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.