Over Estimating Ourselves

After reading chapters 15-16 from Thank You For Arguing and being introduced to the fouls and fallacies we tend to make in our everyday lives. Funny enough, we use them in ways that harm us rather than help us. Likewise, I think there are two main reasons on why we tend to make these mistakes while arguing: 

1. We don't know the basis of rhetoric. We don't know how it works and much less we don't know the methods it employs in order to be a good arguer. 
2. We overestimate ourselves; we think we know how to argue when we really don't.

Consequently, we lose arguments or these turn into fights many times due to this. In this chapter we learned about Heinrich's first and only do-not-do. According to him, "never argue the inarguable" (Pg. 158). Out of this single rule different mistakes (he likes to call rhetorical fouls) branch out. Using any one of the fouls in a discussion will take you nowhere, and "simply make the deliberative argument impossible"(Pg.170). The problem is that we tend to use fallacies and this so called fouls in our daily lives more than we think. Rhetoric comes almost naturally to us  and we tend to follow a rudimentary pattern in the way we discuss and talk. Nonetheless, rhetoric is the art of organized and consice persuassion. Without proper education in rhetoric we can't develop our skills and won't be able to develop our instinctive argumentation methods.

Innuendo: (n.) an allusive or oblique remark or hint,
 typically a suggestive or disparaging one.

One typical foul or fallacy we tend to make in our everyday lives is the one of authority. Older people tend to abuse of their power and try to use it against its opponent (incorrectly). Not they only commit a fallacy of ommiting a choice, but they make a foul by using the incorrect tense. This is the classical father and 5 year old daughter "eat your vegetables because I say so" scenario: 

Dad: Eat your spinach

Me: No, I don't like it. 

Dad: Well eat it anyhow. I say so.

Me: Who are you to tell me what to do?

Dad: Your father. You live in my home, under my rules, now you have to eat them.

Me: Daddy, but I don't like them! (Starts crying) 

In this case the persuader, also known as  the father threatens me to eat my  vegetables without providing me with another choice. Furthermore, he employs the incorrect tense, the present. According to Heinrich's "it is more difficult to use the present tense to make a choice about the future." (Pg. 163) He should be using the future tense rather than the present or past tense. Nevertheless, instead of trying to ease me, persuade me, or seduce me into eating my food he tries to abuse of his power trying to force me. Instead of convincing me, he made his five year old  daughter cry. He didn't give my any choices to pick from, and he used the present tense. Two strikes in one. One more to go, Dad.