How do we define an argument? Is it a supposed to be loud
and dominating activity in which one or more people try to demean their
opponent’s point so that they can establish their authority or get their work
done? Or is it an activity where a person who is lower in authority or
designation is in a fight with someone who is of a higher power, in a daring
and audacious display, disrespecting the latter’s position, a show of
unpardonable heresy? It is extremely probable that this is how the authority
supposed to be the receiving end of an argument perceives the act or situation
to be, at least subconsciously. This can easily be seen in the way there is a
resistance to such activity and then in the opinionated/biased disadvantageous
behavior towards the former. This is not to say that some arguments don’t
deserve such treatment. And even then these consequences may be unacceptable.
But there is a serious lack of empathy in most of the cases where the intentions
of the party branded as a rebel or misbehaved, hold no importance for the party
addressed to.
Whenever there is an imbalance it is hard for a balanced
thing to correct the skewness. There has to be an equal weight on the opposite
side for the beam balance to rest in the middle. In the same way a person with
a colored vision, conflicting interests, falsely assumed elevated designation,
or a clearly heavy side of the brain is logically incapable of interpreting the
intentions of a balanced person, let alone empathizing him when he tries to put
his point forward. Does this mean that the quickly disappearing population of
balanced people can never get their way if they are in the initial stages of
their career and have to depend on the majority who are on the other side?
There exists a concept of being smart. It is the ability of
a person to influence the perception of the other party and still put across
his point or get his way. This can also be termed as manipulative behavior
wherein the psychology is hit upon in its loopholes or stimulation points and
during the effect of that attack, the intended items are slipped under the nose
of the latter (this is a constricted meaning). Again this is a regular
phenomenon whether or not people are consciously aware of it happening to them
or they themselves practicing it. But is being smart the answer?
Being smart is either an art leaned through practice or it
comes naturally to a certain tribe of people. But there exists a tribe to whom
this quality is elusive. It is contrary to their basic nature and ideology to
mince words. It is just not there in their DNA. Does that mean that when the
balance of power in not in their favor, they will have to face the music until
a time they correct the equation (in the long run)? These are essentially the
kind of people who become hard task masters as bosses, someone you would hate
to work under due to their no nonsense toleration.
So what happens when MTV asks people to stay raw? Isn’t
saying RAW against the very concept of being manipulative or smart in the sense
that we defined above? If we go by this concept then a huge majority of people
would automatically be disqualified from the RAW category. The exceptions would
be those who can segregate the two faces of their personality to an extent that
they don’t have a significant effect on the other. Hence there is now only a
small minority of people who now fall under the probable RAW candidacy.
But we still haven’t defined what an argument means to our
RAW and balanced person, for which we need to understand how his mind works and
the reason why he does things. This is a frank and brutally honest person who
is very fair and knows nothing but the truth. For him it is hard to understand
why people have a problem in accepting their mistakes and being open to
improvement suggestions from the outside. In other words ego is alien to him. It
may help him in being assertive in whatever he believes in because that may be
the only thing he can push forward for his incompetency to be manipulative or
smart. His main objective is to contribute towards the final product or
outcome.
Hence we can safely define an argument basically is the
process for development of a thought, idea, proposition or stance through a
discussion or a positively critical conversation between two or more people.
For a RAW person it is an unbiased, healthy, open mechanism to either get his
claim endorsed by the authority addressed to or to develop it, making it the
best that can be. And in this process he finds people with a lopsided brain who
consider his intentions as “gustakhi” and he can’t help it because he knows he
is not at fault. Hence for formality and practicality’s sake he subsides in the
end and when the cloud clears he goes on hi same merry way to become a hard task
master when he himself becomes the Authority.
