the silent treatment

I believe somewhere else (Rude people 2) I argued for the reasons to remain silent when faced with a rude person, this particular post is in continuation from the earlier Nietzsche post and that one. I am curious to see if I end up contradicting myself, not that i am averse to the idea :)

Let me state the problem : When someone is arguing with you how polite is it to let them do the talking and just never bother responding, giving them the silent treatment?

it goes without saying that each situation is different and it is hard to make generalizations, but still there must be some basic principles that govern our interactions.

If the other person is arguing about something then it obviously means something to them. you only have two choices you can try to engage them and continue the conversation or you can choose to not respond. When you engage in a conversation there are chances that you might get carried away and say demeaning rude stuff you might live to regret later. There is always that chance. Besides, if you say something, they are more than likely to respond, and you will be faced with the same choice, to respond or not? which can turn into an infinite loop. How are you ever going to get out of it? So on the surface, the silent treatment, seems valuable. It breaks the cycle, without your ever saying a bad word.

When you give them a cold shoulder, you can get them to shut up for sure, though i think you cannot claim to have been very civil even then. because choosing not to say anything is a potent, violent choice, it hurts them. It is a powerful argument, one that is impossible to refute. There is nothing to prove false, nothing to negate, or challenge - nothing has been put on the table. They do not have many choices left at the end of it, they can choose to keep yelling at you, but it would be futile, you are not replying or they can shut up, in which case they still feel bad because come to think of it, the ball was in your court and you walked away. Whatever else you may want to believe, or make this out to be, you must accept that that in itself it is downright insulting.

In my opinion the silent treatment is not polite, it merely gives the illusion of politeness, it safeguards you from the reproach of having uttered anything objectionable, but it is not benign in any respect.

When you say nothing, the thing you say loud and clear is that you do not care about the other person at all, that even though they are so invested in the situation and this discord, you are not. You can just dust off your hands and leave. Its their problem. No, I am not saying that you should never use it. There are times when i use it too, but they are almost always times when i do not care about the person in front of me, i might have never cared about them from the beginning or i might have reached the point that they ceased to matter to me -atleast for the timebeing- i felt pushed, and caved in, for that time, it was more important to save my sanity than bother about them. The point is, you cannot love someone and still give them the silent treatment in the same moment*. The two - atleast to me - seem mutually exclusive.

Then, like all good warriors you must only use the weapon the situation merits. Using excessive force not only reflects poor judgment but also necessitates messy clean ups after. :) And guess who's going to be doing that? Yes, you! if you have a pricking conscience anything like mine, you are going to be waking up in the middle of the night going, oh damn, why do i do these things :D so when you do, just pick up the phone and call me, we will sit and wonder together, why indeed? :D

* with just one very special case, which I doubt if it is a true exception, i kind of think it is, but need to think about it some more. It just might be a rationalization that I have made up in my mind because there are those times when I have treated some people i love way too much shoddily, or some of them have treated me that way and i just refuse to believe they didn't love me for even one second so.... humph.