from Declination: Do You Want to be Right, or True?

Something changed over time. Call it maturity, or wisdom, or understanding of self. Or call it, as I do, a certain intellectual exhaustion. Whatever it is, I just stopped caring about appearances. I didn’t care to prove myself right, or to prove the other wrong.

I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand. I wanted to know truth — regardless of whether or not anyone believed me. It came to the point that I wanted to be proven wrong, in fact, for that would mean I would have discovered a new truth. My own knowledge would have been expanded. I was still emotionally invested in the outcome, per se, but not in the same manner. If the debate granted me no new knowledge, no new perspectives, it was useless. It was a waste of time. It didn’t matter if I had demolished my opponent’s argument. It was still a nothing.

SJWs are still caught up in the first stage, where everything is about rightness, and not rightness in the sense of truth, but rightness in the sense of appearance, in the sense of acknowledgement from the audience. When a flurry of Twitter tweeters or Facebook posters come in with likes, and messages of solidarity and support, they feel alive, they feel important. Their narcissistic supply is greatly enhanced. But truth doesn’t matter. Knowledge and understanding are irrelevant. To them, a debate is worthless if they do not receive adulation.

HKO

Demonization destroys debate.

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