Most often we don't have to choose a side because we are one, determined by our own immediate self interest and that of our family, friends, peers and alies. But when it comes to abstraction or objectivity or discussion of larger topics in our attempt to think outside the box of our own bias, there may seem to be no escaping this idea of the team and competition. Debate as a sport in school for example imposes the somewhat artificial choices in a debate match and participants who may praise the process as developming and refining their thought process are perhaps over-organizing. It is actually human organic approximation of mechanican thinking. Ones and zeros. On or off. As entertaining as it may be and as useful as it may be as an exercise it is dangerous and most issues debated this way are ill served. Certainly truth and the process of maintaining its complexity are compromised.
We understand that a crime of passion is something to be less damnable than a premeditated one. We know that someone with a great record keeping mindset and the earliest IBM punch card technology contributed to the Shoah or Holocaust and that if the worst choices are made at the top then those below in the chain of command can become little more than switches "only following orders" and united by fear of stepping out of lock-step or goose-step formation. We know that when people commit suicide they are rarely raving in overtly noticable depression and that they have settled into a calm or even a comfort zone because logic has given them a choice to aim for and a plan, a rational and simple end. Perhaps the repercussions toward others haven't been factored in, unless they have read Final Exit and accounted for who is most likely to find the body and so on. When terrorists are brainwashed it is not because of pixie dust from religious meditation but because of a targeted and logical programming of arguments that strip away the complexity of the individual and leave only what seems like a plan and a path to a closure that feels like the end of an equation.
The trouble is that it is an end-defined choice or a goal-defined method of thinking and it contaminates or aborts the search for truth. It speeds forward instead of letting tendrals of new information and forgotten information slow down progress of the team or the objective or the act. The part of the rapist's mind that allows him to steal or procure a drug like roofies and then place it into a woman's drink and then transport her patiently to a private place perhaps careful that others don't say goodnight to them or get a good look at her behaviour -- this is not a person so full of passion he is out of control. This is the mechanical mind kicking in and running the show, for all the joy the presumed act(s) of consumation will give him which have more to do with access, knowledge and access or power over someone. All consistent with the gamesmanship of logic or debate. In this case debate against the conscience or natural social instinct of trust or intimacy. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper allocated funding for G-8 and G-20 in excess of a billion dollars, and much of it for security, it was with reasonable and logical expectation of the results. Vandalism was anticipated, as was disrption or blocking of resources such as a Soup Kitchen for the homeless and economic hardship to small businesses in Toronto. When Police Chief Bill Blair failed to issue a mandate of putting citizens first and simply letting the fences for example keep the people clear of the visiting dignitaries, logic was available to him and he used it. He allowed chaos to rule and he let rule inspire chaos. A pay duty police constable or a security guard has to go out of his or her way to stop and interrogate people about why they are walking in the city core. The prospect of terrorists striking from the ground and amid a crowd was unlikely. Infiltration of the demonstrators by plain clothes police was logical, and yet the Black Bloc still did their thing. Documentary footage of interrogations and personal confrontation with citizens are especially damning because a gathering that was organic and human was contaminated by the formality of robotic, logical and goal-oriented personnelle. The psyche of the G-20 pressence was pushed and over-managed by the super-ego.
All of which are basic principles most people imagined when they saw the money being lavished on G-20. This was not so that the heads of state could see what Toronto is like. What they could see of it under G-20 wasn't an image the city wants to sell anyway, even if they could get close to it. Harper must have wanted to reinforce his message of "I can do whatever I like and prioritize however I want, and no matter what you know about me and my policies my machine will continue to run." The smooth running of the machine continues. Just as it did back when there was a glimmer of hope and talk of a Coalition between Liberals and NDP with the blessing of the Bloc finally ousting the Harper Conservatives. His neck was exposed and our dear Michelle Jean whose job was mostly window dressing through 99 percent of Canada's history has a chance to give Canada back to Canadians and circumvent the catch we are now in and she blew it. Now we still stand with a Conservative encumbant and a split of any votes against him and his party. With his detractors devided, logic lets him sail through without doing anything extrordinary. Suppose Canada had been labeled as "cheap" for not showing off any fake lake or over-the-top security bills and they had merely rented a boat and held the G-20 in Toronto Harbour and a few decoys where there was no reliable shot vantage point for an assasin, as opposed to the convention center which had several viable options. The enforcement of G-20 last minute legislation was more about putting on a show of force and putting people down. Investigating people at the top and holding them accountable in a concrete way would help undo some of that. But the machines are in charge.
We can vent on Twitter and Facebook and feel as if we are in control. And maybe that will make some small dent. People want to throw mythology and the Bible out the window these days because they are not logical. But some of that non-logic is helpful in abstracting what we can't quite articulate with what is at hand in reality. The Tower of Babel is still something that we try to make. We try to make it with logic and Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and the Atheist Bus but it's just a mechanical argument. It isn't liberating to me personally to believe there is no God; I'm not going to age any slower or have better luck dating. Nobody cares if the fat guy at the party declairs himself a hedonist; it would only scare the girls off more. We have failed to contact God or reach him with our flimsy tower of technology or logic and have only found ourselves cursed. Our voices are now speaking many different languages and putting up an obstacle to our ability to built another tower. Even an earnest attempt at this goal, for altruistic reasons, will be seen as arrogance. I don't remember how many people died falling from the Tower of Babel or whether its builders gave up simply because they couldn't understand each other.
I don't understand the idea that it is immature to imagine the world other than the way it is. But I'm told that is the judgement. I don't know that God should he forced to show his face or even that such a Supreme Being would require acknowledgement in order to exist. I exist without much acknowledgement at work, for example. The Tower of Babel is also the steeple on many churches, many of which are being sold off and "de-sanctified" including one I went to as a child and a teen. Whichever church has the bigger ding-dong ringing from its clock, I suppose wins the debate about which hairstyle will doom you to Hell. Many times in my life as a Roman Catholic I have said "Amen" as a Minister of the Eucharist has offered "The Body of Christ." I was in my twenties, long after being Confirmed Catholic at 13, before being corrected that what we believe is that the wafer does transform into the body of Jesus and the wine transforms into the blood. While it's interesting to have someone tell me with authority what I believe, having worked in that Parish as a Sacristan and having drank unblessed wine stock with my friends and eaten unblessed wafers like chips (until tiring of their blandness) I find they taste the same before and after the blessing. And I wondered why for a while we were getting whole wheet brown wafers when after the blessing they were going to be Jesus anyway. To be a strict Catholic, and to say I won't eat the body of Christ as long as he manifests and tells me I am not worthy. . .is to use the same logic as the atheist in demanding he show his face. Then our own logic says that since he hasn't spoken up I must be worthy to consume the body of my God. And then we eat Him. We are Diavores. No just Omnivores, but Diavores. And how can you argue with us? We eat the Supreme Being sometimes twice on Sundays. We haven't figured out why a Priest can bless holy water and sprinkle it onto a posessed person to get a reaction but not simply bless the water that makes up a high percentage of the posessed person's body. Wouldn't blessed blood already kick the shit out of a demon? But that's being too logical. Or if a person - maybe a priest (one who hasn't renedered his blessings worthless by doing something evil) - says grace before every meal and that blessed food and drink is generating all the cells of his body, how can a vampire bite him? That logic may be too ambitious and arrogant for me. Because who am I to argue with vampires? Maybe they know something I don't.
Most of the things we debate about are bullshit or become bullshit on either side eventually when stretched to apply too globally. A person might be pro-choice because they don't believe the law should bother focusing on arresting both the doctor performing the abortion and the pregnant woman paying him to do it. Far too may of us know people we don't want to see arrested, whether we wish they had gone full term or not. But how can a person say pro-choice and freedom are their guides when it comes to insisting a doctor in a remote or underserved area must make time to perform abortions against his or her will? At what point can a person say "Keep that mission statement for your free Toronto tabloid with hooker ads at the back" ? Maybe it's not such a big deal to say that in a town where there is no huge demand for abortion maybe somebody's got to take that long bus ride or go full term. For an urban person, that attitude sounds cold and humorless and outragously conservative. But that is also an over simplification and a compartmentalization and a branding of teams and logos and objectives. You can dislike that comment or argument and then get up in arms and blast the writer with something snarky. But it's a feeling, about as solid as a logo for a sports team or a beer you feel loyalty to. It is not loyalty to a town or a group of free-agents who may or may not play a full season wearing those colors. It is like Mel Brooks said as the 2000 Year Old Man, (singing a fight song) "Let them all go to hell, except cave 76!" Your empathy is with yourself, and anything that isn't celebrating you and your like is the other. Mel also said, "Tragedy is I cut my finger; Comedy is that YOU fall into an open sewer and die."
That's the best example of tribalism and debate in general that I can recall.
And I had to write this long mess.
