Ideas in One Hand; Doubt and Questions in the Other
By: Eric Overby
Tags: Liberalism, Debate, Equity, Free Speech, Politics

Thinking, in itself, is important but it’s not enough. This is why effective conversation is paramount. You need to be able to listen to ideas that you don’t agree with, ideas that confront your sense of reality and that offend your sense of truth. You need to be able to freely say, “This is what I think.” and then listen as someone contradicts what you have just said. This exchange of ideas is what sharpens your position and allows for alterations of your thoughts. The goal here is to hold your ideas in one hand and hold doubt and questions in the other, then take a good discerning look at what you have. You may also find commonality with people.

My capacity for being offended is something that I should pay attention to but not something I should hold dear. It is likely that the moment I am offended is the moment that my sense of identity is being approached or challenged. This can happen in a multitude of scenarios. When someone expresses a political idea that is counter to mine, my first reaction is often to get uncomfortable or even aggravated or angry. These feelings describe being offended but they are counterproductive. If I get lost in them, they cause me to shut down, stop listening, or strike back. However, the most effective thing I can do is to take interest in those ideas. If I civilly question why they think that way and allow them room to speak freely they may reciprocate that space and dialogue and growth can happen. I say “civilly” because growth and effective conversation are dependent on our ability to be civil. I say “may” because some people will never open space for others to speak freely. There are situations and places that are not built for discussions and there are people who will not be civil.

However, the greatest philosophical transformations in my life have been when people challenged my belief systems. The first case of this was when I was 23. I had recently altered the direction of my life and became a Christian. I was young and arrogant. I saw the Bible, and my interpretation of it, as inerrant (without error) and infallible (unable to make errors). A man at my workplace saw me reading the Bible on my break and started questioning my beliefs. He would say, “Well the Catholics believe this, what do you believe?” And then followed it up with “Ok, why do you believe this?” It offended me and I was often defensive but it forced me to look at my belief system: why did I hold those beliefs, where did they come from, were there any errors in it, was there any validity in other ways to look at things? By his questions and conversations, I grew sharper in the positions I continued to hold and I was forced to alter other positions. It was probably one of the greatest single interjections into my thought life. He walked up to my identity as a Christian and began holding up a mirror while allowing me to poke holes in what I thought was there. There is a necessity in civil discourse that enables people to speak freely and challenge ideas in order to have a better or more diverse understanding of the world. It is essential to hold several ideas in your hands. Then you can look at them while discerning what makes the most sense and is the most useful to keep.

During any discourse I am in, my goal isn’t to have the immediate gratification of a “gotcha” moment where I win an argument. My goal is never to purposefully offend for the sake of being offensive. That’s counterproductive and downright ignorant. My goal is to understand an alternative position and articulate my own. I will then consider what the other person has said and hopefully they will do the same. It is inevitable that I may not articulate a thought as well as I could and it is inevitable that they may poke holes in my position. All the better.

Socrates said, “I know that I know nothing”.

Most of my opinions are not as informed and well rounded as I would like. I have to be humble enough to accept that I don’t know enough. If my goal is to understand something true, then being challenged is a good thing. We need to be challenged occasionally and to get out of the echo chamber that is your own philosophical group or your own confirmation biased mind. The alternative is to only be able to hear one narrative and for those who oppose that narrative to be silenced, or to have uncivil debate by two polar opposite opinions. Truth is usually found to be hidden in a field of nuance and, as Albert Maysles said, “Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.”

In order to think through things clearly, we need other opinions and viewpoints in order to navigate into the nuance. We need civil debate to present opposing viewpoints and point out our blind spots. We need the ability to speak freely and civilly to one another.