What are the conditions for discussion?
A reader sent me a 700 word e-mail which began:
Mr. Auster:
While I would defend with my life your right to have an opinion, I have no respect whatsoever for your actual views on evolution.
I stopped reading his email at that point and wrote back to him:
“While I would defend with my life your right to have an opinion, I have no respect whatsoever for your actual views on evolution.”
Well, that’s not a very helpful way to start a letter. Sort of inhibits any interest in reading further, you know what I mean?
He replied:
I feel that I’m well within the bounds of civility to state the fact that I do not value your arguments against what I consider to be a robust, compelling scientific theory.
It is a goal of mine to refrain from name-calling and ad hominem attacks, and I don’t think you’ll find any in my note.
If your forum is truly dedicated to the civil exchange of ideas, I would hope that you read what I had to say, and would appreciate a response from you in the same vein in which it was written.
I replied:
I ask you to reconsider your belief that starting off an e-mail to a person by telling him that you have “no respect whatsoever” for his views is “well within the bounds of civility” or indeed is remotely likely to get that person to want to get into a discussion with you.
Obviously for there to be a discussion, people must respect each other’s views at least to the extent of wanting to hear what the other person has to say. If there is no respect whatsoever, then there is no common ground and no basis for discussion. Indeed, when people come to realize that they have no respect for other people’s views, that is normally the point at which discussion BREAKS DOWN, not the point at which it BEGINS.
Since you have no respect for my views, the appropriate thing for you to do is write an article or blog entry criticizing my views, not to seek to get into a discussion with the very person for whose views you have no respect.
- end of initial entry -
Adela G. writes:
A reader writes: “While I would defend with my life your right to have an opinion, I have no respect whatsoever for your actual views on evolution.”
What a great conversation non-starter, sure to replace the outmoded question, “What is your sign?”, which actually requires the would-be interlocuter to reply.
This pronouncement combines the speaker’s—or writer’s—interest in the principle of free speech with a cavalier lack of regard for any speech that might ensue, thereby effectively closing off any and all lines of verbal communication. (I find the “whatsoever” a particularly nice touch.)
What an improvement on my mother’s rather high-handed, “Shut up. If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you,” that cast a regrettable, if understandable, pall over so many family discussions.
LA replies:
“This pronouncement combines the speaker’s—or writer’s—interest in the principle of free speech with a cavalier lack of regard for any speech that might ensue…”
As others have said, Adela is really on a roll.
Speaking of astrology, readers may be interested in my thoughts on that subject, from a VFR discussion some time back.
LA wrote to Adela:
Fantastic comment.
Adela replies:
Thank you.
But as practice makes perfect, I can hardly take credit for being able to marshal a rapid response to what is, essentially, a verbal attack. The moment I read that provocative first sentence, I was back in familiar terrain. You could say it made me feel right at home.
My mother managed to silence dissent in a way even Stalin might have envied (as it was so much less labor-intensive than his own methods). The delicious irony is that a high-handed liberal raised three children who all became conservative adults.
Paul K. writes:
What an astonishingly arrogant approach your reader has. He asks you to give him the most valuable things you have to give—your time and attention—while informing you that he places no value on them whatsoever. He assumes that you will find what he has to say enormously persuasive and worthy of comment, but lets you know in advance that whatever response you give is of no interest to him. Nevertheless, he expects you to give him a response, perhaps as penance for your misguided ways.
I can’t imagine addressing a two-year-old child in this manner. I can’t even imagine speaking to George W. Bush like this.
LA replies:
Yes, that’s the funniest part of it—and the most manipulative. He tells me that whatever I have to say is of absolutely no value to him, and then he says that he would appreciate my response! … and, further, that if I don’t respond, that shows that VFR is not “dedicated to the civil exchange of ideas”!
Terry Morris writes:
“While I would defend with my life your right to have an opinion, I have no respect whatsoever for your actual views on evolution.”
So your reader values your right to have an opinion, an opinion which he has no respect whatsoever for, over his life, which, what, evolutionism has taught him to have even less respect for? hmmm … if ever there was a reason to abandon the teachings of evolutionism.
I agree with the consensus view, Adela is on a huge roll. Very very impressive lady! And I think that’s a tribute to VFR as much as anything else.
LA replies:
Mr. Morris has brought out another angle on this that has me laughing out loud. How could a belief in, and the reality of, the evolution of mankind via Darwinian survival of the fittest possibly lead a person to be willing to sacrifice his life to defend views for which he has absolutely no respect???
Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 25, 2008 02:03 PM | Send