You don’t get into the business of sticking your neck into the meat-grinder of public opinion without accepting a few ground rules.
The first is reader response. If you’re doing your job correctly people will disagree with you. Contrary to what one might think, this isn’t a disheartening part of the job; in fact, it’s the most fulfilling part of it. Having a conversation within the confines of print is the entire point of persuasive public writing. (Socrates valued those who pointed out weaknesses in his own argument much more than any sycophantic follower.)
Trying to corral others to accept your written public opinion is a secondary goal if not an entirely meaningless one. It’s central purpose is to provoke the question, “How am I sure that what I think is correct?”
In discussing issues no one thinks to bring up elsewhere, persuasive writing is concerned with expanding the field of what people choose to think about.
Some concepts and ideas are so imprinted into our minds that they are generally accepted. Whether it’s a particular religion, government system or accepted scientific fact, it’s always worth doing the heavy lifting to make sure that our assumptions aren’t erroneous.
How do you know that the Earth circles the sun, except that you’ve always been told so? How do you know that democracy is the best system of government? How about the truth of capitalism? Of Christianity?
Chances are, you’ve lived in one or two inhuman, overarching thought-systems for so long that you’ve unconsciously accepted their basic tenants.
The definition of an educated person is to recognize those systems and assess what values they are trying to get you to accept.
I’m not saying that the Earth doesn’t go around the sun or that democracy isn’t the best system of government.
I am saying that it’s absolutely worthwhile to take the time to check.
The greatest flaw in the way we conduct arguments today is confusing the instinct to question with the instinct to attack.
This tendency has its roots in the Internet or, more specifically, how people develop browsing habits.
Social media has allowed people to carve out their own personal cave online, letting in only the information that conforms to their specific point of view.
How many of your friends on Facebook can you divide into Huffington Post or Fox News followers, accepting only one narrative?
Inspecting someone’s “favorites” tab says much more about a person and how they think than any private diary, no matter how personal or seemingly “revealing.” When someone writes a diary, they are writing to the person who, by chance, might pick it up and go through it. When someone bookmarks a page on the internet, they commune with themselves and their desires to a much more intimate degree.
The most dangerous instinct human beings have now is the instinct to seek comfort over (useful) conflict. The tools that people use to debate atrophy because they aren’t used anymore.
The only options left are outrage, impugning the motives or morals of the person you disagree with or invoking the god of communal offense to justify one’s own position.
To these people who are used to the shelter and comfort of reassuring opinion, every conflicting opinion is an attack. Every counter-point seems like an attempt to get inside someone else’s shell and skewer them rather than an attempt to approach the truth.
They are used to the idea that the only opinion that is necessary is one’s own and that the existence of another is something to be destroyed rather than debated.
I’ve never liked the term “open-mindedness,” because of the stench of wishy-washy relativism and baseless superstition that it carries.
It has always been true, however, that if you cannot think like someone else there is no way you can understand them, let alone talk to them.
The point of public debate is, and has always been, to enhance our ability to communicate with one another. Anything else isn't worth worrying about.