This week Woody discusses the idea of ideas and argues in favour of argument.
Hello. We here at By Jove HQ love equality. It’s really rather high up on the list of our favourite things. In fact it’s so high up that its only realistic rivals for top spot are theatre and the phrase “I’m putting the kettle on, does anybody else want a drink?” Put simply we believe that a person’s sex/gender/sexuality/race/class doesn’t make a difference in how much that person matters. All humans should be equal. Or, more correctly, all humans are equal and so should be treated as such. The sad fact is that there are times when people are judged for what boxes they tick in those categories, and quite how they are judged depends on what combination of what boxes they tick. (The combination bit is called “Intersectionality”, I think – I learned the word recently and am keen to see if I understand it enough to use it correctly. If I understand enough things about equality maybe I’ll get the badge I was promised.) By Jove thinks people being judged for these identities is wrong so we fight the idea.
Notice what I said there? Or rather what I didn’t say? I DID NOT say “we think it’s evil so we hate the people who do it.” Did you notice that? Well done if you did; have a gold star and a big smiley face on your homework. Don’t worry if you didn’t notice it, just go back and notice it now – it will be important for what follows. I am not going to dehumanise people who disagree with me by turning them into some hateful “other” to be crushed. Re-conceptualising people into something alien to be feared and fought doesn’t end nicely (Cf vast tracts of human history). The thing about equality means you have to grant the same rights to those who oppose you as your supporters, otherwise things aren’t equal.
Equality for its own sake is a perfectly good thing, but that is not the only reason I did not use “hate” and “evil” up there. Hate is destructive and often self-destructive so it’s best avoided. Evil is such a weighted word that it’s seldom useful when talking about reality; it’s a word that tends to stop conversation. Conversation can be immensely enjoyable – it’s one of my favourite things to do – it is also useful. You see, when people talk about an idea – whatever it may be – the idea gets look at more closely than when it’s just kicking about in their heads doing whatever it is ideas do in their free time – like writing Renee Descartes fanfiction. Looking closely at ideas means one can understand it more clearly. It generates answers to all sorts of questions such as: what does the idea entail?; what are the consequences of the idea?; why do people who do or do not hold the idea do so? This can affect whether an idea is taken up, discarded, or modified. Done in a spirit of play this is great fun; done in a spirit of seriousness this generates essays. Either way, which ideas people hold can drastically change the world. More properly, it changes people, then the people change the world. Think about the differences in a society when we change the amount of people who hold the idea that homosexuality is a perversion or a mental illness for example.
I’m perhaps labouring the point, but it is very important that you understand that ideas can have enormous power. What ideas don’t have is feelings. You cannot make an idea upset or angry. You cannot make an idea go all defensive. If you are seeking to make the world a new and better place, some parts of the old one may need to be torn down. I urge you to tear down ideas, not people. Tearing down people is messy and time-consuming. Tearing down ideas can be equally time consuming, but it’s nowhere near as hard on the carpets; as an added bonus you also have all these un-torn people whom you can invite to see your play, and go to bed with.
Feel free to disagree with people. Feel free to oppose every aspect of their worldview. If what they’re saying about, for example, “what women are good for” strikes you as arse-gravy of the worst possible kind, then call them out on it. The important thing is to call them out on their ideas. A person perhaps doesn’t know WHY what they are saying strikes you as stupid, hurtful, and damaging to the world, or perhaps they don’t even know it does strike you that way. You have every right to look them in the eye and tell them that they’re wrong, as much right as they have to do the same to you. One of you might even change the other’s mind.
The possibility of changing people’s minds is key. This is how progress is made. I’ll admit it can also be irritating. I changed my regular pub for a time once after the third time in a row the same bloke tried to “save me” from my atheism. Equally, I avoided a chap I knew after he used without irony the immortal phrase “all religious people are stupid”. Neither of them argued well (I know most of the points on either side of that one, I did my research when I was working out my own stance and the core arguments don’t change.) What irritated me more was the lack of respect they showed. By respect I don’t mean that oddly common concept that religious ideas are sacrosanct and not up for discussion. I mean that neither seemed able to understand that the other side of the debate a) genuinely believed what they professed, b) had reasons to do so. I’m not “denying what I know in my heart to be true to spite God”; theists aren’t “involved in a conspiracy to deny evidence and maintain power”. Similarly, in politics people on the Right don’t wake up thinking “let’s see how big a bastard I can be today” and people on the Left aren’t “engaged in a scam to avoid working for a living”. It’s mostly a case of valuing different things by different amounts mixed with a little bit of ignorance. One side is wrong, but with any question we’re not going to move away from wrong and towards correct by just shouting dogma and propaganda at each other.
Oh, and if you do have a series of arguments in favour of an idea, try to make them sing. Make it funny or beautiful as well as true; perhaps put them into a new piece of high-quality theatre. Maybe send me a couple of comp tickets. Now that would be a good idea.
