To Be Right, Or To Help?

If you’re a voluntaryist, and you argue with statists, what is your actual goal when doing that? Specifically, what are you trying to accomplish? Most of the time, most people aren’t really thinking about that. They argue, debate, pontificate and rant at each other, and at the end of the day little or nothing has changed.

The truth is, when people argue using the approach that “comes naturally,” it doesn’t usually do any good. But for voluntaryists, here comes the really uncomfortable question: If you knew that you putting in time and effort to change your approach would dramatically improve the results you’re getting, would you bother to? In other words, are you really just arguing for your own entertainment, or to feel “righter” than other people, or are you actually trying to help them understand something, for their own benefit? Think carefully before answering. I know from experience how easy and tempting it is to fall into “combat mode” during arguments, where the goal is not to convince, but only to win. But if you “win,” but the other person remains just as wrong as before, what was the point?

Now you might say, as I say myself, that publicly debating someone and “winning” might help convince any spectators to reconsider some things, even if you think there’s no chance of the one you’re arguing with changing his mind. But in private debates and arguments with people you know personally, where there is no audience, that answer doesn’t apply.

By analogy, if you were having car trouble, you could either hit your engine with a wrench and yell at it, if that makes you feel better, or you could go to the trouble of learning what to actually do to fix the problem. The trouble is that the latter takes a lot more time and effort. And it requires you to learn new information, and new skills. And it’s much easier and more fun to just be mad at that stupid engine for not working the way it should.

And that’s basically what I see when I watch most voluntaryists talking to statists—and I’ve certainly done my own share of that over the past two decades, too. And when a voluntaryist says, “I’ve tried everything, and they just won’t listen; it’s hopeless!” that’s usually the equivalent of the car owner saying, “I must have smacked the engine a hundred times with this wrench, and it still doesn’t work!” Well gee, I wonder why.

Pardon me for getting all mystical-sounding, but if you want to change them, you have to change you first. There are now dozens of people who can attest to the fact that yes, there really is a way to approach talking to statists—your friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors, etc.—in a way that is far less likely to just make them get emotional and run away, and far more likely to make them hear what you’re actually saying, and to understand. And yes, to end up agreeing with you.

To skip right to the punchline, if you’re content smacking the engine with a wrench and swearing at it, and if you find that psychologically therapeutic (even if rather ineffective), then have fun with that. But if you are willing to learn, in order to be able to teach, then find a way to get your butt to a “Candles in the Dark” event. Hopefully one will be happening in Florida, and one in Toronto, in the near future. But at this very moment, the only one scheduled for sure is happening down in Acapulco on February 13th and 14th, just before “Anarchapulco” (http://www.anarchapulco.com) starts.

You can get tickets for the Acapulco “Candles in the Dark” at the bottom of this page:
https://anarchapulco.com/buy-your-tickets/

If you think that you've tried everything with all the statists you know, and that they're all hopeless, you are wrong. And if you're not willing to learn something new, then don't expect the statists in your life to be willing to learn something new either. And as always, if you attend a "Candles in the Dark" event and decide that it didn’t make you a significantly more effective “ambassador for anarchy,” you get your money back.

Amanda and I hope to see you there!