The other night we had an argument.
I think it was about whether people tend to feel some sense of duty to perform their jobs, whether or not they hate them.
(My characterization.)
And that argument became an argument about our respective styles of argument: me, obsessively fixated on reiterating my point in different ways until you agree with it; you, helpfully seeking to move the conversation forward, in many different directions, by disagreeing with my point.
This argument, in turn, became an argument about whether it’s ever productive to entertain these sorts of meta-communicative debates.
What does it do but ossify patterns we might otherwise transcend?
Create “an issue” by naming it?
Is the diagnosis worse than the disease?
Shouldn’t we just go to sleep?
Perhaps, perhaps…