Essay: Productive Debate

I'd like to take a moment to discuss two trends I've seen in the anime community, trends that rather trouble me. One of these trends is what looks like an increasing amount of violent acting-out on the web. The other is a tendency in people who don't act out to avoid anything that even looks like confrontation like the plague. I suspect these are flipsides of the same coin.

The anonymity provided by the web, the opportunity to have potentially infinite different identities along with different names, is a fantastic tool for both exploring and building one's personality. Behind a virtual identity you can say things that fear of family or friends' reactions would prevent you from expressing elsewhere. The downside of this wonderful tool is that, with the assurance that a web-identity can't be traced back to a "real" identity, a lot of the social mechanisms that restrain verbal violence are disarmed or reduced in strength. The result seems to be a downright explosion of people acting on direct orders from their ids. This does not make for the safest or friendliest of environments. Anyone who wants some good reading on this topic should get something by Sherry Turkle.

On the other hand, there seems to be a reverse imperative running alongside this updated let-it-all-hang-out behavior. On the web, and even in my own classrooms, I see growing signs of a culture of non-confrontation. David Brooks, in an Atlantic Online article, notes that a lot of people are seeing the same trend: "Neil Howe and William Strauss surveyed young people for their book Millennials Rising (2000); they found America's young to be generally a hardworking, cheerful, earnest, and deferential group. Howe and Strauss listed their respondents' traits, which accord pretty well with what I found at Princeton: 'They're optimists ... They're cooperative team players ... They accept authority ... They're rule followers.' The authors paint a picture of incredibly wholesome youths who will correct the narcissism and nihilism of their Boomer parents" (src). Fantastic article, definitely food for thought; read it some time.

I certainly agree that some correction for narcissism and nihilism is in order, but what I'm seeing looks more like an overcorrection. The most benevolent version is one in which the basic motive is, Can we please all get along here and stop yelling? I'm right behind the "stop yelling" part, since as I mentioned above some people are getting pretty strident. It's the "all get along" part of the agenda that gives me pause. Because, face the facts people, it's never gonna happen. Instead, I would have us try the next best thing: productive disagreement.

I admit, I find it unspeakably relieving that the imperative behind non-confrontation seems to be an insistence that anyone can be or say whatever they want. This helps me believe that however much people shy away from disagreement the trend won't result in a fresh round of overt censorship. On the other hand, the undertone of this insistence disturbs me. One of my friends suggests that the reason we have so much trouble stimulating classroom discussions over disagreements is that our students have been trained in the worst form of cultural relativism by their school systems. They have been taught, she thinks, not some version of "you can't impose your beliefs and ideals on others, but you can and should make your own informed ethical judgments and act on them," but rather some form of "no one has any right to do or say anything negative about anyone else no matter what the behavior or belief in question." This is, as she points out, not teaching toleration it's teaching apathy. (Thanks to Emily L; can we get some feedback from my readers on this one? I've gotten two big votes yes, so far.) This theory would explain what I see in our community--the trend toward an ethos of "say what you want in your own space, but never ever speak up for the purposes of disagreeing with someone else."

This gets us to the more pernicious side of the trend, the side that stifles any debate on any subject in the name of all getting along. What genuinely frightens me is that I suspect a lot of people don't see this as a problem. I do. If my friend is right, and Brooks certainly seems to think she is, then what the non-confrontation trend expresses is a refusal to make ethical judgments. Or, in the extreme form, any judgments whatsoever. This is a problem. Even if mass refusal to make ethical judgments doesn't send the world directly to hell in a handbasket, it could easily blind us to the then-hidden code of ethics we function under. If we don't own our ethics, we have no opportunity to examine them and make sure they're what we really want to live by, and that's when we get covert censorship which is even harder to fight. I want us to bring our standards for judgment out into the open. I want us to feel confident enough in the standards we each choose to abide open disagreement.

In the interests of not scaring people off from this project, I also want us to be polite about it.

Productive debate is not screaming "you're wrong" at each other, nor does it have room for threats and coercion. Productive debate happens when people who disagree are able to calmly, and without invective or histrionics, discuss their points of difference and explore the reasons behind those differences. Productive debate happens when people are able to say "I don't agree and probably never will, but I respect your position," or even "I can't respect your position, but I see that I won't change your mind; perhaps we should talk about something else." Productive debate happens when people keep their cool, even if they feel passionately about what is under discussion. (Note from an English teacher: there's nothing like losing your cool to make you lose control of your argument and hence the debate.)

This means, for example, that a moderated mailing list should never ban a particular topic of discussion; that is not productive. If list members don't want to participate in said discussion, no one is forcing them to and nothing is stopping them from deleting every message from a particular sender without even reading it. When the moderator should get involved is when courtesy lapses; that's the time to send a general message reminding everyone of the list's standards of polite debate. Though this is sure to be a controversial stance, I don't believe anyone should be removed from a list even if she/he does systematically violate courtesy. Instead, a general message should go out, mentioning the offender, and warning list members that this person is not abiding by the list standards and messages from her/him can be deleted unread with no loss to list discussions. Trust me on this one, there's nothing someone who's acting out like that hates worse than being ignored.

Similarly, if you think that the content of someone's page is in some way wrong, a productive response is not to either ignore it or flame the author. A productive response is to go away and think about it, then come back and write a calm and clear email to the author expressing your disagreement and asking what the author's reasons for posting such content are. And if/when you get a response, think about that too. Does the author have a point? If so, it's only polite to acknowledge it if/when you write back.

I agree that getting into fights isn't usually much fun. Good discussions, on the other hand, can be lots of fun and even result in new friends to have more late-night email talks with, if everyone's lucky. The more we work with productive debate models, the more you may realize that the model can protect you from the screaming maniacs out there. After all, if the other person can't grasp basic courtesy and obviously has no intention of admitting any disagreement at all, you have no obligation to respect her/his opinion or accept the judgment of you that person has rendered. And if it eventually gets down to the judgment of your peers (on the web or in the court) your calm and your willingness to engage in productive debate will give you a significant edge.

So can we give it a try, please?