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i was having a conversation with some guys about the anarchist principles and activism and we came to debate about how could social organization be any different. well, first we were talking about why it should change and what would we want to see. but then we were talking about what we'd like to see based on what is possible or not to happen. we changed the direction from philosophical priciples to practical matters. so i realized that often people don't follow a very straight line when debating (informally), and end up going through a variety of subjects without much objectivity, not even realizing they are doing so for that matter, which is not very productive. anyway, I'm bringing this up because i think analysing debate itself is very illuminating because we can have clear view of where its heading. so we should address it directly. my main point: if we want to have good communication we have to be aware of how it's happening (to say, of course, we must study it). so, while we're at it, let's take the situation above. did you ever have simmilar experiences? do you think this change of subject in a debate is frequent? what makes a good debate and a bad one? P.S.: 1- i think that changing peoples minds relies much more on how we try to do it than the actual content our ideas 2- one of the guys said something like other countries wouldn't tolerate a stateless society, people wouldn't let that happen and i wasn't very sure how to respond to that. it's an abstraction of course (and i think it's a very misleading direction to take) but if you could help me out here with some posts/links suggestions so I can study that, i'd appreciate it