Facts, Like Everyone I Once Loved and Held Dear, Don’t Care About My Feelings
Oh, did I just hurt your feelings with my facts and logic? Let me just take a big sip of “don’t care” juice from my novelty mug labeled “YOUR TEARS”. If you’re looking for an apology, you’ve come to the wrong man. God, I wish my wife and kids were still with me so I could recount this debate evisceration to them…
The key to winning a debate is keeping your cool. This is something my ex-wife never understood, even when I reiterated this fact as she was walking out the door. A good debater has conditioned himself to suppress any emotions, as these vulnerabilities can lead to errors, fallacies and, ultimately, an argumentative downfall. Unsurprisingly, this is a shortcoming shared by every friend and family member I’ve alienated over the last few years of my life.
Common Sense is under attack from pain, suffering, feeling, and emotion. These foul weapons are often referred to as “the human experience,” but the realities that your fellow human beings experience have no place in the context of an honorable debate. I should know, I am the winner of various debate competitions in high school. Don’t believe me? The trophies are up there on the shelf where the pictures of my wife and kids used to be.
Becoming a skilled debater takes patience. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve experienced irrational feelings such as loss and loneliness. But I’ve trained myself for a lifetime to bury this foolishness down deep for the sake of civil discourse. You must brace yourself for the “feelers” in your life to confront your stoic, unbiased manner. There will be many. But you must look your ex-wife (or, you know, whomever) in the face and burn that bridge without a trace of joy or sadness.
Someone once told me that “not everything in life has to be a debate” and “I’m leaving you.” But this person was wrong, because debate must be an integral part of each moment in which we live. This is an unfounded hypothesis put forward by those in our society who want to tear down the integrity of facts and logic for the sake of irrational feelings. She is not going to listen to your sound reasoning. She will berate you and accuse you of neglecting your kids and being cold and uncaring. I mean they. The person debating you will berate and accuse you, I mean. But this is simply what we call an “ad hominem” attack. But they will nevertheless continue this attack, even if it’s in the middle of family court.
We are in the battle for a soul of objectivity and she will never let you hear the end of it. Your opponent. Whatever. They will twist your words against you, but you must remain steadfast and matter-of-fact, even amidst a barrage of well-researched attacks from her lawyers. And you know what? Since when did “emotional neglect” worm its way into the American legal system? Our laws should be cold and unfeeling but now the once-honorable courtroom has turned into a circus of irrationality and feeling? It just goes to show that we have a long way to go before intellect is respected again. But alas, I can’t get angry. For anger is a feeling. And we’ve already established that facts do not care about these things.