On Arguing and Evolutionary Biology

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Matthew 5

Yes, this post will somewhat lack direction.

The Happy Warriors and the Wolves.

People who like to argue provoking an introvert into arguing. . . as seen by the introvert.

I don't like arguing.  It's one of the constant ironies of my profession in relation to me.

I'm really good at arguing.  I always have been.  I didn't intend to make it my living, that's for sure.  It was an accident that it ended up part of rice bowl really.  I hadn't intended to go into litigation, but when I was in my last year of law school I clerked at a firm that did litigation and now, 32 years later, that's where I still am.  

I learned to argue at home, but not in heated debates.  My home was pretty intellectual and I was the only child. Different parents deal with that differently, but as my parents also came from intellectual homes it was normal to discuss the merits and demerits of a lot of topics.

I'm highly used to arguing professionally, and of course do it all the time.  And I can do it on any topic, or at least on any I have knowledge of.  On some topics which are open to debate, such as certain historical topics, I do enjoy it. But I don't like argument for argument's sake.  And I regard forensic debate, as done in high schools and universities, with absolute contempt.

Indeed, I'll occasionally hear somebody aspiring to be a lawyer, or even who became a lawyer, state that they did it as "I like arguing". That doesn't make you well suited to be a lawyer, it means that you're an asshole.

Professionally, or on the topics which are open to debate and about which I enjoy discussions, I can completely separate myself from the argument.  Except where people can't do that, and get personal, mean or petty, I don't leave the courtroom or the discussion angry.  Not everyone can do that, however, and I note that some of the people who claim that they "enjoy arguing" cannot.  

Indeed, there is a real psychological difference between gregarious arguers and introverted intellectual arguers.  I'm highly introverted and when people who like to simply argue on stuff provoke one with me, I normally avoid it completely.  If basically cornered on one, however, and forced to argue, I have an Irish temper, and that spills over into arguing.

People think that people with Irish tempers fly suddenly into arguing  Not hardly. Rather, they avoid the fight until forced into it. At that point, it's not for fun, it's for blood.  At the point where one of the "happy warriors" that I encounter socially finally provokes me into an argument, as they "enjoy arguing" the game hasn't begun for me, as it isn't a game.  I never ever argue just for sport, in that context.

Indeed, I have a friend who claims to like arguing and constantly is provoking arguments with about anyone who will argue.  This doesn't usually involve me as I'll avoid the conversation.  When he's in the lunch room dissing something to provoke an argument or some body of thought, I just leave without joining the fray.  

The other day, however it became impossible as I was cornered on a topic. And as I'm really good at arguing, and this wasn't professional, and no separation was possible, I was forced to join the argument.

Provoking such a person into an argument like that is a lot like throwing rocks at wolves. Normally they'll walk away.  But if that gives you the idea that they always are going to do so, you are mistaken. If they turn on you, they're going to try to kill you, metaphorically.  Such arguers don't believe in allowing the other person to "walk away to fight another day". The battle is on and there will be only one survivor. That's it.

Which is where I'm at in such debates, metaphorically.  By the time I was done arguing with the person, I'd not only defeated their argument, I'd left the happy warrior as white as a ghost, broken down, and shaking.  And I don't regret it a bit.  Join me in an argument for sport and not know your facts, I'm going to destroy you.  I'll keep arguing once you try to disengage and I'll leave your argument torn to shreds and your world view messed up. 

If you are a happy warrior, i.e. an asshole, leave people who aren't like that alone.  We just wondered in here trying to get through the day, not for your sport.

We don't argue for sport.

And here endth that lesson.

Evolutionary Biology and the Argument.

Mother and daughter cooking. They'd probably been arguing before the photo was taken.

I'm constantly and deeply amazed how little attention evolutionary biology gets.

We are right now in a constant swirl of social nonsense which anyone with a modicum of understanding on evolutionary biology could avoid.  I'm practically at the point where if a person is going to spout off on any topic, they should have at least had an introductory course on it.

Indeed, the contempt for science, on the right and the left, is simply epic right now.  There are entire topics that "conservatives" can't touch right now as they run contrary to science.  And the left, which likes to point this out, is at war with evolutionary biology.

It's a tragedy.

And here's where I'll stand to get myself in trouble.

Men and women are radically different, as I've mentioned here before, and one of the things that they are really different in regards to are household arguments.

I don't argue much with my wife.  Every married couple. . . lets' make that every couple, argues some.  But we don't argue much, which is a good thing of course.  In addition, I don't like to argue, and therefore I generally avoid arguments with people if I can.

My wife and daughter, however, argue with each other constantly.

I don't think either one of them grasps how distressing this is to a person who doesn't like arguing, particularly as there's virtually no way not to be involved in their arguments at some level.

I think this is a common feature of household dynamics, and I think its' explained by evolutionary biology.  Look it up on the net, however, you'll get a pile of social science crap, most of which isn't scientific in nature whatsoever.  Indeed, for such a common occurrence you'll see efforts to blame it on everything other than what it is. Blaming it on men is one such common approach, which is not only non scientific, it's just bullshit social propaganda.  I.e., it must be the fault of men as everything is the fault of men.

So, what provokes this part of my post?

I generally stay out of the mother/daughter arguments if I can, including avoiding efforts to be drawn into them.  When I can if there's a real point of contest that there's a solution to, or a problem that has caused them, I point it out, and generally the view is accepted.  This presumes, however, that you know what the argument is actually about. 

Often, you will not.

Indeed, there will be an observation on that below.

My work involves a lot of professional arguing. And as an introvert, my work also has the feature of dealing with people a lot, something that's draining on introverts.  At the end of a day, an introvert needs a little down time.  I often don't get it.

The other day I didn't, on either score.  When I got home, my wife was on the driveway (people can hear my vehicles distinct sounds pretty easily).  I thought at first how nice that was, my wife coming to greet me.  

Instead, I got in an odd tone, the question "what do you want to do for dinner?"

Now, that's an innocent enough question to be sure.  I really didn't have an answer, and I virtually never try to actually dictate a dinner choice.  I've given up on that, and after a long day, I don't really have any desire to plan out a dinner. So my answer was something neutral, as in whatever you want is fine.

"I haven't planned anything" was the response, and it was a bit of an agitated one.  Now, that's a common response to a conversation that I'd just as soon not have, but which we frequently do.

My wife is one of those people who like to make decisions by presenting endless options.  I've posted on that decision making type here before, on our laws of behavior series.

Everyone must make decisions in life, of course.  But not everyone has the same decision making style. Some people are highly analytical, others highly instinctive. Some make decisions based on facts, others on emotions.  Some make decisions rapidly, while others prefer to deliberate slowly.

But there are some people who actually prefer to have options, rather than make decisions at all. For highly decisive people, these people are aggravating in the extreme.

Chances are high that everyone knows somebody like this. Confronted with the necessity of deciding something, they tend to go to a decisive person and lay out the options. The decisive person will decide. Rather than accept it, the other person will set out 27 more options, and go on and on actually past the point where the other person  has committed a decision, with that person usually aggravated in the extreme by that point.

These people like options more than decisions, and are often able to get by on a lot of decisions by not deciding.  Somebody else will end up doing it, usually to the declared surprise of the option lover, who doesn't like having options eliminated, and who has added an other 72 options by the time the decisive person forces a commitment.

This is often my wife's approach to decisions.  If you are in the opposite camp, and I tend to be, this is a species of torture in some instances, although there are instances in which I will do that myself, particularly on some very serious topics.  At any rate, the I haven't planned anything comment drew a second "I want to go out".

That was fine, and was followed by me with a question where to, which was followed by the reply she didn't want to go out, but order in, which I agreed to.  This was followed by a comment that we'd saved food she didn't want to waste, which was true.  I said that was fine, which was followed by there wasn't enough spaghetti, which is what we'd saved. Then she pointed out there was also a chicken breast that had been saved from the day prior.

At this point there was clearly no way out, so I just said, thinking I was agreeing to what had been noted, that I'd make something with all of those, which was followed by that being an impossibility.  I then agreed to cook something, even though I'd done that the day prior after a really long day, which brought back the comment that she didn't want to waste food.

A conversation like this, for a person who is required to make decisions all day long is a special sort of torture.  I'd been asked to make a decision, given a range of options, and then told that all of the options were 100% impossible. What's the point of that?

Well, there probably wasn't one.  What was really going on was a continuation of some sort of argument about which I'm still unclear, between my wife and daughter.  My wife, in frustration, spilled out into the driveway to give me a set of problems because she was upset at my daughter.  I vaguely discerned that the conversation had started with one between them on dinner.

This flowed into a conversation in which I tried to draw my daughter out on the question, but she already had her back arched up as well, and it was instantly an argument between the two of them, with me as the unwilling referee. That rapidly expanded into a set of planning demands from my wife, who likes to plan things with precision further out than I conceivably can.  I'll tend not to plan things until I know that I can, which must be frustrating for people who like a clear agenda.  Indeed, I'm not really big on clear agendas for a lot of things as, over time, I tend to find that my professional life disrupts them.

This went on and on and ultimately I was involved more and more, something that I hate to do, until I was finally engaged.  And at that part, I destroyed all of their arguments Teutoburg Forest style and went off to the room where this computer is located, shut the door, and sat by myself.

On their own they came up with a dinner plan and we had that, and a very quiet evening.  People, having made me bitterly angry, avoided me, and they probably still should, as I'm still bitterly angry.  

What was that argument about?

I don't know, but I don't think it has anything to do with dinner. That would be monumentally stupid.

What I think it has to do is having two closely related women in the same household.

I know that sounds Neanderthal, and that's likely what causes female therapists to claim that the spats between wives and daughters are men's fault, but in looking up mother daughter conflicts, I came up with one comment that I thought absolutely brilliant.  Here it is:

mothers and daughters fight from 10 -20 there is nothing you can do about it . unless you are thinking about getting a divorce back up your wife in front of your daughter all the time . have a quiet word to you wife when its just the 2 of you . but if you take your daughters side she will think its ok to fight with your wife .

I think that's right.

That is particularly the case that "mothers and daughters fight from 10-20 there is nothing you can do about it".

But why?

Nature.  I.e., I think that's DNA.

In spite of what bullshit sociologist think, women mature much more rapidly and their behavior is radically different from men's.  And that impacts their relationship with their children, i.e., boys and girls, much differently.

From about the time they're 13, girls DNA tells them they are women.  And it also tells them that they are to be the head of their domestic households.  In the Old Testament we find examples of ancient Jews with more than one wife, and almost invariably it ends up being a miserable experience as one woman doesn't like the other and it drives the man nuts.  If you can stand to watch the horrible television show Sister Wives, you'll see the same thing at work.   Cody Brown must be on the most extensive set of pharmaceuticals imaginable simply to eat breakfast every morning.  Brown is a member of some Mormon offshoot that must compel him to such a lifestyle, but the more typical reaction in that circumstances is probably the one portrayed in Paint Your Wagon where the frustrated husband auctions off one of his wives for domestic peace.

That's a different situation, obviously, but the same logic, I think applies.  Once a girl hits 13, in her mind she's fully mature and her natural impulses are telling her to run things in regard to herself, and in the house.  Those same impulses are at work in her mother.  Getting the two to mesh, perfectly, isn't going to happen.

For whatever reason its different with men.  Men generally don't try to be head of the domestic household in a family, even if they are very much the head of the family in general.  In a tribal society, they're out during the day trying to hunt something, and they have to have cooperation with each other to get that done.  Just as too many cooks spoil the broth at home, a lack of teamwork in the field can get you stomped flat.

Additionally, irrespective of what bullshit sociologist wish to believe, men generally have a pretty strong protective instinct and women know this.  It's part of the reason that women in combat is a frankly stupid idea.  Any man who wont' act to save a woman from harm, if he can, isn't worth his rations, and rank and position have nothing to do with that.  It just is.

Women also have a strong nurturing aspect that men lack to the same degree.  Almost everyone knows this, in spite of what they might assert.  When we find that in men, it's remarkable.  Be that as it may, in the domestic household its generally what makes the mother somebody that children turn to with problems, arguments notwithstanding.  And this frustrates mothers in regard to their daughters and also strongly ties mothers to their sons.  

All this goes back to the tribe and what we were days long gone, maybe even before our current species. And that's what those arguments are about.  They aren't about dinner, they're about "this is my tent."

None of which really deals with the complications such things entail or that arguments are serious by nature (except to the aforementioned "I like to argue" crowd).  But which partially explains why I have a long day ahead of me and I'm already tired.  I love my family, and I like having them all here.  One of the tragedies of the modern industrial world is that everyone has to leave home, it seems.  I'll be glad when the arguing era stops, which hopefully it will soon.

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Stranded semi tractors on the Happy Jack Road outside of Cheyenne.  Yes, my window is cracked.

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So, last weekend the kids and I went deer hunting.

Deer season this year is very short for some reason, I don't know why, but it is. Or maybe it seemed that way as I had no opportunity to take a day off from work to go, and the kids of course had no opportunity to take a day off from university.  So I actually missed the better part of it before I even went out.

We didn't draw into limited area tags, so our options were limited to local general areas.  There's been some changes in them recently and the area that we generally go to, when we go to a general area, is antlered deer, three points or better, now.

I'm not a game biologist and I'm not a head hunter either, so I don't quite get the "antlered deer only" thing.  I probably should study up on it, but I don't get it.  Particularly in the area where I went which has been infested with Chronic Wasting Disease in recent years, and I'd think they'd want to cut the numbers of all deer down a bit. But, as noted, I'm not a game biologist so I can't say the reasoning isn't solid.

Anyhow, we headed out on Saturday and saw a lot of deer, and hiked a lot of ground, but we didn't see any bucks at all until the afternoon.  About that time, finally arriving after hours as the spot that I intended to check in the first place, we saw a single deer.

And quite a deer he was.  He looked like the deer on a bottle of Jägermeister, a German liqueur I've never tasted, in part because it's one of those odd liquors that in the United States is associated with stupid behavior.  But the label is impressive.

The label features a deer with a large rack with a cross in between its antlers.  The image recalls St. Hubert (which I knew) and St. Eustace, both of whom had profound religious conversions after encountering deer while hunting which had the image of the cross blazing between their antlers.

St. Hubert encounters the deer.

Or at least according to Wikipedia the image on the bottle honors St. Hubert and St. Eustace.  I suspect its only meant to recall St. Hubert, who would have been better known to Europeans in the 1930s when the liquer was first created.  St. Eustace is remembered more in the Eastern church and was a Roman general who converted after such an experience while hunting and who was ultimately martyred in 118.  

St. Hubert lived more recently, post Roman Empire, having been born in 656 and living until 727.  He was born in what is now southern France into a noble family, but was sent north to Paris at an early age.  Due to political turmoil, he was one of many who ended up it Metz as sort of a noble refugee and we need to keep in mind that France, as a solid political entity, didn't exist at the time. Anyhow, he married one Floribanne, daughter of Dagobert, Count of Leuven, and the couple had a son, Floribert, later the Bishop of Liege.  In this fluid political time, therefore, fate had taken Huber from Toulouse to Liège in an onward northern migration.

Hubert was not a religious man and that condition was amplified when his wife died giving birth to Floribert, a not uncommon fate for women at the time.  After that, Hubert took entirely to hunting in the Ardennes, living a solitary hunting life.  On a Good Friday, however when the faithful were gathering in Church in honor of that day (which is not a Holy Day of Obligation) he encountered a great stag and the it turned on him, cross between its horns, and spoke, saying:

Hubert, unless thou turn to the Lord, and lead a holy life, you shall quickly go down into hell.

It's hard to ignore a thing like that, to say the least, and Hubert dismounted from his horse and immediately, according to tradition, replied; "Lord, what would You have me do?", to which the reply came "Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you."  Hubert entered the priesthood and rose to the rank of Bishop of Liege, which he occupied until his death, at which point his priest son took over that position.  Both are saints.

According to the legend of his encounter, the deer also lectured St. Hubert on having higher regard for animals and engaging in human hunting practices, including taking old stags beyond their prime breeding years, and also to take sick or injured animals even if it meant passing up on a shot at atrophy.  There's more to it, but St. Hubert is accordingly still  held in high regard in Germany, Austria and France among hunters and ethical hunting principals taught in European hunting societies are attributed to him.

Anyhow, the deer was like that one depicted, but lacked of course the cross.  That would have been life altering to say the least, but at least day altering was the fact that I rose my rifle up, shot, and missed.

Now, I'm a good shot and this totally perplexed me, as did missing a second shot from a greater distance.  After all of this, I shot at a couple of rocks at varying distances to see if something had happened to my rifle's zero.  Nope, it was right on.

I have no idea what happened.  Suffice it to say it was frustrating.

We stayed out but never saw another buck deer.  Only does.

On the way in, when we hit the junction with 287, it was like a parade.  Vehicles coming home in the dark from UW's Homecoming Game.  Something I've never seen, not even when I lived in Laramie.

It was also getting a lot colder and it was clearly going to snow.

It wasn't in the morning, however, and therefore the plan to get up and attend the 8:00 a.m. Mass across town seemed a solid one.  "Across town" was now the required option as the Priest at our parish changed the Mass time at the downtown church from 8:00 to 9:00, also moving the 11:00 to 11:30. This is part of a demographic change I understand, but it also means that those of us long habituated to 8:00 (at one time it was 7:30) now have to find another parish.

On the way out of the church after Mass, it was snowing.  And on the road home, it was snowing heavily.  By the time I checked the WYDOT site, the roads in and out of Laramie had closed. They'd closed in fact pretty early.

This proved to be particularly problematic for my daughter who had academic matters at UW she could not miss.  By noon it appeared it was not going to change and I decided to head back out hunting (I don't mind hunting in bad weather), but Long Suffering Spouse informed me that "you better wait until you see what they're going to do", which amounted to an instruction not to leave in anticipation of having to do something.

Now, Long Suffering Spouse has a unique manner of speech in which, when she wants somebody to do something, or somebody to correct something they are doing, rather than address the person directly, she comments on "People".  For instance, rather than say "Please take out the garbage" or simply command "Take out the garbage", she'll say "People need to take out the garbage".  This is something she comes by naturally as a learned behavior and its not going to be possible to break it, but it can be baffling if you are in a group. When she directs the comment to "people", there's only one of the people who it's being addressed to and she knows who it is.  That's not so obvious to other people.

About 2:30 she came into a room where I was reading and somewhat dozing and announced that "If people need to really get to Laramie they may need to go to Cheyenne and up through Ft. Collins".  As a little earlier in the day the possibility if me driving my daughter to Laramie if the roads opened up was discussed, while allowing my son to wait until the next day, and as I was the only one in the room, it was pretty clear to me that I was the "people" and this meant, "You need to drive her to Laramie and should plan on going through Ft. Collins".  She then went out to shovel snow.

I addressed my daughter on the topic and she was wanting to go for the aforementioned reasons so she packed right up, we loaded up in the old Dodge diesel truck and turned it on.  Long Suffering Spouse then came to the driver's window and asked "what are you doing?"  I informed her we were leaving, just as she'd instructed, and she disclaimed having done that.  I dismissed it and we headed off.

That may seem odd, but part of the "People" line of speech can be accompanied, if there's a decision to be made, by a long deliberative process.  This gets into our Ninth Law of Behavior, but Long Suffering Spouse really likes to debate options prior to making a decision, and if at all possible, to have somebody else make them.  It's not uncommon for options to be presented, for me to make a decision, and then still find options being presented well after the decision has been made.

This is a process that makes people who have that inclination comfortable and its hardly unique to her.  I've had at least one employee who was so extreme on it that absolutely nothing the employee did wasn't subject to a request for input, no matter how minor it was.  That's not the case here, it's just her decision making style.

That style, however, doesn't lend itself to making decision that need to be made immediately and I simply dismissed her question as being the typical one we'd have, in which a decision has been made and now we're getting extra options. We even do this on the way to dinner when we eat out.  Options are presented, I'm asked to make the decision, I do, and then on the way there, additional options are added.  Given as it was 3:00 p.m. and I was off for a long ride down and back, I left before additional options could be added, as there did not appear to be any.

The roads down to Cheyenne weren't great, but they weren't horrible either.  By the time we got to Cheyenne the Happy Jack Road was open to local traffic only, but by my reasoning Laramie is local.  So we turned off to take it.

But not before a Highway Patrolman stopped me on I80 on the portion of the road where it was closing.  He whipped around with flashing lights so I pulled over.  He then announced on his bull horn that I couldn't stop on the side of the road.

I was only stopped on the side of the road as he'd pulled me over.  He never even got out of his patrol car.

Anyhow, we found Happy Jack Road, which I haven't been on for more than thirty years, and started up it.  The road was in excellent shape. . . until the top.

The ten or fifteen miles on the summit were horrific and were among the worst roads I'd ever been on.  But we made it to Laramie without incident after a white knuckler up on top.

By the time I made it to Laramie, 287 and 487 were open, so I headed home the normal way.  Roads weren't awful, even if stretches weren't great, and I made it home about 10:00 p.m., much earlier than I expected, but late for me.

It turned out I'd totally misinterpreted Long Suffering Spouse's "People" instruction and in fact she had only brought the topic up as an interesting topic of discussion with no intention whatsoever to send anyone off on such a trip.  Indeed, it turned out she was horrified the entire time and didn't think anyone should have hit the road at all.

I'd been up since about 3:00 a.m. and so when we got home, about dark, I was pretty tired.  That evening, however, my son suddenly recalled that he'd meant to tell me that there'd been a little water on the floor down at my mother's old house.  He attributed it to condensation from the water heater as the thermostat had been set low and it had turned cold.  I feared something else.

I was right.  The bottom of the gas water heater had rusted through.  This was confirmed the second I saw the water heater, which was at about 11:00 p.m.

In my son's defense, he hadn't experienced this before and he's been fortunate to grow up in a house with very few plumbing problems.  Thinking back it seems to me that our home when I was a kid was constantly afflicted with plumbing problems.  I suspect hat this is one of those areas in which the march of technology has made things much more reliable, as it has with automobiles.  When I was a kid, the man of the house working on plumbing at least once a year was pretty normal, and I'd experienced prior water heater failures.  Now, this is pretty rare.

It took us about two hours to get the tank drained and the water turned off.  The plumbers came the next day and installed a new one.

Going to bed at 1:00 a.m. doesn't mean I get to sleep in the next day and so it was off to work at the normal time. Before that, however, I got a text that our ceiling was leaking at work.

And indeed it was.

Very recently the air conditioning system was worked on and it was immediately and ocrrectly suspected that this had something to do with the leak.  The leak was quickly addressed once somebody came to work on it, but that wasn't until about 3:00 p.m.

So during the day, it became leakier.

It's now fixed.

On the way out of the building in the evening, which was on my way to an evening meeting I had scheduled, the young Asian woman who is always very friendly asked what the floor sheet on the elevator was for.  She's among the very best dressed people in the building and was wearing either a white fur or faux fur.  "Ceiling leak" I replied.  "Old building", she replied back in her very thick accent (I've never been really sure where she's actually from, I'd like to ask, but I don't want to appear rude in doing so).

Well maybe.  But sort of just one of those things, recently.