July 29th 2026

Arguing skillfully

Arguing skillfully

A healthy ecology includes robust debate and argument.

To agree all of the time, to be in consensus, is to be entropic. To move closer to death and decay.

So many of us loathe conflict. We avoid it at all costs, choosing instead to remain silent to keep the peace.

When we choose this path, we simultaneously choose the path of diminishment, and certainly the end of enlivenment and creativity. We sanction our disappearance. And then wonder why we feel so insignificant.

Leaning to stand within conflict, to allow it to be present, and then to remain of sound mind in our ability to respond, is a necessary life skill.

The easiest path to doing this is to expand the circle. Choose to have the conflict be about something more significant. When we allow it to feel personal, we become the receptacle for the garbage being dumped.

Anyone who leads a campaign knows this. They know that when they step onto a public platform, it will bring with it waves of hate, nasty, toxic commentary. If they, for one moment, have this be about them, then they will, by the simple force of the wave, crumble.

Kaitlan Collins, the journalist who continuously asks the US President the types of questions people want the press to ask him, is publicly ridiculed by him in disgusting ways. This is what she says when asked by Jon Stewart how she manages to stay centred against the president’s spite. “It’s really not about me, and I don’t want it to be about my reaction. … In those moments it’s important to put the reminder back on the work, on the question, and on the non-answers that we get.”

Here are some things we can choose instead.

It’s about dead children. (Miss Rachel, and many others)

It is about the right for all people to have justice and dignity.

Corruption and lies are not acceptable under any circumstances.

All people, no matter their gender, origins, skin colour, or the gods they revere, have intrinsic value. No one group is more righteous than another.

When we argue from principle, something far greater than ourselves, we can handle the hate and cruelty that we will face.

Published July 29th 2026. Photo taken July 29th 2026