It all started with feminism.
The Dying Art of Disagreement
11–20 of 80 posts
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#12I’m not sure how you’re supposed to respectfully disagree about someone like Kissenger who got hundreds of thousands of people killed through his ideas.
Karl Marx's ideas have been responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people (and counting), yet they still seem to be granted plenty of airtime at our universities.
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#13Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kissinger or Rice--people with blood on their hands.
Their actions aren’t preventing the speakers from getting compensated, but rather preventing them from delivering an address.
You might imagine, then, that a university would begin to narrow the breadth of intellectual perspectives it allows, to align with the students’ wishes.
However, tuition is only part of the story. Universities are highly sticky - students aren’t going to leave Berkeley because Milo was invited to campus. However, the university risks both contributions from alumni, and branding against the echelon of students they want to attract.
Your perspective reflects only immediate concerns, which must be accounted for. But hopefully, I’ve shed a little light on these more complex decisions.
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#14> Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. [..] These quarrels are never personal.
This, like many of today's rosy views of the golden past, is slightly misleading: while Socrates many have high-minded intellectual quarrels with Homer, one can't just ignore that he was murdered ("sentenced to death") by his fellow Athenians for supposedly corrupting the youth.
In comparison to drinking hemlock, the criticism today's divisive figures have to endure seems manageable.
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#15Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kissinger or Rice--people with blood on their hands.
The trouble is, once this perspective gains a footing, it metastasises to the point where civil disagreement becomes almost impossible anywhere, and on any topic. That seems to be happening now. Here in Australia, for instance, we have the marriage equality postal survey going on as mentioned in the article (a daft exercise in fake democracy to appease a far-right party faction, but let's put that aside for now). I have personally been called a homophobic bigot by a 'yes' campaigner, not because I'm against same-sex marriage (I'm strongly for it, and voted accordingly), but because I refuse to cut off friends and family who are on the 'no' side. Polarisation has reached the stage where, according to many, we are literally required to ostracise anyone on 'the other side' (of pretty much any debate).
A capacity for, at a very minimum, civil debate, even where you disagree strongly with the other side, is a crucial foundation stone of the Enlightenment. There are edge cases for sure (I don't know how to have rational discourse with self-professed Nazis, for example), but actual debate (as opposed to fighting, spurning, hating and ostracising) needs to be a strongly-held default, or we are totally stuffed.
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#16I’m not sure how you’re supposed to respectfully disagree about someone like Kissenger who got hundreds of thousands of people killed through his ideas.
Karl Marx's ideas have been responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people (and counting), yet they still seem to be granted plenty of airtime at our universities.
There is a difference between ideas and people who put those ideas into practice. Marx was just a writer. Lenin or Stalin—I don’t think you can respectfully disagree about them.
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#17It would be really amazing if those who choose to comment in this thread would try to do their best to disagree with each other thoughtfully, charitably, and respectfully.
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#18I’m not sure how you’re supposed to respectfully disagree about someone like Kissenger who got hundreds of thousands of people killed through his ideas.
You can start by saying what ideas of his you think are wrong, and why they are wrong. Then you can listen to why he (or those he agrees with) believe those ideas are right.
If I think your ideas are morally wrong and getting people killed, I am compelled to either try and stop you, or resign myself to cowardly inaction. I of course choose cowardly inaction—I’m selfish and enjoy the comfort of my life and don’t want to disturb it. But I don’t try to make that out to be a virtue!
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#19It all started with feminism.
This breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to post flamebait.
Unfortunately we've had to ask you a ton of times to stop breaking the rules. If you keep breaking them we're going to have to ban you, so would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and only post civil, substantive comments (or no comments) from now on?
Re: The Dying Art of Disagreement
#20I’m not sure how you’re supposed to respectfully disagree about someone like Kissenger who got hundreds of thousands of people killed through his ideas.
Kissinger's a monster in my opinion. But everyone's monster threshold is different. Refusing to engage based on monsterhood is a road to a war of all against all. We're walking that road now. That's a far worse outcome than the odd monster slipping onto lecture stages.