Building Character

We're always trying to pursue our dreams and goals, no matter the consequences or the lack of morals through the process of obtaining so. No matter the ridiculousness of our arguments, we're set to win whatever we're fighting for. One could easily say we're much like the early Sophists, who argued to win, using cheap rhetoric.

One must emphasize "cheap" in that sentence, as rhetoric may be narrowed down to having one rule: you can use logical fallacies as long as they're related to what you want to obtain, and that they don't result in a fight.

Nixonian (eponym) Rhetoric is probably my favorite kind of rhetoric. Heinrichs uses the example of what probably is the most used phrase by politicians to justify remaining in armed conflict: "If we pull out now, our soldiers will have died in vain." I couldn't think of a better example for Nixonian Rhetoric, because as everyone but a few uninformed cavemen know, Henry Kissinger (Nixon's Secretary of State) concluded peace negotiations for the Vietnam War in 1973. But that's just a fancy way of saying that the US foreign policy failed and they lost a war they were going to lose ever since they got in. They lost, proving their soldiers died in vain, and that their veterans are suffering from PTSD in vain as well. The most used phrase to defend armed conflict never really ensures their soldiers will not die in vain at the end of the war, and there's even a 50% chance they will die in vain. Politicians are just appealing to your guilt in order to justify their mistakes.

There's also the "appeal to popularity" fallacy, or as Heinrichs calls it, the Spock for President fallacy. I could think of one example for this, an axiom I've hated for a long time now: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." If you really think about it, it isn't quite logical, but appeals to someone's attempt to build character. If I get blood poisoning in my right leg, doctors will most likely amputate it. It didn't kill me, but it definitely didn't make me stronger. You might be thinking that it might build character and "make me stronger," but then again, I might suffer from severe depression from then on. That's not making me stronger anymore.

There's a simple manner of avoiding from making logical fallacies seem ridiculous and eventually hurt our very valuable arguments, which narrows down to one simple differentiation: right vs. wrong. When someone says what you're doing is wrong, find ways to deviate it from seeming it to be wrong (and works as well by convincing your opponent how what's right is truly right.) And there's also avoiding arguing what's inarguable:
"1. Switching tenses away from the future.
2. Inflexible insistence on the rules--using the voice of God, sticking to your guns, refusing to hear the other side.
3. Humiliation--an argument that sets out only to debase someone, not to make a choice.
4. Innuendo.
5. Threats.
6. Nasty language or signs, like flipping the bird.
7. Utter stupidity."