Sometimes when arguing we get locked in a position, so much so that we are too fixated to give way.
Recently I was chatting via e-mail and I got into a tete-a-tete with a chaveir. He agreed with several of my points but noted that my last point lacked evidence. As we argued he noted I was too stubborn to see that I was wrong. That might have been true. And so I enlisted 3 outsiders to comment via a disguised version of our debate.
1 outsider completely agreed with my chaveir, whilst 2 took partially agreed with each of us.
It later occurred to me that my chaveir himself was no less adamant or peristent upon his own point of view, but I had to let that go...
R Hirsch comments:
[P. 493]
"He does not stubbornly insist upon the validity of a statement which he has made once. If he sees, or learns, that he has made an error, he will be ready and willing to concede that he has been wrong."
Of course a real golem is probably too blind to ever see his own error! That means that extreme persistence robs one not only of objectivity but of the memschlichkeit expected of a "ben Avraham"
KT
RRW
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