The Gentleman's Victory

My two favorite bloggers have a few things in common. They are literary and profound thinkers and I would say this is what defines their writings. Still I am irked by the same annoying quality in each of them: their unwillingness to stand up and fight.  

They will freely give their opinions, but they seldom move down into the trenches to defend them. One, whom I will call Burr in order to preserve his anonymity, is a far left, very out-spoken liberal, who virtually never answers a challenge to his position. His silence is not symptomatic of cowardice, as one who does not know him may erroneously conclude. It is something else. The other, whom I will call Vincent, appears more willing to give a slight rebuttal; but he also seems sanctimoniously intolerant of back and forth arguments.

I have had no problem filling the void they leave behind, a fact I will attempt to clarify after I tell you about my affection for chess.

It is considered a gentlemen’s game, and I suppose it is, in the same way that a duel is a gentlemanly way to settle a dispute. Chess is a noble battlefield, peopled with royalty, the King, the Queen, the sacrificial pawns and the majesty of its middle class. It all implies sophistication. In chess the winner knows it was he that won, and no one can attribute his victory to a random event; and the loser cannot console himself as the victim of a chance occurrence that worked against him.  If his ego is squashed, it is crushed purely, leaving no room for denial in the remains. No dice are rolled, no cards drawn, no fortune dealt. One person proves that in this instance and in this game, he is simply better than another one.

When I was younger, I loved to debate, but later in life the fire fizzled out. I appreciated the same virtue in debating that I saw in chess. You strategically outwit your opponent, and nothing is left to fate. I misused the debate, just as I misused chess. Passionate debates often seemed to result in hurt feelings and never accomplished anything. As I recall, I always won my debates and I fear that I alone own those memories. As I matured, I articulated the idea that a desire to debate is really a desire to conquer and this realization slowly dampened the fire inside me.

After years of rhetorical silence, I discovered the joy of blogging. There you could debate and withdraw on your own timeline. So long as you are respectful, no harm done. Philosophical and political bloggers often claim a search for clarification of truth as a motivation for their hobby. Don’t believe it. Bloggers blog because they enjoy blogging. Debaters debate because they enjoy debating.

I love reading the sites of opinionated people with unique thoughts or creative expressions. It is an educational pastime, a playground where intellectual discourse and lively discussion abide. I typically comment on conservative-minded blogs more often than I do on liberal ones, as I often find little to contribute to an article when I  largely agree with its conclusions.

A liberal response given on a conservative blog is really just a rebuttal. It seems OK. The conservative author expects it, probably welcomes it. Just ask him. But what am I really trying to do? I find an article written as a form of art or expression or sharing of an intellectual idea by a well-intentioned writer and I attempt to refute it, to invalidate its worth and to defeat its author’s ideas; to what end? Blog articles express opinions that are the natural result of other, more fundamental, deep-seated philosophies. Nothing anyone can say about the subject of a blogger’s article will typically change his mind or his thinking. To argue that I am trying to engage in discovery or mutually beneficial intellectual exchange of ideas seems a bit hypocritical. If this is the motivation of a blog commenter, his efforts are sorely misplaced, as it rarely works, and he would do better reading a book or donating his time to a soup kitchen.

No one seriously comments on blogs to change his own opinion, as he knows himself to be right and would not post a refuting comment in order to get a rebuttal that would convince him of something wrong. If he makes a long argument, he does so not to discover data, but because he believes he has the right data already. So, the commenter must comment either to change the opinion of someone else, someone who is statistically as likely to be right as the commenter himself, or to get his own opinion challenged, to sharpen his blades, and prepare him to outwit his next victim.  Whenever a blog commenter tells himself that he is merely trying to strengthen his grasp of truth, he is probably trying to fool you, but he may have fooled himself. Self-perception and debating motivation do not tend to get along. Blogging is not an educational chore, but a hobby. When a blogger maintains an internet presence as a debater, he does so for the love of the game.

I tried to justify my dissenting comments, and sometimes satirical ridicule, as part of a mutually agreed upon game, like chess. If those involved all enjoy it, then what is the harm, and why shouldn’t I play? To paraphrase, why shouldn’t I find a writer’s virtual home and attempt to burn it down? The effort is divisive and ultimately fruitless. If you cannot possibly change anyone’s mind in a substantive way, then why would you go to their site and attack their articles? To invalidate a person’s creation is to invalidate a part of the person.

It reminds me of the atheist who tries to disprove that Jesus is the Son of God because he resents the fact that the theist is wrong in the matter. Something compels him to go after the theist, to catch him in his mistaken notion. The more data you use to challenge him, the harder he will fight and the more aggressive he will become. A mountain lion, once trapped, becomes angrier, and less open to reason. Why would I want to trap him? How well I succeed is not relevant. The meaningful question is why would I feel the need to try to refute logic just because I think it is erroneous? Knowing that our beliefs on philosophical issues usually stem from more fundamental principles, making productive debate on specifics pointless, why should I want to engage him? The best I could hope for is to prove my intended victim wrong about the specifics we are debating. He would still walk away with the same fundamentals that took him there, and so his overall politics would not change.

It is a sophist’s game, to try to out maneuver those with different philosophical foundations than I by challenging them on specifics. If a person is proud to win a game, then regardless of what he tells you, it would probably shame him to lose one, even if only a little. If he tries to win and fails, the loss in not a neutral outcome, but an invalidating failure, even if he tells you it is not, and even if he outwardly perceives that no harm is done. A recent study showed that those who play and win computer games against other players have more confidence in other areas of life for the rest of the day.

Benighted as they may be in their gentleness, both Burr and Vincent seem to have learned something long ago that I am just beginning to appreciate: it is not true that in order for me to win, someone else must lose. It is hard to walk away when you see the weak spot and your sword is drawn. It is hard to resist trying to slay those who have opinions other than our own.

In the liberal vs. conservative debates, nobody wins and everyone claims victory. It’s easy to see the phenomenon when you watch it from a distance, but not when you are emotionally invested. A debate is like a chess match, but it is not chess. Victory is subjective. After a liberal attacks a conservative site through blog comments, the conservatives feel their castle walls withstood the test, that the olive oil they poured over the turrets boiled the flesh off the invading force; that their boulders crushed the invader’s skull. The liberal remembers Ozymandias as he eyes the broken statue where the castle once stood and marvels at the smirk on the face in the ruins. It would all be good were it not for the overshadowing fog of resentment emanating from the debris. As charges of incivility betray a sense of umbrage left in the aftermath of an aggressive opponent’s passion, everyone claims no offense is taken. And even if the conservatives are mistaken about the outcome, so too the liberal suffers his own illusions, as illustrated in the fact that he can dream up a reality where besieging a castle in “good-humored” rebuttal is harmless. He tells himself that it is really just a philosophical exercise, a game each side enjoys: all in good fun.

Except no minds are changed and each side’s proclamations of victory echo over bruised egos half buried in stacks of smoking rubble; each side marvels at how the other could be so foolish as to keep trying to stand under the gargantuan force of their wisdom; and the liberal does not emerge as unscathed as he perceives himself to be, a perception he holds probably because he must, more than for any other reason. He did not convince anyone of anything, anymore than his opponents did. The only person who sensed the powerful blow of any proof he introduced, was the liberal himself, who needed no convincing. His only success was in offending a bunch of conservatives who were minding their own business before he moved in and tried to convince them of the error of not thinking like him; and he failed. His opponents’ most fundamental assumptions differ from his; he sees nonsense where they see obvious truth; so his liberal arguments are foolish and easily refutable with conservative logic.

Since annoying his philosophical adversaries was not a part of his conscious plan, regardless of the power or weakness of his arguments and regardless of the condition of the conservatives after the battle, there is no denying that the liberal was utterly defeated; none of his objectives were met.

So if the conservatives lost and the liberals lost, then who won? Burr and Vincent.