On dialogs and debates

When I was in high school, we had a number of debates during Finnish classes, where students were introduced into the fine arts of rhetoric and the things that accompany it. The concept was very good: teach the students how to argue and debate as well as utilize words and wit. Somehow I feel that a lot of the really basic problems of society could be avoided if instead of resorting to violence people would possess the ability to talk, discuss, and communicate. But far too often when a person runs out of words, they resort to other, more unfortunate measures in trying to communicate their point across.

Another learning from these debates was that quite often people do not or cannot form opinions, or are unwilling to argue a side. The best debates, in my opinion, were the ones where you found two people with opposing views of a common topic which both held dear. It was truly interesting to observe the jousting that ensued. But unfortunately very often the situation was very asymmetric (i.e. one was very opinionated and the other could not care less) or then the overall mood was indifferent. This is one reason why I am somewhat hesitant when it comes to the praising of democracy's flawlessness...

I have unfortunately long since forgotten whether we were taught any theory behind dialogs and debates, but on a personal and purely empirical level I think that some very obvious clusters can be formed. A dialog can be exploratory in nature, where the participants collectively work towards discovering ideas through an exchange of information and opinions. Or then a dialog can be more competitive and debating in nature, where the exploratory objective is surpassed by the objective of winning by means of either convincing the opponent of your point of view or by merely deflating the opponents arguments.

Politicians seem to venture on a very different level and are measured against different dimensions. In a debate it is not only relevant for the politician to win the debate, but also to do so while applying good form and by not upsetting the people too much. The battle of debate is subordinate to the larger war which is fought on a higher level. And one must not upset the general populace, which wields the power. It is this group which I am slightly afraid of, as it requires much more studying of a person of political inclination to understand their ultimate motive, as they often play very many games at once.

This does tie back to the dynamics of high school debates: I argue that, at least our, debate was much more political in nature than what, I would imagine, the teachers wished to teach. Ultimately it does not matter whether or not you had the more solid arguments or the ability to deflate the arguments of your opponent. Ultimately the decision of who won was decided by the rest of the class, which very often resulted in a situation where the debate turned into a popularity vote of either the debaters or then of the topics. Very seldom did the actual debating amount to anything: the judging parties had already made up the mind, even prior to the debate.