Throughout my life, I鈥檝e witnessed 鈥 and sometimes participated in 鈥 countless debates, both in person and, more recently, online. And in all these years, I have yet to see a single case where the participants actually convinced each other. Never have I heard one side say, 鈥淵ou know what, you鈥檙e right 鈥 I鈥檝e changed my mind and now support your point of view.鈥 Not even a softening of positions seems to happen. At best, people part ways with a polite, 鈥淲ell, we couldn鈥檛 convince each other 鈥 good luck.鈥 At worst, they become enemies.
At school, we were taught that 鈥渢ruth is born from argument.鈥
But experience suggests otherwise. In most cases, nothing is born 鈥 except exhaustion. In my own life, what often dies in these encounters is the desire to continue engaging with the other person at all.
Let鈥檚 take a concrete example. Suppose you meet someone who says:
鈥淲e鈥檝e never lived as well in Armenia as we have these past seven years.鈥
You try to push back:
鈥淏ut what about the defeat? What about the victims? What about the loss of Artsakh, the territorial losses of Armenia?鈥
And the reply is:
鈥淲hat does Nikol have to do with any of that?鈥
End of conversation. Dead end.
You each have your own definition of what it means to 鈥渓ive well.鈥 And nothing you say will bridge that gulf.
So what can change people鈥檚 views?
Ruben Vardanyan once said: personal example, self-sacrifice. And he didn鈥檛 just say it 鈥 he acted on it. But let鈥檚 be honest: it doesn鈥檛 really work. Even with Ruben, much of society looked for some hidden motive, some foreign 鈥渁ssignment.鈥
Is there any point in arguing with such suspicion? I don鈥檛 think so.
In theory, opinions can only shift when circumstances change 鈥 when people feel the impact of reality directly, on their own skin.
But in an environment flooded with propaganda 鈥 churning endlessly from murky sources 鈥 even that may not be enough. People may be too 鈥淪hell-shocked鈥 to feel it at all.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN