The Art of Arguing

Those who have never learned to argue cannot negotiate. Those who cannot negotiate either avoid — or escalate. Both are the same problem, merely at different speeds. A culture of debate is not the opposite of peace. It is its precondition.

I. The Colombian Paradox

In Colombia — and across much of Latin America — harmony is held as the highest social good. Conflicts are not resolved; they are avoided. Contradiction is not experienced as a factual difference but as a personal attack. To criticise an idea is to criticise the person who holds it. To question a decision is to question the person who made it.

The result is not harmony. It is surface agreement over smouldering conflicts. One says yes — and means no. One smiles — and is hurt. One agrees — and acts differently. The energy that is not spent in argument finds other channels: rumour, mistrust, passive aggression, sudden escalations that appear to the outsider to come from nowhere.

What can be observed in Colombia applies everywhere that honour culture and group identity are stronger than institutional trust. The idea does not belong to the person — but in these cultures it feels like a part of them. You criticise my idea? Then you criticise me. Then you are my enemy. And with enemies one does not argue — one falls silent, or one fights.

II. What a Culture of Debate Really Means

The term is misleading. A “culture of debate” sounds like cultivated dissent, like panel discussions, like the feuilleton. That is not what is meant. What is meant is something more fundamental: the collective capacity to experience contradiction as productive — as a tool for approaching the truth, not as a threat to social order.

This capacity requires one single, but radical, precondition: the complete separation of person and subject matter. Not as a formula of politeness — “I am not attacking you, but your position” — but as an internalised attitude. My idea is not me. My opinion is not my dignity. My proposal is not my honour. Those who reject my proposal are not rejecting me.

This sounds simple. It is the hardest thing human beings can learn. Because the fusion of idea and identity is not cultural — it is biological. The brain processes social rejection in the same regions as physical pain. Those who reject my proposal trigger the same neural signals as someone who strikes me. The separation of person and subject matter is not a natural response. It is a learned civilisational achievement.

A culture of debate is not the absence of emotion in argument. It is the capacity to have the emotion — and still distinguish between the person and their idea.

III. Why Harmony Is Dangerous

Societies without a culture of debate do not produce harmony. They produce accumulated conflicts. The difference is not the quantity of conflict — it is its aggregate state. In cultures with a culture of debate, conflicts are resolved in small portions, continuously, regulated by rules and institutions. In cultures without one, they accumulate — until the pressure is so great that regulation fails.

Colombia is the most extreme example: decades of guerrilla war, paramilitarism, drug violence — in a country regarded as one of the friendliest, warmest, most family-oriented in the world. The warmth is genuine. But it applies inward, to the group. Outward, to the other, to the enemy, to those who hold the wrong position — it does not apply. And because there is no institutional procedure for clarifying who is outside and who is inside, the boundary tips quickly.

What applies to societies applies equally to organisations and to personal relationships. Couples who never argue do not refrain from arguing because they have no conflicts — they have them. They do not resolve them. The energy of avoided conflicts accumulates, until a small occasion releases the entire accumulated load. The escalation appears sudden. It was not.

IV. Mediation Without a Culture of Debate

Mediation is the craft of structured conflict resolution. It has gained enormously in significance as a method over recent decades — in business, law, politics, family law. Its basic principle: a neutral third party helps the parties to articulate their interests, discover common ground and develop a solution themselves — without external judgement.

Mediation works well — when the parties bring a minimal culture of debate with them. When they are able to distinguish between their interests and their identity. When they can process a contradiction from the mediator or the other party as factual information, not as attack.

When this precondition is absent, mediation reaches its limits. The mediator who questions a statement by one party in an honour-cultural environment risks being perceived as partisan. The party that would lose face by yielding cannot yield — not because they consider the solution wrong, but because the yielding itself is the defeat. The result: an agreement that both sign and neither means.

The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC is a case study. It was the product of years of mediation — and it holds, with limitations. But its implementation repeatedly fails at the same point: the inability of local actors to accept agreements as binding when the opposing party remains defined as the enemy. The text is agreed. The attitude that carries it is absent.

V. What a Culture of Debate Would Teach

A culture of debate is learnable. It is not genetically or culturally determined — it is a competence that can be developed when the conditions are right. What would need to be taught?

First: the distinction between attack on the idea and attack on the person. This distinction is not self-evident — it must be made explicit, practised and repeated. In schools, in companies, in political bodies. Not as a rule, but as a practice.

Second: the experience that contradiction can be productive. People who have learned that a good objection helps them — that it improves their idea rather than damaging them — gradually develop a different relationship to contradiction. They seek it out. This is the foundation of scientific thinking. It is also the foundation of every functioning democratic debate.

Third: the capacity to lose — and continue. Those who have learned that a defeat on the matter is not a defeat as a person can begin again. The debater who loses comes back next week with a better argument. The entrepreneur whose idea was rejected revises it. That is innovation. That is resilience. That is the opposite of collapse.

VI. The Real Role of the Mediator

A mediator in an environment without a culture of debate cannot merely process conflicts. They must simultaneously convey a culture of debate — and that is a different, harder task.

They must model what they teach. They must themselves withstand contradiction without losing the relationship. They must be able to formulate objections without being perceived as an enemy. They must show the parties that criticism of a position is not an attack on a person — through their own behaviour, not through explanation.

This requires that the mediator has themselves fully internalised the separation of person and subject matter. Not as a technique. As an attitude. Those who do not have it cannot convey it.

The best argument is the one after which both sides better understand what is at stake. Not who has won — but what is true.

VII. A Culture of Debate as Civilisational Achievement

The great civilisational achievements of humanity — democracy, science, the rule of law — have one thing in common: they institutionalise productive argument. Democracy is a regulated procedure for deciding without fighting. Science is a regulated procedure for identifying errors without destroying those who err. The rule of law is a regulated procedure for resolving conflicts without the stronger party automatically winning.

All three institutions presuppose a culture of debate — and all three simultaneously generate it. Societies that have these institutions strongly develop a culture of debate. Societies that do not have them, or that have weakened them, lose it.

What is missing in Colombia is missing not because of bad people. It is missing because of absent institutions that practise productive argument across generations. What is currently eroding in Europe is eroding not because of bad politicians. It is eroding because social media have replaced factual contradiction with personal attack — and because hardly anyone is developing a countervailing force.

The deluge that threatens is not only a deluge of unresolved factual problems. It is also a deluge of unresolved argument. Those who cannot argue cannot live together. That is not an exaggeration. It is the lesson of a thousand years of human history.