The Importance of Being Right
I like being right. I make no excuses for it, either, because most of the time I *am* right. However, it can cause a bit of aggro now and again, never more so than when I'm in the presence of my bother-in-law, Sean.
Now, I know very well that you can't always be right, and often the other person's arguments can be persuasive enough to sway you. I believe you should try to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.
The feeling that you have the right of the issue is persistent, and pride plays a role as much as stubbornness. I always try to arm myself with some good solid facts, or at least good logic, and this is where I think the major difference lies between me and Sean.
Don't get me wrong. He's not an idiot.
He's clever, opinionated and stubborn (much like me!) But he is also xenophobic, misinformed, unenlightened and often downright ignorant, so our arguments can become heated, to say the least, especially if he's had a drink or seven, as he often does. One of the things that annoys me the most about my darling schwa is that he often expresses his opinions for effect rather than from genuine conviction. And I try to treat them as such, which is of course one of the things he finds most annoying about me!
Sean hates Australians. He will tell you so at any opportunity, at length and often with a vitriolic vehemence that surprises people who do not know him. He will often hold forth on the many deficiencies he perceives in Australians when we're at the pub or at home (or anywhere else, for that matter), and has been known to do so in the presence of actual Australians.
The fact that Australia is a huge country with a fairly large and extremely culturally diverse population, and therefore does not lend itself logically to sweeping generalisations about "the bloody Aussies" makes little impression on him, aside from stoking his anger when I point it out to him.
Whenever there's rugby on and the Aussies are playing, for example, he has to have a go. And of course it's the World Cup at the moment, so he's worse than ever.
Australians and Australia are but two of many subjects on which he will, with very little prompting and often entirely apropos of nothing, launch a diatribe of stunning venom and mind-boggling arrogance and ignorance. He seems to cobble together factoids from various sources and present them wholesale as his latest grand theory.
A case in point: the other night we were having a braai and he decided, as an expatriate South African, to address the subject of apartheid. In the company of all my English mates from the touch rugby club. One of whom is black.
Oh, Christ, there he goes again! was all I could think.
Apartheid, he declaimed in his patented I-know-something-you-don't-know tone, was not actually thought up by the Afrikaners. Oh no, contrary to popular opinion (somehow his "facts" are almost always contrary to popular opinion!) it was, in fact, invented by the colonial British government of the eighteen hundreds.
This notwithstanding the well-researched and documented history.
I couldn't help it. I had done an entire research paper for a course at university on this very subject. So I gave him both barrels. I told them names, I told them dates, I gave them chapter and verse, and Sean STILL disagreed with me! And proceeded to become verbally abusive. At which point I completely lost my cool and called him some VERY unflattering names.
We don't speak much anymore. Is it bad that I'm relieved?
I like being right. I make no excuses for it, either, because most of the time I *am* right. However, it can cause a bit of aggro now and again, never more so than when I'm in the presence of my bother-in-law, Sean.
Now, I know very well that you can't always be right, and often the other person's arguments can be persuasive enough to sway you. I believe you should try to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.
The feeling that you have the right of the issue is persistent, and pride plays a role as much as stubbornness. I always try to arm myself with some good solid facts, or at least good logic, and this is where I think the major difference lies between me and Sean.
Don't get me wrong. He's not an idiot.
He's clever, opinionated and stubborn (much like me!) But he is also xenophobic, misinformed, unenlightened and often downright ignorant, so our arguments can become heated, to say the least, especially if he's had a drink or seven, as he often does. One of the things that annoys me the most about my darling schwa is that he often expresses his opinions for effect rather than from genuine conviction. And I try to treat them as such, which is of course one of the things he finds most annoying about me!
Sean hates Australians. He will tell you so at any opportunity, at length and often with a vitriolic vehemence that surprises people who do not know him. He will often hold forth on the many deficiencies he perceives in Australians when we're at the pub or at home (or anywhere else, for that matter), and has been known to do so in the presence of actual Australians.
The fact that Australia is a huge country with a fairly large and extremely culturally diverse population, and therefore does not lend itself logically to sweeping generalisations about "the bloody Aussies" makes little impression on him, aside from stoking his anger when I point it out to him.
Whenever there's rugby on and the Aussies are playing, for example, he has to have a go. And of course it's the World Cup at the moment, so he's worse than ever.
Australians and Australia are but two of many subjects on which he will, with very little prompting and often entirely apropos of nothing, launch a diatribe of stunning venom and mind-boggling arrogance and ignorance. He seems to cobble together factoids from various sources and present them wholesale as his latest grand theory.
A case in point: the other night we were having a braai and he decided, as an expatriate South African, to address the subject of apartheid. In the company of all my English mates from the touch rugby club. One of whom is black.
Oh, Christ, there he goes again! was all I could think.
Apartheid, he declaimed in his patented I-know-something-you-don't-know tone, was not actually thought up by the Afrikaners. Oh no, contrary to popular opinion (somehow his "facts" are almost always contrary to popular opinion!) it was, in fact, invented by the colonial British government of the eighteen hundreds.
This notwithstanding the well-researched and documented history.
I couldn't help it. I had done an entire research paper for a course at university on this very subject. So I gave him both barrels. I told them names, I told them dates, I gave them chapter and verse, and Sean STILL disagreed with me! And proceeded to become verbally abusive. At which point I completely lost my cool and called him some VERY unflattering names.
We don't speak much anymore. Is it bad that I'm relieved?
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