Читать книгу How to Win Arguments - Robert Allen - Страница 10

Anyone who has read this far will be in no doubt that I do not have much faith in human beings as rational creatures. A glance at today’s news headlines (any day, any country) will bear me out. That is why the issue of status assumes such importance in the realm of argument. It is utterly irrational, a throwback to our animal ancestors, and yet it still exerts an iron control over our behaviour. One can readily understand why baboons may depend for their success on organising their family groups on the basis of status. But people? The thinking apes? Unfortunately it is all too true.

Status in arguments is seen best within a business environment or in some highly structured organization such as the army or police. Anyone who has ever worked in an office or factory will have seen a boss who is always right, no matter how wrong he may be. Bosses like this don’t argue about the facts of a case (they may well be ignorant of them and, in any case, they regard them as largely irrelevant). No, their chief concern will be that by pursuing a particular course successfully (getting their own way), and putting down any opposition they may encounter, they get to stay Chief Baboon.

Subordinates will often play along with this game by deliberately deferring to the boss and letting his opinions hold sway even when they know he is wrong. In that way they help to confirm his status and thus bolster their own position in the pecking order. One of the features of a pecking order is that people do not mind it as long as it remains unchanged. In fact they will engage in regular rituals that are designed specifically to reconfirm the order. However, someone who dares to try to upset the status quo will spark off the bitterest of status arguments.

Another interesting feature of status is that the people who concern themselves with it do not have to be ‘important’. It is not only officers and gentlemen who worry about their pecking orders. Think for a moment of the stock comedy figures of the mild-mannered gentlefolk who organize the church flower rota. Anyone who has experienced the intrigues and political chicanery attendant upon a church flower rota will know that the issue of status is just as important to the meek and humble as to the high and mighty.