Rondeau Ramblings: Thoughts on Discourse

I got kind of frustrated recently. There is a video out there right now that gave poor criticism to a property that I love. While I’m not going to bother giving any more context about it, the response led to people creating videos defending the property. But what frustrated me was the comments. The blatant disrespect to one another because of a disagreement and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out why it bothered me so much. I realized that it was a reflection on our political situation. Where people say they believe one thing and then are met with quiet judgement at best and raging keyboard warriors at worst.

I thought long and hard about it over the last few days and I realized that the line “You’re delusional” is thrown around a lot. And I concluded that most people think, “Well, if I know I am rational and you disagree with me, therefore you must be irrational.” And they come to this conclusion before any comments or conversations are observed. “I believe x.” “Well, I believe y therefore you are irrational.” What an obscene thought process. You can do tons of research and have tons of sources to support your stance but when people enter a conversation starting with an insult, we accomplish nothing.

If I went into every argument I ever had thinking that the opponent was irrational, where do I learn anything? Where do I learn about different points of views and perspectives? Well, I don’t learn anything. How can I? If I think that there is a God and you don’t, does that make either of us delusional? Well not inherently. And certainly not based on a blanket statement. We have learned to judge people based on blanket ideas or preconceptions. If I have heard the arguments of one Christian, then I have heard them all meaning I can apply the same basic conclusion to all of them.

Not only is that wrong but frankly disrespectful.

And not only that, but it also causes people to react to the insult and pushes people further into their beliefs. If you want to change someone's mind to your point of view, please engage it respectfully. If you start a conversation with “you are stupid” and then expect me to believe you. Well, that isn’t going to be very good discourse at the very least.

I realize now that I enter every conversation with a healthy amount of doubt. Doubt that I could be wrong, and that this person has something important to say. When the George Floyd murder happened a lot of people began to step back and say, “well maybe I was wrong about the state of racism in the United States.” And then people began to talk to other people about it and learn something. Maybe their opinions change and maybe they didn’t. But it created a healthy amount of discourse that only happened due to someone’s unfortunate death.

Then everyone became closed minded again to discourse when the pandemic slowly got worse. And people ran out of money. There were no compassion, no discourse, and people began to result to anger because of their inability to take care of themselves due to the pandemic and the laws surrounding the pandemic.   

I just want to return to normal discourse. A time where we can discuss different ideas. I don’t know if we are able to turn back to polite conversation. Only time will tell if we can heal enough to do so and teach our children to do so.