The term "patience is a virtue" couldn't be more true in arguing. They say that the formula for comedy is time plus suffering, so what would be the proper formula for a good argument? Well, i guess it is safe to say that there isn't one, but there is one way to use time to make a good argument, almost exactly how it is used in comedy. The ancients had a word for it: kairos, the art of seizing the perfect instant for persuasion. Just like parents have their "parenting moment"-an opportunity to make a point-persuaders have their persuasive moment. A person with kairos knows how to spot when an audience is most vulnerable to her point of view, and then exploit the opportunity as much as possible. Say you wanted to convince an enemy of yours to come to school in a clown suit. First of all, that is pure evil. Second of all, this is not something that would be easy to convince someone of. So, you use your sneaky skills to find out that your enemy works for student counsel and recently got in trouble for not reading the school's emails and missing meetings. Now you know that if you send this person an email with a similar address as the school, they will most likely do whatever that email says to save their booties. You are using kairos by seizing the perfect instant for persuasion. You send that fake email and your enemy is at school the next day dressed like a clown. You then have yourself an evil laugh and go about your day.
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