By admin 
By Maria Popova
Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and disorientation, is that they turn human beings into opinion machines. We dope our pain and confusion with false certainties that stifle the willingness to understand (the nuances of the situation, the complexity of the wider context, what it’s like to be the other person) with the will to be right. Our duels of self-righteousness can be fought over whose turn it is to take out the trash or who should govern the country, they can take place on the scale of the planet in the language of nuclear weapons or on the scale of the kitchen table in the code language of lovers, but they are always a betrayal of our deepest humanity — the capacity to understand, the longing to be understood, the knowledge that everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they’ve got and the cards they’ve been dealt.
Corinna Luyken, maker of tender and thoughtful illustrated aids for living, animates the absurdity of these duels with playfulness and charm in The Arguers (public library).
The story begins as a bickering over whether a brush or a comb would better detangle the king’s beard and ends up, in the wildfire way of righteousness, as an argument about everything and a national sport.
Soon they argued all the time,
until no one could remember
when the arguing had started
or over what,
or by whom.
They argue with each other and with the flowers and the stones.
They grow so skilled at it — “they could argue forward and backward, right side up and upside down… in fog and sun and sleet and snow” — that the king and queen decide to hold a contest for their nation or arguers.
On the day of the contest, things take an unintended turn.
The story ends with a wink, but is at heart a warning: arguing is counterfeit problem-solving, an argument is a barricade against understanding, and self-righteousness is a fist you open to find your kindness crushed.
Couple The Arguers with philosopher Daniel Dennett on how to criticize with kindness, then revisit Joan Didion on learning not to mistake self-righteousness for morality.