Debates: Balderdash Or Not?

“A load of balderdash.”

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I think I heard dad say. He was at the wheels. We had gone, me, him and my elder brother, to see some plots of land we'd just purchased and now we were driving back.

“You don't provide a lot of facts when making arguments.” My brother Gabriel said.

I kept silent. I had heard that a lot of times. It was obvious the facts I presented had proved superior to theirs and they were just throwing those comments at me. It had happened to me a lot of times when I was debating issues with people. First we would start by presenting logical reasons. If my facts proved correct and theirs wrong, they would either throw insults, a demeaning comment, or say I was talking nonsense.

We drove for some minutes before dad said:

“Still I've got to hand it to you, you are really adept at making arguments.”

The roads were not much busy and we were driving along at a considerable speed.

I remember one time I visited a friend. It happened there was a football tournament taking pace, infact the World Cup, and I visited my friend so we could watch together. At half-time of the match, we sat in the living room, 5 in number, having a discussion. An issue came up and we argued about it for a while. At a certain point in the argument, I seemed to be prevailing with my facts, then one of my friends called out:

“What nonsense.”

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I knew he was irritated. One could read it clearly from his countenance. This same friend later said something to me about my prowess in convincing people with logical arguments.

The other of my friends said something to the effect of:

“The way he does it, he could even prove a wrong thing to be right.”

Though one thing I've always been conscious of during debates. That is maintaining civility and respecting the opinions of others. I also try to keep my cool if they labelled my opinions “balderdash” because I knew they were doing it more for my opinions coming out on top of theirs. Observing this rule helps me engage in debates from which I learn a lot.

I've always known one thing about myself. That's my ability to prove points using facts and logic. I remember a time I was at a lodge. We were about 6 friends having a discussion. One of them, Peter said to Mike:

“Could you list the advantages of military rule over civilian? Could you prove military rule is better?”

“Are there any advantages? They must be very few if they are.” Mike replied.

Peter went on to list the advantages, quite accurately and show how military governments are better than civilian ones, then added:

“We could debate that topic the other way round And I would still be right.”

Their conversation reminded me of myself, of how easily I could pick a topic, any topic at all, so far it's a reasonable one and debatable, and still prove it right.

After a while I realised it was like squeezing blood from a stone. I started learning only to debate something only if it was inherently right. That helped me avoid a lot of unpleasant situations. I debate to learn and to derive insights and not just to be right. Arguing just to be right seems pretty childish to me.

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I realised that the reason my friends dismissed some of my opinions only to turn around and endorse them later is only if the atmosphere around the debate starts heating up. Because of that if I'm having a debate with someone and it seems to be taking an unpleasant turn I just give up the debate altogether. That way I hardly get the "load of balderdash" comments anymore. I remember one time I had a debate wth my friends, Onyeka and Israel on the balcony of a two storey building one windy night. After the debate they said they learnt a lot from it and thanked me for that. And that's what debates should be about. To learn and to be educated and thats how I play it now when talking with people.