Fun Argument Novels & Stories

The "Argument-as-Generator" technique became our new normal. It was exhausting, exhilarating, and deeply weird. We’d walk through the still-faded village, bickering passionately about the aerodynamic properties of dandelion fluff or the moral philosophy of hedgehog migration, and watch as a trail of vibrant color and crisp sound bloomed in our wake. Children started following us, giggling at the spectacle of their protectors having a heated debate about whether clouds were primarily gaseous or sentimental.

Every time I teach my child to learn, the third time I talk about the same problem, I want to give him a shot. But I have to be patient, try to control my emotions to internal injuries, need to be hospitalized for treatment. I and my wife often argue aloud each other because of raising the children. Tired of silence. “I swear what I say is one hundred percent truth. Even if I am talking understatement. In fact, they are so stubborn that they can't stand it. If you don’t believe what I say. You try getting married and have children, you will know what the bitter fruit of life is."

I wanted to argue that the data didn't support this, but I was starting to understand that I couldn't win arguments with Eli by citing data if the data was measuring the wrong things. "Present it to Westbrook," I said finally. "See what they say." "No," Eli said, and there was something almost defiant in his tone. "You present it. Because if this is going to work, you need to advocate for the vulnerability. Not as 'Eli's creative choice' but as 'core to the strategic vision.'" This was him pushing back. Really pushing back. Not compromising or finding a middle ground. Actually challenging me to defend his approach. "Why does it matter who presents it?" I asked.

I think there could be an issue if they can't listen to Aria :) DanahLouise x

Kainene asked. "A reasonable argument is one where both parties are interested in learning something from each other. A reasonable argument usually ends with one party agreeing he his wrong, accepting defeat and learning from the other party who is right while an argument is just an argument. It can be reasonable or unreasonable. In most cases, according to me, it usually ends up unreasonable." "Such boldness," Kainene shrank her lips as if she was staring at a mirror to see if she had rubbed her lipstick in her lips properly.

Not the carefully maintained nothing of two people deciding not to cross a line. Nothing. The actual thing. Finally. I was twenty years old and I was in this house and the last argument was unavailable and the primary thing was the primary thing and the colchicum had bloomed and the leaves were coming and the order of things was the order of things. I closed my eyes. I held on.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

And there it was. The specific and particular sentence that was not an argument and was not a reason and was not a piece of information I had been lacking. It was a claim. The particular and ancient claim, the one that was supposed to precede all accounting and survive all accounting and make the accounting beside the point. I am your father. This is the thing that the sentence meant. Whatever else is true, this is also true, and this truth is supposed to reorganize the weight of all the other truths.

I read that argument and I felt, briefly and precisely, the cold of someone who has been outmaneuvered. Then I read it a third time, and the cold passed. The argument would fail. The argument would fail. I knew it would fail before I had finished the second read. The correction was the remedy for the suppression. Using the suppression to undermine the remedy was circular—the suppression was the wrong, and the claim was the right. You could not use the wrong to attack the right that addressed it. But clever arguments could buy time even when they were wrong. I called Dr. Elan.

It was in forty-two practitioners in eleven states who were about to spend three months learning how to deploy it in their specific contexts. She watched the session. Grace opened it with a statement that Zara had not seen in advance because Grace had not shared it with her. She said: "The argument you are about to learn was built in a specific case by specific people in specific circumstances. I'm going to tell you about those circumstances because the circumstances matter — you need to understand where an argument comes from in order to apply it correctly. But by the time you finish this program, the circumstances will be background and the argument will be yours. It belongs to anyone who