Michael's RR

Argument is not to be something we are suppose to be afraid of in America. Understandably some cultures do not argue and that is okay. But in America people sometimes make it more than it really is. For instance when a person disagrees with somebody they are afraid to stand up for themselves, these people are sometimes referred to as pushovers. So the cycle continues until some brave soul stands up and defeats the bully. Metaphorically, this would be considered a close-ended argument, and is not what our argument paper should look like.

This is not what Bruce Ballenger is portraying in his essay at all. In fact I would go so far as to say that Bruce is referring to everyday things, an argument with an open-ended ending. I am talking about things like: when a person might come to BSU wearing a Vandals logo. He would be arguing that in some way the Vandals are better than the Broncos. I am not just referencing scores at a sports game, but that the Broncos are not good enough for his money or advertising space. Ultimately the Vandals just mean more to that person.

I began to realize that anything and everything we do is an argument. This Vandals vs. BSU could be more of an open-ended argument if based on Ballenger’s open model process. However, we would have to start the argument without any initial opinion or belief.

I learned that we must dig deeper into our argument and show both sides rather than just being set in our opinions. I really liked Ballenger’s example of Huckleberry Finn. I believe this example will help me to create evidence based reasons for either traditional medicine or modern medicine for that portion of my paper.

“To argue well is an act of imagination, not a picking of sides.” - Ballenger. Indeed I must look at my arguments through a variety of angles, but without losing my claims. I think I might tell a story to demonstrate the effectiveness of traditional medicine while still using evidence from a scientific article to back this treatment.