This broadcast sparked my blog. The title comes from a song. I'll write about it another time. Today, I'm really interested in your thoughts on the relationship between doubt and civility. It's worth the 90-minute investment to watch (or listen) to the whole conversation, but in case that's too much to ask for, here's an excerpt from the transcript:
Ms.Tippett: You wrote on your website in your blog about the relationship between civility and doubt. I'd love for you to say some more about that.
Mr. Blankenhorn: It's funny that you would ask that. It's the thing I've been thinking about most in the last several months, more than any other topic. And I think that doubt and civility are friends. They go together kind of like, you know, coffee and cream. They're partners. Um, by civility, I mean treating the other person the way you would want them to treat you. And by doubt, I mean believing that you may not be right even when your position is passionately held.
Ms.Tippett: You wrote this: "What I need as a doubting person is the wisdom of the other."
Mr. Blankenhorn: See, because if I don't have any doubt, I don't need you. I should be nice to you out of manners, but I don't need a relationship with you. I may want you to be available to be lectured by me so that you can come to the correct view and I may want to treat you politely for that reason, but I don't really need you. As I grow older, I grow in doubt and that's good. And I feel like that that's a healthier way to be. And if I am not sure that I have the full truth of the matter, I need you.
Civility allows me to have a relationship with you. It feeds me what I need. You know, when you're in the public eye and you change your mind, well, that's viewed as a sign of weakness. And then if you express doubt about something, that's viewed as a sign of weakness today, especially in this hyperpartisan everybody wants to be tough-minded. I don't know.
Full broadcast: David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch on On Being
Thoughts?
This was an awesome interview!
ReplyDeleteI gave it a listen. It is a remarkable friendship between Messieurs Rauch and Blankenhorn, reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton, or Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson.
ReplyDeleteThey are on the same page as far as marriage. The trivialization of the institution in the Sexual Revolution has been nothing but counterproductive. None of the promised results have come to pass; the cessation of marital conflict, or rancorous divorce, or domestic violence. And worst, a pandemic and plethora of STD’s has been loosed on society.
My question is whether same-gender marriage can somehow be enshrined or normalized as a bona fide institution without all kinds of props.
They both observe that hetero marriage is on the ropes. The plug on the bathtub drain has been pulled, and the little toy boat is circling the drain.
Jonathan says it rightly at the 39th minute mark; the advocates of same-gender marriage are complicit in dismantling all opposition in the name of purging society of ‘bias’
I don’t see civility necessarily as an outcome of doubt. One has only to look at Bill Maher
I see civility, or courtesy, as a virtue to be practiced and strengthened by conscious exercise. Some have it conferred upon them by nature or providence in greater measure than others. Some must struggle harder to attain it than others.
One must define what one means by ‘doubt’. The natural tendency when hearing the word is to identify it with philosophical agnosticism. The typical assumption, then, is that the term is shorthand for a secular materialism
I like where these 2 are going. But I fear that they are voices in the wilderness. The Spanish
Inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust, the Reign of Terror, the Stalinist Purges, and the killing fields of
Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda all teach me that Man is not a temperate creature
I have a grim foreboding. In Canada and the EU, hate-speech laws are used to dun and cow the resistance. They are in point of fact eroding the buffer state between then and the actual extreme opposition. And when the buffer state is gone, the actual extreme opposition will emerge in the West as it already has in the nations where Sharia law has become the jurisprudence. Do I sound biased? I’m only being pessimistic.
Thanks for your thoughtful; if pessimistic, thoughts, Randy. I agree that one must define doubt. Mr. Blankenhorn defined both terms for us: "Um, by civility, I mean treating the other person the way you would want them to treat you. And by doubt, I mean believing that you may not be right even when your position is passionately held."
ReplyDeleteGolden rule (with humility) seems like the perfect recipe for civility. And, I can't get too pessimistic (because I'm a die hard idealist); although, even I have to admit, I worry about the Sharia law state in which America would find itself if Dominionists had their way.