Argument is sculpture

Much of how we go about arguing, and how we think about arguing, is structured in terms of battle, of war.

We win and lose arguments, attack and defend positions and deploy strategies to gain or lose ground. This point is illustrated by Lakhoff and Johnson in Methaphors We Live By.

We need new metaphors, especially for ways in which we communicate and collaborate, and how we think about and reflect on them.

Imagine if arguments were collaborative sculptures instead of battles. The principles and activities and characteristics of sculpting applied to how we experience, understand and carry out arguments.

This notion is borrowed from a scene in the Children of Time series by A. Tchaikovsky, in which spiders hold council and weave their arguments with their spidery silk.

Every argument, once concluded, would yield in a uniquely weird sculpture that would reflect both the content of the exchanges as well as the contributions of its participants. Arguments would be collaboratively built and chiseled at, and become themselves artifacts of strange beauty to behold.

Bereft of winners and losers, we’d have instead a record of attempts at making the world more beautiful through argumentation.

Every participant an artist, every participation a contribution.