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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (25723)	9/1/2001 8:09:02 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

This is the debate thread, if you want consensus go to the consensus thread. Now that's a remarkably silly statment. The purpose of legitimate debate is often to seek consensus. I understand that politicians have debased this concept, so that the concept of a political "debate" is to present your viewpoint with the hope of influencing the listeners but no expectation of influencing the debater. This is also the concept of debate as a "sport," where the purpose is solely to score more points than the other team. (I know -- I was a debater in high school and college.) However, ideally good debate is directed toward exploring different views of an issue with an attempt to achive consensus. I suppose some people are here principally to hear themselves talk and to try to score points on their wall. These are the people with no intellectual curiosity or open minds, but rather with fixed ideas and closed minds who don't want to be bothered thinking, but want only to react. But others are here to try to discuss issues with a view toward understanding different points of view, to come at issues with our own ideas, of course, but also with minds open to other, better ideas. For these people, consensus is quite possible and perhaps even desirable, particularly if we concede that there is one "best" way to solve most human problems if we could only find it. You may not be interested in anything but trumpeting your perfect mastery and understanding of all things. If so, presumably you aren't interested in consensus. But don't demean others who have a more open mind and more intellectual curiosity, and who feel that if minds that differ as much as those on this thread do could actually achieve consensus on some issue, that would be a significant step forward.