How to never recognize that you have lost an argument

There are many things I like about people and some I dislike. Strangely enough, they are the same things I like and dislike about myself. If I were asked to compile a list of the later, I think that my all-time, number one would be that I hate when people do not concede that they are on the losing side of an argument. But then, I hate the idea of conceding myself.

For example, my wife and I argue about a lot of things: cooking, routes to take any place we are going, politics, dress codes, books, films, even the color of the sky:

Me: Wow! The sky sure is blue today.

My wife: Well, it's not really blue more like a light blue.

Me: Blue is blue, light or otherwise.

My wife: Yes, but one should distinguish between a light blue and just plain blue.

Me: Why? Is there a color-of-the-sky police that will come and arrest me for not describing the sky's color correctly? All I said is that the sky is blue.

My wife: Yes, but you see, we in France...

Me: Oh, no, no, no. Let's not start this WE IN FRANCE thing. Next thing you'll say is that the ten commandments were written in French and the guy carrying the tablets was really named Jean-Jaques Rochefort, or something...

And it goes on like that for half an hour. As you can see, the argument is not about anything important or about a point of fact. It is really about winning, or rather, not losing an argument. My wife has taught me quite a lot about how not to lose an argument. She has wonderful technique. For instance, the other day she cooked a couple of hamburger patties without taking the plastic separators off.

Me: Hey! You left the plastic on the patties!

My wife (without missing a beat): Yes.

Me: But, but...that's dangerous, not to mention unhealthy!

My wife (cooly taking the plastic off of my hamburger patty): No, not at all. In fact some people recommend that one leave it on. It keeps the meat from drying out, you see!

Me (rapidly approaching the point of hysterics): What? Who would say such an insane thing?

My wife (starting to munch of her plastic condimented meat): We in France always leave the plastic on because...

There is no need to say where that argument went. Nor need I explain that my wife did not concede that she simply had failed to see the plastic and therefore did not remove it from the meat. Health issues and the possibility of choking on a piece of plastic were not important. What was important was not losing the argument and conceding a mistake.

I am not immune to the same vice. BUT, I use far more sophisticated methods of stonewalling such as quoting from non-existent books, or citing fantastical physical laws, equations, and formulas. I also have, on occasion, made up "old sayings" and folk wisdom in order to drive in the last nail of my opponent's (usually my wife)argument's coffin, as it were. Take that argument about the "blueness" of the sky. I could have easily trumped her "We in France" thing with my unbounded knowledge of invented physical law.

To my wife's "...it's not really blue but a light blue" I could have answered:

"Oh, my dear. I can see you are not familiar with the text, "Optical Phenomena and Atmospheric Gradation of Colors". In that marvelous book, Dr.Savaranthra Dasgupta, the Nobel Prize winner, states that there is really only one color of blue in the sky but it is the deformation of a persons retina that "fools the brain into believing there are gradations in the color of the atmosphere."

My wife would have been dumbfounded at this wondrous and copious display of my (faux) learning, although I sometimes think she is not so much astounded by my fake erudition as by my ability at invention.

Of course, neither my wife or I have cornered the market for devious methods of winning arguments. I have learned quite a lot from the masters of this sort of shenanigans: politicians.

Mexican politicians win arguments by never admitting there is a point to be argued in the first place:

Interviewer: It is a tragedy that nearly two million children will be attending school in ramshackle, totally inadequate facilities because of a lack of funding for school construction.

Politician: Yes, one of the cornerstones of our constitution is that education is mandatory and free.

Interviewer: But, that's not the point. The point is that the Senate voted a huge raise in your monthly salaries yet not a penny for school buildings.

Politician: We've also done wonders in providing every child with free books.

Interviewer (exasperated): Sir, I am referring also to the fact that you gave yourselves in the Senate, a %3,000 dollar Rolex watch for each senator, as a Christmas present, and yet you...

Politician: Yes, and we have increased the amount of free breakfasts given the children. Now they get a cup of milk instead of just plain water.

And on and on it goes. Its as if politicians live in a different universe from the rest of us. In France, the people in power have made an art of their tactics for not losing an argument, especially in public.

Take the undersecretary who got caught spending 12,000 euros of public money on fine cigars. On television, he had the gall to argue that he did it to uphold the prestige of the French Republic, after all he was not going to offer cheap cigars to the people who visited his office. What would they think of the country if he did?

Or how about the bureaucrat who recently appeared on television to explain why France was falling behind in developing "green" power generation:

Interviewer: According to the numbers recently published in a national newspaper, France if falling behind other European countries in developing "green" electricity.

Bureaucrat: Not really. We are spending 10 billion euros on developing wind farms.

Interviewer: Yes, but the report says that that will be spent on five wind farms which, if and when they become operational, will only produce about 2 percent of the electricity needed. Denmark, on the other hand, will be producing around 20 percent of their needs via wind farms by the year...

Bureaucrat: Yes, but they are a smaller country.

Interviewer: Precisely! They are smaller, have less resources, yet...

Bureaucrat: You can't compare smaller countries with larger countries...

Interviewer: That's not the point. The point is...

Bureaucrat: We are shutting down three nuclear plants...

And off he went on a tangent, which is a clever way of not losing an argument, or rather of avoiding one by completely ignoring the issue.

If in politicians this refusal to "face the facts" and admit one is wrong is an occupational tool, in most other people it seems to be a defense mechanism that has been hard-wired into our brains by nature for some obscure biological reason. It might even be a bad mutation of which we have not been able to rid ourselves in spite of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

I can imagine Pierre the cave man making a spear and using animal fat instead of tar to bind it to the spear shaft. Bill, the cave guy from another valley says to him:

Bill: Hey, Pierre, you got it wrong. You put fat on the spear point so it slides into the flesh of the mammoth easily and tar on the shaft to bind the point to it firmly...

Pierre: Per'aps in your valley you do it zat way but in Gaul we put zee fat 'ere, alors!

So, they go out hunting and when a saber tooth tiger jumps out of the grass, Pierre readies his lance but the stone spear point falls off.

Pierre: Oh, oh...

Tiger: Arrrrrrgh!

Bill: I toooold you soooo!

Pierre ended up on the tiger's dinner menu but nevertheless, it seems that the I-never-concede-I-am-wrong genes persisted because I have a friend who would rather walk over hot coals than admit he is wrong about ANYTHING!

We were having a drink in his house, listening to music and my friend says:

My friend: Ah, I love that Count Basie music.

Me: Actually, I think it's Duke Ellington.

My friend: No, that's the ol'Count, my friend.

Me: Uh, well, here is the disc jacket and it says "Duke Ellington in a Sentimental Mood"

My friend: Well, I think I put the CD in the wrong jacket...

Me: Hmmm, I could have sworn (I got up and looked at the CD itself). Uh, it says Duke Ellington and his orchestra on the CD itself.

My friend: Yeah, well, I think its labeled wrong. In fact, that's what makes it so valuable. Its a rare thing, you know.

The piece being played was over, and the recording having been made live in the Stardust ballroom or something, an announcer comes on and says, "You are listening to Duke Ellington and his Orchestra coming to you over NBC radio from the ballroom of the...

Me: Uh, the announcer said it was the Duke and his orchestra...

My fried: Ahhh, he got it wrong. It's definitely the Count.

I don't know who was more stubborn that night: He for not conceding he was wrong or me for trying to prove him so. I think we both have that gene.

A View of Bayonne

For those of you who have never visited the places I mention in my blog entries, I will start posting some live views of said places. Here is a page with three webcams that offer a look at Bayonne.

Click here to view Bayonne Center

Abur, as they say in Basque

Rodolfo

On getting lost and other Sunday outings

It seems to me that most French people, among them my wife, consider that street names are there for decorative purposes, not to serve as indications of where you are in a city.

I have come to this conclusion because of last Sunday's outing, if one can call driving around the twisted streets of Bayonne for more than an hour, an "outing". The occasion was the celebrated "Mexican" shared feast put on by the association to which we belong--AFLACOBA, a jolly group of Latin Americans living in the Pays Basque.

The invitation said we were to bring something to eat and drink and to be shared with others. There was to be sundry activities: singing Mexican songs, a theater group, etc. We were asked to get ourselves up in Mexican items of clothing, so I put on my hat and my wife took a long a blouse that looked like a baby-doll nightgown but to her was very "Mexican". And, she cooked up a tomato tart (don't ask). I took along a jar of my wickedly hot Mexican sauce.

So, off we went.

Me: Oh, we should have looked at the email to see where this place is and...

My wife: I know where it is: the maison for the associations in Bayonne.

Me: Are you sure? It seems to me that there was something about a Belichone or Balichon, or something like that.

My wife: Its the same thing, the same thing. On you go, come on!

And off we went, driving merrily into disaster. We arrived at the place in Bayonne that, reputedly, is meant to house the activities of various associations. There was an eery silence in the place which gave me a bad feeling but not my chirpy wife who sauntered up to the only open room where there was a bored young man sitting behind a reception desk.

My wife (in French): Ah, can you tell us where the AFLACOBA people are meeting?

Young man: The what?

Me: Oh, oh...

My wife: The AFLACOBA, the AFLACOBA...you know that Latin American...

Young man: Not here. There are no meetings of any kind being held here today.

Me: (Panicking) Oh, oh...

My wife: But, surely you are wrong. We got an email saying that this Balichon thing...

Young man: Ah, the Balichon! Well, that is not here.

Me: Oh, oh...

My wife: Well, where is that Balichon thing...

The young man went into a lengthy and complicated description of the trek we would have to make to reach that golden fleece otherwise known as the MVC Balichon. Now you might be asking yourself, what the MVC stands for. Well, that, as you will see later, is the crux of the mystery.

Off we went, to follow directions we did not fully understand, to look for a place we did not really know where or what it was.

Me: (Starting to loose my temper because of hunger) But, you said that you were sure it was at this Association place...

My wife: And, I am. That's what it said in the email.

Me: I don't remember any mention of any association...

My wife: Never mind. The young man said to look for the Galleries Lafayette and to continue up from there.

Me: That's pretty vague. Are you sure he said...

And on we went driving around, getting into wrong way streets, circling for an hour, asking "locals" about a place called Balichon. We saw a man putting things into the boot of his car so we assumed he was a "local". My wife jumped out of the car, while I, motor idling, stayed ready to drive off in whatever misdirection the man would send us. I started to think the man was NOT a local when he produced a huge map, unfolded it and started to trace circles on it with his finger. Much like when one says, "I think its around here."

After a fifteen minute consultation, that seemed as complicated as the planning of the Normandy invasion from the way the man moved his hand over the map and gestured, my wife ran back, got into the car, and said the man had no clue to where the fabled Balichon place was but that he thought it might be...

Off we went, following these new, obscure, and vague instructions of the map guy.

Me: Didn't he mention the name of the street? I mean, did he say where...

My wife: Augh! What for? Anyone knows where this Balichon place is...

Of course, we not only did not find it, we got lost in a very complicated tangle of streets with no names. We asked a half dozen people, all of which gave different directions or gestured wildly, but made no mention of the street where this Balichon place might be. After a half hour of muddling about in that maze of narrow and crooked streets, we gave up and decided to go home.

At home, I took off my hat and Paseo shirt (which had, appropriately, three bullfighters stitched on the back)and sat down to eat our now cold tomato tart. I grumbled and my wife kept insisting that the people who had sent the email should not have mentioned the Association place where we had first gone. "That," she said, "has misled us."

I didn't recall any mention of that Association place so I went to have a look at the email.

Me: Look! There is no mention of any Masion des Associations! It says "MVC Balichon" and it gives the name of the street it is on! We should have looked for that street!

My wife: And, what do I care what street it is on? Do you think I know the name of the street where I do my nails? Of course not! I don't need to know it; I know where the place is!

Me: But what does that have to do with anything? They have established streets names and houses numbers so people can find their way around, so you don't have to say: Oh, my house is near the butcher with the large window and next to the tree with lots of leaves, or something like that.

My wife: But, I have no use for the names of streets. I know where places are.

Me: Not this place! We spent an hour driving around like lost tourists. We could have just asked for directions to the street, not the Maison des whatever!

My wife: Well, it was that MVC thing that misled us. They should not have put that in because it leads one to think that it is the Maison des Associations.

How in the world one goes from an acronym MVC to Maison des Associations is something only the strange and bizarre workings of a Gallic female mind can achieve. Of course, I should have known better, but I didn't, so I asked the question:

Me: How in the world can you say that MVC led you to think that it was the Maison des...

My wife: Ah, but don't you know what it means? Here it is right here, on my screen (she said looking at the Google page). It means "Maison de la Vie Citoyenne", no wonder one confuses it with the "Maison des Associations".

I was speechless.

Française en Colère

If you have ever lived in France for any length of time, or even visited the country, you have probably heard the phrase, or read the headline, or saw the picket sign that said, "(Filll in the blank) en Colère", which loosely translated means "Angry (fill in the blank)".

Teachers, railroad workers, bureaucrats, dog owners, visitors to Disneyland, or citizens with nothing better to do, will rise up in anger at most anything, will then bus up to Paris, grab a sign (usually provided as a courtesy by the CGT, the all powerful confederation of unions that just loves to fill Parisian streets with protesters) and hit the streets.

The script usually goes like this: the government will announce a (change in the amount of hours worked, new taxes, a law banning X, Y, or Z, cuts in the amount of bureaucrats at the A, B, or C level, ordinances regarding fines for dog owners who leave their dog's poop on the street...whatever) and the buses start heading for Paris. People will march, threaten strikes, public monuments will be draped in mantels with slogans, traffic will be snarled for hours, and two days later the government will back down and not follow through on their proposal.

When I applied for my residency in France, I was obliged to go to Pau, the site of the regional Prefecture, and attend a "Civic Day" (a day in which I was to be instructed on how to be a correct resident of France). As I waited for the instructor, who was fashionably late as most bureaucrats are, I happened to look out the window and into the floor-to-ceiling window of the office next to our classroom. There were hundreds of CGT flags and posters stored there and more being made by half a dozen busy, little workers. The flags, and posters, and placards, and mantels did not carry a message. They were just being readied for the next protest and for someone to "fill in the blanks", as it were. Protest in anger is not only a right in this country, it is a national sport and a source of infinite pride. People will tell you, with eyes misting with emotion, of the day they protested, angrily of course, against (you name it).

French anger--many times disguised as indignation, righteousness, national unity, love of animals, fresh produce, or stinky cheese, or defense of culture, customs, or traditions--is really anchored and truly the product of French Pride. This has been the boon and the bane of this country for centuries. It has led it on the path of glory and down the blind alleys of disaster.

The story of supersonic transport is a great example of how this combustible mixture of anger and pride can lead to economic disaster and personal tragedy. When the race to produce an SST, supersonic transport, began in the 1950s, the Americans, the French,the British, and even the Russians (with their" Concordski" copy) set off on a race to capture the transatlantic shuttle business. By the 70s, the Americans had figured out that transporting 100 people at supersonic speeds was not as profitable as transporting 500 at subsonic lethargy. Environmental as well as economic concerns doomed all of the SST projects but not the French one. For France, the project had nothing to do with making a feasible business out of the Concorde. It was all about French pride: The French wanted to prove they were technologically superior to those hamburger-eating Americans.

The Concorde was a technological triumph but an economic disaster. The dream of technological superiority came to an end on the 25th of July, 2000, when a Concorde carrying 113 passengers crashed in Gonesse, France. All one hundred and thirteen passengers and nine crew members on board the flight died. On the ground, four people were killed with one left injured. For years aviation specialist had been pointing out that the huge amount of resources that were needed to keep the Concorde flying were a waste, and that age and the intrinsic complexity of supersonic flight made it very dangerous. But, pride kept that bird in the air until it finally flopped to the ground.

But, this combination of pride and anger (sounds almost like the title for a novel) not only shows up in important, obvious ways, such as the crash of the Concorde or a protest by thousands of people, it permeates everyday life as well. Last night I was watching a classic French film of 1943, "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It depicts how a series of poisoned pen letters sent by an anonymous citizen of a small town in rural France, create a lynch-mob atmosphere fueled by pride and anger disguised as righteous indignation and moral outrage.

Pride and anger again reared their head after WW II when the film was banned because it was said to misrepresent the French character and life in small French towns; it was also accused of having been German propaganda.

But French Pride and Anger are not always that tragic. Sometime they can combine to produce hilarious consequences. A few years ago, we were in Paris and went to see the marvelous exhibition "Picasso and the Great Masters". It was so popular people (us among them) waited for hours in freezing temperatures to go into the Grand Palais where the exhibition was held. My wife was busy during the day and we decided to go the the "nocturne" time slot, the last during the day, at 8:30 PM. The show was so crowded that we were not allowed into the building until 9:15 PM. Nevertheless, the museum staff "respected" the closing time of 10:00 PM, hardly time to see an exhibition that one would need at least two hours to see, and even in that amount of time, it would have been a bit rushed.

We were half way through the show when the museum staff started urging us to head for the exit because they were going to close up shop. Claudette, the spunky French citizen that she is, started to protest and when the head museum guard was rude to her, I started to protest in English. Well, that set off the crowd, which was composed mostly of French people, this being a winter show when few tourist were around. Among the angry French persons who defended us was a tall man, about as tall and as prideful as General Charles de Gaulle. "Il est honteux!," (It is shameful) he yelled. "Une honte!" (A shame!) he screamed at the guards. He went on to say that we (the poor beleaguered tourist) would take with us a "disgraceful impression of La France!" This was, in his view, a stain on the national honor.

It was a scene straight out of that wonderful book by Pierre Daninos, "Les Carnets du Major W. Marmaduke Thompson", which pretends to be a diary kept by an Englishman who comes to live in France. That book is not only very funny it is dead-on in depicting the French character, especially the "pride and anger" combination to which I am referring.

I thought it especially funny confirmation of my hypothesis that in the last World Track and Field Championships, while world records were being set by athletes from other countries, all the French television channels could talk about were there second and third place finishes by French men and women. I found it hilarious that in one instance, while the entire stadium was celebrating a new world record set by a Jamaican relay team, the French commentators and interview guy were overjoyed that the French team, which included one white, blue-eyed sprinter who is the current darling of the photo press, had come in an "honorable" third place. Not a word was said of the new, and amazing, world record set by Usain Bolt and company.

But to me, the most interesting show of "pride and anger" is the beloved parade of the 14th of July, Bastille Day. The country comes to a standstill and people remain transfixed by the televised transmission of hundreds of soldiers, police officers, firemen, and sundry uniformed folk marching down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées while French Air Force jets fly overhead streaming the red, white, and blue. That is the "Pride" part of the day. The "Anger" is displayed by a group of people, kept far away from the proceedings by the police so they don't mar the beauty of the parade, who protest the unnecessary waste of money and time that the parade entails.

I sympathize with those folks because I really don't see what, for example, armed men, dressed in yellow leather aprons and carrying hatchets (that make them look like butchers on the way to work or spiffy woodsmen), and who represent the worst of French history because they are members of the Foreign Legion, the armed force entrusted with enforcing French colonialism in Africa and other places, have to do with a nation's sense of being. The laundry bill alone of all those hundreds of men in starched, well pressed uniforms, could finance a school building or the salary of a couple of teachers in grade school (now that a lot of them are being fired in cost-savings measures). But then, I might not see the logic in it because, I am not prideful, rarely angry, and certainly not French.