Arguments are moot?

So I went for a late meal last night with my two friends Savanna and Katie. It was good to have a relaxed meal with these two amazing girls and share some laughs. The two of them had been working 'till 9 that night and I had been working all day and night and getting quite frustrated. A break was definitely in need.
Over the meal we got to talking about arguments and whether or not there actually was any benefit to them, or just sources of frustration and anger. Some popular topics of argumentation arose as examples - religion, language. I citied the specific meaning of words as both a common misconception that causes arguments and the question: "Do words have definitive or transient meanings?" one of my many frequented arguments.
One thing I made clear last night and I will make clear now is that I like to debate (I'm on my school's debate team) and question everything. I also know that this can annoy other people, so I try to limit these activities to the right audiences.

What I realized through our conversation is that when most people are arguing their point there are a few things that commonly occur:

1) People don't listen to the other point as way to say, "My point is right because I don't even have to listen to you"

2) People don't give up and will stubborly argue their point to the point of anger

3) Most people see arguments as a fight rather than an exploration of truth negative.

As you can tell, these three realizations would identify arguments to be commonly perceived as negative. I wish it wasn't this way. Maybe argumentation is a lost form of conversation, but I would rather not give up but rather try to curve the perception back to the essence of argumentation - an attempt to discover the truth of a two-sided issue. If people would practice more tolerance (at least conversational tolerance) then perhaps arguments wouldn't have such a negative aurora. I think the real problem is people's unwillingness to listen to someone telling them they are wrong.

I would ask these people, "What gives you the right above someone else to speak your version of the truth?" Because, really, what we say is "truth" is something quite personal to ourselves. We are all individuals with our own unique perceptions of the world. We discover through exploration and conversation. Rather than sacrificing such a great tool -argumentation - we should practice more tolerance. It is hard to say, "I may be wrong here," or at least, "Even though this point is completely the opposite of what I believe, it has just as much right to be heard as my point," but for the sake of truth, justice, and some really great arugments (and yes, even some poor ones) thinking like this is necessary.