The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 300

Built to Disagree 

ANDREW’S POV: 

Oliver made the foundational argument. Rules exist to protect everyone equally. Feelings are individual and variable. What I feel is not the same as what you feel and if we each act on our own feelings without the framework of shared rules we end up in conflict, not community. He gave examples. He was good. He sat down. 

Then the first speaker for the negative stood up. 

It was not Amelia. She was their closing speaker, which was the most important position, the one that had to pull everything together and leave the last impression on the judges. The negative’s first speaker was a girl named Priya from the year above who was very confident and who opened by asking the room a question. 

“Can anyone tell me,” she said, “what it feels like to be treated fairly?” 

She paused and let the room sit with it. 

“You can feel it,” she said. “You know it in your body when you have been treated fairly and you know it in your body when you have not. And that feeling, that sense of justice or injustice, is what every rule we have ever written was trying to protect. Rules did not create fairness. The feeling of fairness created rules.” 

I noted this argument. It was a version of what I had anticipated. I had my rebuttal ready. 

The debate moved through its structure. Speakers alternated. Arguments were built and countered. I listened carefully to everything the negative said and I tracked which points had landed well with the judges by watching their faces and their note-taking. Dad had taught me this without meaning to, I had watched him do it in enough settings to understand that the people evaluating you were giving you information about how you were doing if you paid attention to them. 

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify