative. You Know?

I'm pretty argumentative. I used to excuse it by saying well, it's because I care. It's because I think the person matters, and because I think their opinion matters. So when they are wrong, or at least - when we disagree, if I can see the points of disagreement clearly enough to articulate why they are wrong, then that's an act of generosity on my part! Because I'd be doing them a disservice otherwise, letting them walk away and walk around with that crazy wrong opinion, when I had it in my considerable power to help them out a bit with a better one.

Sounds straightforward right? Well sit down if you're standing. Because here comes a shocker.

You might have a hard time believing this, but it turns out that all the above might be kind of a crock of shit. Don't get me wrong: for most people I might share an argument with, all of the above is true enough - true as gold. But the fact is, the rock-bottom foundational truth of it is, it's not from any kind of virtuous motive before-the-fact. It's more of a sort of a reason after-the-fact. The fact itself is, I argue because I'm just pretty damn argumentative. When I see something that strikes me not-right, I just gots to jump right in and have a go at setting it straight. At its heart, it's pretty much just a bad habit. A knee-jerk urge. I may think I excel at Reason, but my reasons for diving in and trying to reason it out with someone are essentially not reasonable ones. Not at heart - not at bottom.

Luckily, I manage to turn it into a virtue, by how I pull it off so sweet.

3 comments:

dogimo said...

There's a SAH-WEET!! John Cusack movie quote in there!

I think I'm going to make that a regular feature. Stick a John Cusack movie quote in any post where the detour I have to take to fit it in can be feasibly justified.

Here, it's worth the narrative sacrifice, but just barely. It kinda derails the flow a bit. I admit it.

Maybe I should take it out.

I'm taking it out.

Lunarchick said...

I popped out of the womb with an argument on my lips. I've got an opinion on everything and an argument at the ready. It's just my nature. I'm to old to fight it so I am choosing to just go with it. It's part of charm. Right? Right???

dogimo said...

You know it, Charm City Woman!