Argument Without Anger

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 462, 30 April 1948, Page 13

Argument Without Anger

N contrast with Citizens’ Forum, it " might be argued that Let’s Have it Out began on perhaps too highbrow a plane. I doubt if anyone who appreciated the first-named programme would concentrate with more than half an ear on the second, although the latter was a much more entertaining and stimulating session. Here there was no halting lack of conviction in putting forward ideas; although ‘the speakers had obviously given prior thought to the subject, they gave free rein to their imaginations and the result was as natural as spontaneous conversation. The listener, as at so many Brains Trust programmes, had the sensation of eavesdropping on a private fireside chat between people of more than average intelligence, and the suggested ideas must have -borne fruit even in the most comatose mind. This kind of discussion, with carefully-selected people taking part, is far. removed from the ordinary acrimonious argument which so often crops up when average people get together in groups. It would do most of us a great deal of good to eavesdrop a little further, with the idea of discovering how to argue without

getting angry, without losing the thread of the discussion, and with open miad for the reception of the other man’s viewpoint. Now that the radio is open to discussion, programmes like Citizens’ Forum and Let’s Have it Out, as well as the future sessions promised by the presence in our midst of Donald McCvyllough, are playing a big part in educating us all to be more reasonable in the evalution of new ideas and in the methods by which we hope to convert other people to our own,