We need to think about our ability to have a conversation. Because it is doubtful.
To know what to say about the things that matter, we need to know what matters. I am not proposing some objective hierarchy of significance. People are perfectly entitled to feel passionate fury over a Eurovision singer’s dress. What to me is out of place is the furious anger with which people speak at (rather than to) people who couldn’t care less about how much thigh a talented soprano chooses to show.
The ability to have a conversation requires some ability to agree on an agenda. What are we going to talk about? What language are we going to use? What facts are we going to agree on as given before we can identify the space left to persuade each other?
I know you can feel it. You are going to have abortion thrown in your lap. And the moment that happens you are going to be penned in a mischaracterisation you will never break free from. Baby-killer. Woman-hater. Never mind stepping off the fence for this one, the act of considering with vague interest a point of view, will be indicted by the opposing view as complicity in mass murder or antediluvian collective gender suppression.
If you think about it, it doesn’t have to be abortion. We do not ground any conversation we have, any disagreement we have, on a consensus on basic facts. When we do that, we shut off any means of dialogue or mutual understanding.
It has become so easy to build invisible walls of prejudice within which we do not allow any alternative insights. This is not some elitist criticism of the less educated. It is happening at every level.
Consider this little story which may not shock you but it did me.
Recently, I put a few euros in some ads on Facebook carrying a picture of the cover of my new book that is coming out shortly. I put in the money hoping awareness of the book could break out of the bubble of like-minded people that Facebook organises for me to comfort me in the delusion that everyone agrees with me.
We talk a lot but we do not have a conversation- Manuel Delia
The photo of the cover of my book apparently made it to the news feed of a university professor of the Labour Party persuasion. I know that sounds moderately insulting coming from me. But this was one professor I have admired for many years. He was one of my best teachers. His expertise is unequalled in his field. And I hold his opinions in very high regard.
There he was trolling the advert of my book, apparently annoyed at the “rubbish” inflicted on his news feed. I don’t know what his Facebook feed is like but I have much I would call rubbish. Many books are rubbish. Maybe mine is too. But I was still surprised – hurt? – that an academic would judge a book by its cover and proceed to publicly rubbish it.
If we aren’t prepared to leaf through the thoughts of people we dislike, what hope can there ever be that we might be open to be persuaded by what they have to say? And if we’re never persuaded by anything we do not already agree with, when can we ever appreciate the endearing value of Eurovision kitsch costume design?
Our ability to have a conversation relies on our ability to listen. Yet debate has been reduced to short barbs and stunted witticisms. For every charge, there’s a whataboutism waiting to pounce back. False equivalencies abound, dragging down the necessarily less than perfect with the malicious and corrosive.
Politicians slavishly chase this way of thinking, if thinking is what we must call it. Two politicians who technically work on the same side have a very public spat. One of them is right and one of them is wrong but that is not going to shift the points of view of their respective supporters one iota. A third politician – their boss – must solve this. Standing on either side of the controversy would make enemies of the supporters of the other side because nothing they could ever be told could persuade them of their error. So, the boss moves to fire both his underlings.
This attitude panders to the stubborn loyalty to your side, right or wrong. It is the clearest cause and the most extreme consequence of our inability to talk, to listen, to exchange ideas and to remain open to persuasion.
We know this is wrong. Most of the times we solve the problem by creating blind spots in our knowledge and our conversation to dodge intellectual bullets before they challenge us. We create taboos, hardly more sophisticated than the rules of Neolithic societies.
We do not discuss the health of political leaders because that’s ‘private’, even though their tumours and their suicidal thoughts have an impact on our daily lives.
We do not discuss drug abuse by holders of political office. We do not discuss the rights of migrants who do not make it ashore. We do not discuss women who travel to have abortions. We do not discuss the misjudgements of the politicians we support. We do not discuss just how horrific the notion of bent cops is. We do not challenge secret deals made with our money by politicians and their business associates in a smoke-filled room. We do not discuss the responsibility of the state when a journalist is murdered. We do not discuss the implications of government ministers in criminal enterprises.
We do not read the ‘rubbish’ other people write.
We talk a lot but we do not have a conversation. We do not agree on what matters. We live alongside each other but not together. We do not listen.
We do not read.
We do not change.