On Playing Center

As usual today, I was wandering the various semi-intellectual corners of the internet, looking for arguments to follow. As usual, things did not go over well. Watching the debates that go on online is kind of like violent ping pong. One side sends some bigoted insult with half a cogent claim stuck in there, the other responds in kind. On and on they go, when they stop...they don't. Maybe it's just the internet. If so, then that's a problem considering how important the internet is for the acquiring of information. If not, well, things aren't any better.

I have here a particular argument in mind. It's the God argument. One side does this: "Do you explain all the good deeds in the world as selfishness? Would you render people as nothing? You reject the very meaning of human existence! You are foolish to deny the truth!" The other, like clockwork: "What are you, stupid? Believe in your magic happy lands of fairies and dragons, I'll stick with facts, thank you very much!"

There may be something in both of these arguments. However, neither side is willing to see it. This is, of course, because neither side listens to anything the other says unless they think they can come up with some retort. Instead, the other side is wrong. That's it, end of story, I'm going home to The Truth.

Well, no. Is life really so black and white that you have all the right and they have all the wrong? Is the opponents' view just a twisted inversion of your own? Such a reduction is dangerous at the least. It's perhaps the main reason that it's so easy to stop listening sometimes. Both sides shout past each other, and that's the whole show. Sometimes somebody will change their mind and move to the other side. When that happens, it's a huge event. This is the first sign of a problem. Then, the side that they moved to hails the victory of fact and reason, and politely asks the opposing side to surrender with shame. It's as if the other side had bewitched them, but they're better now. That's the second problem.

All of this, of course, assumes that an opponent is completely empty, nothing more than a container filled with lies and evil cackles. Yet opposing views have a life span, a history, trials, and the pressures of the moment. You don't achieve a worldview overnight. Of course, this is ignored. They're wrong, after all. How much more complicated could it be?

Well, if you asked, you might find out just how complicated it can be. But you never ask. The opponent goes from being somebody who disagrees to somebody who is actively trying to sabotage you to evil itself. Then people die. They die because the other guy is wrong, but is unwilling to "see the light." This is, of course, because you must be right.

This is the story of so many shouting matches. Sometimes they turn to shooting matches. One would like to hope, however, that the majority of mankind is more sensible than this. And really it seems so. They don't want to destroy. They are passive.

This passivity, however, is its own problem. Because while they prefer to sit, those who spend their lives combating evil shout and curse and beg for "reasonableness." The faces that plaster screens and books are the angry ones, the ones with a mission. And frankly, they're the ones that are listened to do. A moderate voice simply doesn't "sell." It takes time, it introduces problems. A voices of judgment makes things much simpler. He explains your feeling with so many well-chosen words, and puts both the problem and solution right in your hand. Demosthenes was good at this, as was Hitler. It seems that for loud men, spotting enemies is easier than opening one's mind to them.

So there are a few loud people, and a mass in the middle. The loud men, bold as they might be, cannot act alone. They need support. They need the people. That is where the battle must be fought, if one is to do anything about it. The question is, how? Must we rouse the people to battle for unsettled ideals and an oftentimes iconoclastic self-examination? Most people don't want to, and so should we force them (that would seem to completely ruin the point, wouldn't it)? Merely asking them to listen can work, but not often enough. A measured voice attracts few crowds. So the challenge is to find a way to rise above the din of battle. This matters in so many contexts and for so many reasons. Lives could be saved, and the world as a whole could be improved with understanding. Practical realities, however, make us question if it is possible. How do you ask the outspoken to quiet down long enough to listen to the life story of evil and ask whether or not it deserves better? How do you look a nation in the eye and say, "I can't give you the Sun in the palm of my hand. In fact, I may crush the foundations of your existence, but I ask for your ears nonetheless"? Socrates tried to do it, but his reward was an unjust death at the hands of the men he was trying to guide. It's disheartening to say the least.

I would like to conclude with an answer, or at least a finger pointed down one path. That's not something I can do. I can only ask for one's patience. I hope I'm not alone, and I don't believe that I am. I find people who are willing to listen, drifting in an unforgiving sea. I'm also not Socrates. Even if I were I couldn't see myself making it far. As Socrates must have learned, to guide people requires first that you ask for their hand, and second that they offer it to you. The question is how you get a person who's spent a lifetime amidst the blaring of so many furious trumpets to hear whispers of a different view. And on that, I'm off to think. Sometimes, to ask. When necessary, to correct myself (although I still have trouble admitting when I'm wrong). That is what is called self-improvement. And only on a bloody, dangerous staircase can we make our way towards something that may be called better.