The Best Self-Help is Free: Avoiding "Trench Warfare" Issues in Argumentation and Communication

In order to get things done effectively, you will often need to convince people that your approach to a particular issue, action, or project is a justified one. This holds whether you have a concrete aim in mind or whether you simply wish to advocate a broader idea that you cannot directly implement but hope to eventually see implemented.

Unfortunately, arguing in favor of your ideas is a highly delicate task and is fraught with perils. Most people already have extremely strong views on many issues - not an undesirable state in itself. However, these strong views are also intermingled with intense emotions that prevent those exhibiting them from truly evaluating the given issues on their actual merits. If their views on such emotionally charged matters are directly opposed, many people will react viscerally - without thinking - and will attack not just the ideas that oppose their own, but also the person espousing those ideas. It seems rather baffling that in our modern age it is still possible to make a lifelong enemy of someone simply by expressing an abstract disagreement - but this happens all too frequently to be ignored.

A good general rule for trying to convey your ideas is to avoid what I call trench warfare issues. During World War I, months and years would often pass without either the Allies or the Central Powers making any progress in expanding the areas under their control. Both sides remained dug into their trenches in grueling conditions, and hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted regularly without territory switching hands.

Trench warfare issues are similar in essence. A lot of energy and passion is devoted to arguing over controversies where the battle lines are already well drawn and neither side seems willing to move ever so slightly. Abortion is the quintessential emotionally charged issue of our time - and I have observed that any meaningful attempts to make any kind of progress in the principles underlying the issue or the policies by which it can be resolved has been undercut by each side's excess of zeal and lack of genuine thought and reflection.

Nothing will change regarding the abortion issue so long as the battle lines remain drawn as they are at present. I suspect that the abortion issue will ultimately be resolved - but by technology rather than policy. Once the technology is available to "evict" a fetus from the womb without killing it and to enable it to mature outside the womb, we will be able to have the best of both worlds. Women will be able to terminate their pregnancies as they choose, without killing or thwarting the development of the human being inside. But who among the emotionally charged majorities on both sides of the abortion debate has even considered this possibility, much less worked to bring it to fruition?

The problem with delving into the trench warfare issues is that even if you approach the issue using original, rational, level-headed arguments, the emotionally zealous people on both sides will attempt to pigeonhole you into one camp or the other. This might draw you into a morass of arguments - which often become quite heated - that you had no intention to engage in. It might also expose you to a lot of criticism and accusations from people who did not understand the points you made, because their zeal clouded their understanding.

Instead of digging into the trenches, the more effective approach in communication is to maneuver around them in an attempt to strike directly at your target. I advocate an approach called working on the fringes to achieve positive cultural, intellectual, and even political change subtly but effectively. You can read about it here.

Your aim in any discussion or communication is probably not to align yourself with already prevalent positions. If you seek to improve your well-being and enhance your reputation, you probably wish to do so by creating something new and different and by sharing insights that have not been presented before - at least not in quite the same form. It will be to your advantage to present your ideas as being new and original and to distance them from any associations that might spark visceral reactions on the part of others. Give people no more reason to dislike you than is absolutely necessary, and try to be original enough in the ideas you present that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to pigeonhole you as being any kind of "-ist."

For many people, once they can classify you as just a representative of some larger ideological or political group, you as an individual cease to occupy a place in their minds. You become simply one instantiation of the general category to which you are purported to belong. But it is yourself as an individual that you want to advance - not any kind of "-ism." The "-isms" will do just fine without you - and if any of them perishes, it will perish with or without your involvement. If you wish to change the world in any larger sense than altering the context surrounding your own life, you will be much more effective at it if you do not draw too much notice to yourself from your opponents.

Read all chapters of The Best Self-Help is Free.