My resolution: to argue better in 2021
THERE are worse things to read these days than John Milton, thundering across nearly four centuries. For me it started with his 1644 Areopagitica, affirming that above all liberties is ‘‘the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience’’. The statement was not without risk in his own times and is immensely refreshing in ours. The key word is ‘‘argue’’. It does not include ‘‘cancelling’’, ‘‘noplatforming’’, showering personal insults on opponents or imputing to them imaginary, wicked motives. It means sharing evidence, ideas and philosophies, listening, possibly changing your mind a bit.
A resolution worth sharing in 2021 is to be more Areopagitica. The past few years have seen a stubborn coarsening and polarising tendency worse than any in my lifetime. In the UK, the Brexit referendum was one trigger, though it was not until after the vote that irrational bitterness really dug in. It was fed by the way several tin-eared governments had allowed three gaps to widen: economic, geographical and generational.
When some are fighting to survive and others scared of losing privilege, argument sours. Debate became outright war, even within families. Only a few souls listened and were open to thoughtful measures for reducing damage.
But somehow that preference for mud-slinging polarisation spread further, among politicians and keyboard warriors. It spread into conversations about race, so that just when ignorant, suspicious old racism was starting to fade under equality laws and wide ethnic mixing, it got revived by insulting accusations.
Authors were praised for condemning all white people as innately racist. Claims that ‘‘silence is violence’’ went alongside the diktat that only one slogan would do. The fact that saying ‘‘all lives matter’’ can get you death threats would not impress John Milton.
Nor would the argument that there is a taint on any person or building owing anything to longago slavery or empire.
Not that there ever is an actual argument. Simple accusation and insult ends discussion, bar a bit of irrelevant ‘‘whataboutery’’ and a pat moral judgment.
I started out rather liking the phrase ‘‘lived experience’’ , especially about racism. It genuinely is difficult for ethnic majorities to know how infuriating and belittling it can be to stand out. But even serious ‘‘lived’’ sufferings are a poor replacement for reasoned, useful arguments for practical justice and tolerance.
So is the tiresome habit of imputing imaginary motives to your opponent. Even I, mildest of voices, often get told that I want to install fascism, censorship, theocracy, communism, matriarchy, whatever.
The heroes of argument are the quiet souls who sometimes admit they were once wrong. They are few and far between when the default response to any
The key word is ‘‘argue’’. It means sharing evidence, listening, possibly changing your mind a bit.
disagreement is: ‘‘You’re mistaken, therefore evil. Or mad.’’ We all get infected: I amnot guiltless.
I next came on Milton’s Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, which I hadn’t read for 50 years. He wrote it at 21, bold and vivid: this is no gently patronising away-ina-manger Christmas but a royal arrival overthrowing an ancient, dark, brutish confusion. War chariots stand idle, trumpets fall silent, hell lies open, the Satanic dragon lashes ‘‘the scaly horror of his folded tail’’. Temples lie empty as the infant’s tiny hand banishes cruel Moloch and bloodstained sacrifices, the Roman Lares and Penates, the Egyptian gods. At last the poet offers an unforgettable image of peace and order: ‘‘And all about the courtly stable/ Brightharness’d angels sit in order serviceable.’’
We have our own Molochs and deceiving oracles to defy. May 2021 see a courtly, more serviceable way of defeating them.