To argue or not to argue?

 To argue or not to argue/that is the question! As a sensitive and sensible person, mostly you choose not to, because you know that arguing is like wrestling with a pig. You get absolutely dirty, and the pig loves it, anyways. 

At times, however, you are almost provoked in to arguing. There are people who are extremely aggressive, authoritative and, oh, yes, hugely and loudly argumentative. They do not allow anyone a word edgeways. 

They choose, moreover, to conveniently arrive at their own conclusions which, much worse, they love to carry to all sorts of people, including those in the higher/authority positions whose ears they love to warm.You, of course, like to believe that such people may not choose to believe everything they hear. Well, one should always be optimistic. In short, depends! 

Even in such a context, i would regret having argued at all because it is a sheer waste of energies of all sorts, trying to justify yourself. Why justify yourself if you are not at all wrong in the first place, right? Anyways, however much you may justify your position, if a person has decided to think otherwise, your sincerity is going to fall on deaf ears, right? An argument, moreover, demeans you as you descend down to the level of the other party who would be excellent at such secondary skills they are extremely experienced at. 

And, yet, if arguments are so very horribly bad, why did a scholar like Amartya Sen think of argumentative Indians? I suppose, to understand the whole issue, let us look at the etymology of the term. It has two Latin origins, arguere (which means, make clear) and argutari (which is to prattle, and comes closer to accusing).

The typical banal argument would descend from the second verbal source, while 'argument' as a philosophical criterion, a thought-full activity should enjoy the first as its root. In ancient India, or in Socrates' 'Dialogues' or later in Aristotle's peripatetic mode of pedagogy in the Lyceum, an argument was an honourable mode of intelligent and intense questioning and debate. You had to be, moreover, truly skilled at rhetoric  to put forth any  argument and/or counter-argument.

Later on, as history shows,  such intellectual debates and discussions, too, plumetted down to mere conventions, leading to coteries showing off their 'inform'ed abilities, void of wisdom, may be, as mostly in the medieval Europe and its scholasticism during the Dark Ages! 

In brief, whichever way we look at the activity, better to never argue. Silence speaks the loudest, right?

Pratima@Self-reflexivity is the best policy because therein you argue with yourself, in the process making yourself a better version of yourself constantly.