Arguing our Asses off.

Argumental Studies & Leadership Programs
 
http://www.aiki-extensions.org/pubs/liberal_martial_arts.pdf
 
A former dean of University of Chicago compares  liberal art
to martial arts, arguing one’s ass off (so to speak) as a good
thing as opposed to the domestic violence it often connotes
in popular culture making it hard to give it room in the inn,
put it in play as heart of  liberal art.
 
“We don’t teach our students how to argue”—the then dean
sent me this declaration from  an educational conference on
education. Fight Club appeared  in movie houses about the
same time, criticized for its hard knuckle bare belly & bone
ultimate psychological allegorizing: fighting one’s ass off.  
Israelic: wrestling with God.
 
              The heart of the heart of
                    the  Liberal Art
 
    Arguing our asses off.
 
I accused my Presbyterian
preacher dear old man:
“You’re ego’s big as a
house, Pops,” I hissed:
 
And Dad: “Yes. But
mine’s  crucified.”

Had his ass argued off,
so  to speak. Unscrew
the belly-button and
it bounces on the
ground.. Crucial.
 
An assumption
greatly to be
desired..
 
Some girls-in-class write
their first person pronoun
in lower-case signifying
an-ass-argued-off, so to
speak: ego  sent to the
cellar like Madeline
Usher
 
Out! Out!  damned spot:
leave me nothing but
immaculate conceptions.   

               Argument
Indo European. arg –“to shine,
the shining.” brilliance, clarity;
in Latin: arguere: to make clear,
demonstrate: monstrare, monstrum,
monstrous—showing a revelation,
an apocalypse crying out loud 
          
A good thing, the liberal art.
To argue our asses off, non-
unilateral  reciprocating back
& forth sustained converse-
actional wars of  contrition..
 
Edification. .
 
Jason and the Argonauts sail for
Golden Fleece  &  the City of
Shining Lights arguing
their asses off...
 
Building this city with rocks
& rolls toward shared vision
& dreams of a common
language, arguing our
asses off.
 
Liberal Art.
 
(As opposed to the liberal arts,
those vocational majors and
minors we provide prerequisite
sequential and capstone courses in:
physics, chemistry, biology, sociology,
psychology, economics…all those
courses of another color where
arguing one’s ass off needn’t
apply & is a distraction.
There’s a difference.)