Why Teenagers Win Arguments

An essay about political opinions, influence, Winston Churchill and J.D. Salinger that I hope you won't share with a teenager.

A few years ago, I lost an argument to a teenager. I was in my mid-thirties. It was a demoralizing experience, to say the least.

I had only myself to blame. I used my self-appointed and highly imaginary role as a cool adult to influence the teenager. And I mostly argued against the quote-unquote mistakes I had made.

By the end, I was talking in circles, defending things - doing your homework was one - on grounds so intellectually and morally flimsy I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. At one point in our discussion, the teenager lit a ten-dollar bill on fire. I was routed.

My own daughter is now eight years old, willful and bright. I live in fear of the arguments ahead.

Smelling weakness

Teenagers win these scuffles, and know it, even if they lose the war. For their own selfish reasons, teenagers question everything grownups know - how we know it, how we got so sure, and why - if we’re so sure and so right - we’re still arguing so desperately.

They seem to sense that they’re being set up to pay an insurmountable bill with every new assumption they agree to. I know I did.

It’s clear to a clever fifteen-year-old that adults don’t have a rigorous basis for much of what they assume to be true. This is mostly because people make their assumptions based on a very motivated form of reasoning. The flaws in these assumptions are obvious to a teenager, simply because they have different motivations.

The pet obsessions of adulthood, like property ownership, career advancement, defensive class awareness and political opinions, certainly don’t look like much fun. Teenagers see the way their parents are hemmed in and on the hook. Teenagers don’t like the look of it. And teenagers - seriously, please don’t tell them -  are mostly right.

Unsentimental education

Being a genius teenager who sees through the idiocy and hypocrisy of the world is part of what makes the lessons of young adulthood so hard.

It’s accepting what you know better than accepting - the money, the status, the necessity of the laws, the endless praise of authorities, the jockeying for position that passes for public debate. It’s stooping to play by that worldview simply because you have new fears and desires, as a wholly responsible individual in a world ruled by habit and fear.

Salinger and sympathy

You can take this perspective dangerously far. All you have to do is withdraw all sympathy from adults. J.D. Salinger does this in the name of kindness and truth. And it’s part of why he’s so intoxicating for a moment, but falls so flat once that moment has passed.

It’s almost easy for a child to be enlightened. The last of his nine stories, Teddy, is kind of about this. But kids of all sorts have shocking observations and seem to easily take or leave the worst of human nature easily, at least sometimes.

Enlightenment, even of the mildest sort, is harder for a grownup. You have more pressure and responsibility, more desires and doubts. You’re farther from the blankish slate of birth and farther from the promised release of death. You’re better at deceiving yourself.

But the longer you’re an adult, the more you should be able to sympathize, even with the worst of us. To withdraw sympathy from adults seems to be a willful refusal of responsibility. As for Salinger, his decision to withdraw sympathy from functioning adults seemed to me hypersensitive and overly simplistic after a while. I wondered why he did it. Then I remembered World War Two.

Acquiring opinions

Adulthood is less a position or a philosophy than it is a condition, like arthritis or hypoxia. One of its defining symptoms is that we identify more with our captors and guardians.