JetUNsetter

I often wonder what gets us into arguing. Not the legal arguing, the one with the shouting and all things heated in the social setting.

I tried to find the definition of “argue” and was astonished to read that the root of the word comes from arguo, which means to make clear. It is not about convincing or sharing an idea as other modern definitions have it. It’s about making something clear.

And that is exactly what it is! We argue because something is not clear. The funny thing is that it is not clear to us in the first place. In every argument, people perfectly capable of communicating succinctly and clearly and effectively, just lose it. They sound incomprehensible, inconsistent, nonsensical. The person listening to them cannot make much out of what is said. Usually, and rather unfortunately, the repicient will also lose it in the end. They will start responding but not to what was said necessarily (as it was never clear or sensical) but to the fact it was said and to the how it was said.

In essence, if we break the argument down it is initiated by a person who is overwhelmed by a feeling. A feeling so deep or crushing that takes them over. It cancels their reason and any human progress made since caveman. The shouting replaces the normal tone of voice because it comes from a completely different part of the brain (or body) where speech is not really a tool. The only message to hear coming from the shouting initiator of an argument is: “I have a feeling right now that I have not calculated or processed what it is. Can you please help me, cause it is overbearing to feel it”.

The recipient, however, will very rarely decode that message. In the worse scenario they are equally stimulated or overwhelmed by whatever the argument is about or they simply don’t like the fact they are being shouted at which, is in turn, is a stimulus of a potentially overbearing feeling in itself.

In the end, any argument could be deflated by a simple phrase like “I understand you are trying to explain something to me but I struggle to understand what it is. Do you want to rephrase it perhaps when you calm down a bit”? Try it at home or on the street! The only tricky bit is not to allow the feelings to be overwhelming. By all means, feel them just acknowledge this is a feeling that if unchecked will take you over to a pointless path (sometimes of no return).

Picture the human brain as a very sweet melodic instrument like a violin that can put all its thoughts in a beautiful and effective sequence of words any other human brain and understand and respond to. And the moment this feeling kicks in everything gets out of tune. The same strings are pressed and a terrible noise comes out of it. All we need to do is a reminder that hey, some tuning is needed and once this is done we are back into business.

An argument is nothing more than a cry for help. Possibly a cry for affection for some sort of love and reassurance. Babies cry when they are out of tune, right? The privilege the babies have is that all their cognitive capacity is not messed up by the feelings so they don’t argue, they just cry. Of course this is only because their cognitive capacity is not there yet so not much to be messed up.

An argument just signals a malfunction in a circuit. If acknowledged for that could end up quickly and without the blood and the tears. Maybe next time we catch ourselves even, cursing and shouting we just need to think, do I really need a hug instead?

Please help me sense if I made sense of this one too….