When the witty one-liner outweighs the nuanced argument, the discussion becomes a caricature of itself.
Who doesn’t know them, the people who want to spend hours discussing at parties? At first it may be amusing, but after a while the mood often turns into annoyance and most people turn away. Even passive-aggressively turning the music louder is mostly in vain here, because the discussants always find a corner that is quiet enough – just to get loud there themselves. Honestly, that’s me. Intuition and skillful questions lead me reliably to people who are open to discussions. Fortunately, I still get invited.
However, while debating is an amusing pastime for me, other people attach great importance to it. This is understandable as long as it is about concrete problem cases with immediate pressure to make a decision. Here the relevance of discussions can hardly be denied. However, opinions differ on abstract fundamental debates: some consider them superfluous and self-satisfied quibbles, others swear that this is the only way to find something like truth.
There are definitely convincing arguments in the fundamental debate about fundamental debates: Whether public or private, discussions create space for the detailed presentation of pros and cons. This can be a valuable broadening of horizons for both the discussants and a possible audience. The former have to enter into a process of self-reflection in order to be able to represent their opinion at all and the people who follow the whole thing may hear approaches that they have not heard before.
However, the prominence of lateral thinking and swagger has also shown us the dangers of such open discussions. Space for unconventional ideas always means space for charlatans of all kinds. Precisely because charisma and the art of rhetoric play a major role in discussions, understanding debates as finding the truth is problematic. In the worst case, misinformation, conspiracy tales and inhuman ideologies prevail here.
This is precisely why the question of who can and should be discussed publicly is highly controversial in left-wing circles. If a person from outside one’s own political circle is invited to a discussion event, the extent of the contradiction depends on the nature and the obviousness of their (possibly) inhuman positions. Self-confessed racists are rarely considered as discussion partners, transphobic »radical feminists«, who tend to make politics with hints for the initiated – so-called dog whistles – have better cards.
Even in the hypothetical ideal case of a public debate in which neither contempt for human beings nor fake news find a place, one problem remains: the probability is very low that people want to face the complexity of their own position. Instead, the fundamental debate turns into an intellectual exchange of blows, in which one cheers for one’s own favourite. But this competitive logic undermines any benefit expected from discussions. When a seemingly witty one-liner that makes the other side look bad gets more attention than a nuanced argument, the latter becomes increasingly rare. But then the discussion is really just an entertaining activity.
