How to Win Every Argument.

One thing my Global Perspectives teacher said the other day really stuck with me. She said 'You can't have a fully formed opinion without a thorough understanding of both sides of the argument'.*

*Not verbatim.

This is one thing I've really had to work on these last few months or so. In Politics, we have to be able to debate both sides of an argument, regardless of your personal opinion. This is obviously beneficial because of like mark schemes and all that boring stuff but it also teaches you to be open to other opinions and really understand how someone could believe something different to you.*

*Most of the time it's not that deep. It's usually stuff like 'Should we have more referendums?' - gritty stuff, I know.

We had a debate in Biology last week about stem cell research and I had to argue on the against side. This was really hard for me because I am so passionate about new scientific discoveries and giving people the best possible chance of survival, but am also Christian so believe in preserving life. So, not only was this internal debate going off in my mind, I also had to piece together the couple of kinda lame ideas I'd had in preparation for the debate into a comprehensive argument.*

*I'm prone to headaches.

The outcome of the debate doesn't really matter (namely because it was a Biology lesson not the House of Commons) but what I took away from it was that I am finally starting to be able to clearly see two sides of a debate.

Writing that makes me realise how, to anyone else, this is like nothing. Being able to think is hardly an achievement. It reminds me of when your really fit, sporty friends are like 'Omg I got my PB in 100m backcrawl today' and you're like 'Please would you pass me the crisps'.

No-one cares.

This is just a bit of a heads up to people who strongly believe something. People won't take you seriously in an argument/debate if you don't consider their opinion.*

*This is coming from my experience of many, many hopeless arguments where I forgot that it is possible to not agree with my opinion. (Like, what?)

So be acceptant, open-minded and most importantly, kickass.