Refocusing the debate

There's a fundamental message that I find myself repeating over and over. If you read back along my blog here or ever discuss politics with me in real life, you'll find a recurring theme. I feel too much focus is placed on the battle between established ideologies, as defined by the words that describe them in bulk, such as "socialism" or "capitalism", "left" and "right".

I am not an expert myself on the meanings of these words. I have looked them up of course, those and others like them, and what I see in those definitions is not always a perfect match for how I had percieved them (what me and many nowadays call socialism I think better fits the definition of social democracy for example), or how I see them being used. You can hear experts talk for hours about the pros and cons of this or that, the risks in each system. The bias of any speaker almost inevitably comes through. Bias doesn't mean that what they say is wrong. Thats partly what makes it more dangerous. Its the inevitable spin we all use, consiously or otherwise. You state your case in the way that makes it most apealing. We present information not deceitfully as someone with the oposite bias might claim but simply with our own focus. emphasising what we think is imprtant, perhaps dismissing something others might think important. There's a fundamental empathy required in any real dialogue of firstly realising that both sides are likely engaging in the same level of subtle manipulation of language through uncontious bias, and in maintaining the presense of mind to know that this does not mean our oponent is sinister or ill-intentioned. Thats not to say they can't be; but there can be no dialogue if we presume that anyone who doesnt already agree is in some way corrupt, foolish, or dishonest.

We all know we live in an increasingly polarised world. When we fight our ideological battles through some quick witted meme we dont open the door to real debate. So much of the "debate" occurs in isolated bubles where political players, or just individual spreading their views, talk not to the oposing side but simply to others who already agree. A dialogue founded in self-satisfaction, in giving ourselves the feeling that we took a stand and spoke out whilst keeping ourselves safe of any true danger of confrontation or having our ideas really challenged. Every week on social media in the UK, after the two main party leaders have had their debate in parliament, the videos come thick and fast of each saying their prepared lines of attack against the other. Tellingly, each side shares only the clip showing their own leader speaking, and never the oponents reply, or their initial statement. Goes for both sides, exactly as each other. you have to go looking for the full debate, to see the actual exchange. Then, when you see it, you realise how often they utterly ignore each others words in their replies. knowing full well that they are not in fact speaking to each other, but to their own base of supporters online.

I find now, in my efforts to genuinely try to understand the view from both sides, that a great deal of us are not as diferent as we initially think. If we can lift the veil of presumptions and dogma from our debates we will find much more agreememnt than disagreement, and in those places were we still disagree we will at least find understanding and the foundations of compromise, and there a path forward.

We are one humanity. We are more than tribes.

Lets base our debates around goals and then hear each other on the solutions. We should consider each other honest and well-intentioned until proven otherwise.

I am not "a socialist" or "a capitalist". I am not "a leftist" or "right-wing". I am a person. I own a small business and want to be able to work at it to make it succeed, but I also want to see the poor and downtrodden looked after and not abandoned. I dont honestly care what Karl Marx or Adam Smith said, what they defined and explained. We can learn from history and its figures but we cant stop the buck at ideas developed 200 years ago and pretend that we havent spoted some flaws in both in the time since. That they cant perhaps learn a thing or two from each other a find a balance.

Why can't I say that I would like to see everyone have access to health-care without having to fear the cost or debt; or that there should be a basic social welfare safety net, without being called a socialist and told that I endorse goverment control over the economy and that I want them to "seize the  means of production". Why can't I say that Venezuela is being ruled by an a torturous dictatorship without someone saying I am part of the wealthy elite and out of touch with comon venezuelans, even though I am from there and have family and friends there and the people contradicting me don't. Why can't I say that I want to be able to aspire to succes and perhaps a degree of luxiourious wealth should my business ever do well enogh without someone telling me that that contradicts my views on social security? can we stop turning the world black and white and realise that complex issues need complex and well debated answer, and stop this ridiculous obcessions with 200 year old ideologies that have allready shown their failings and realise these are not the only answers we have to choose from?

Can we stop talking about left and right and istead just talk about sustainable economies, about eradicating poverty, about climate change and the spread of preventable disease. Can we do that without stringing each other up and burning each other at the stake?

We all just want to be happy. Can we just talk about how we can achieve a good baseline of that for everyone, and the potential to strive beyond in an even playing field for those who can or want to?

How is it we can send a machine to orbit a moon of Saturn and send back photos but we can't just have a polite conversation about how we should run our society...

Lets each take responsibility for creating dialogue and building bridges. For talking with people and not at them. Lets mend fences and build friendships and solve problems.

Lets refocus the debate.

 

The fighting words of Politics

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

- Lewis Carroll

 I first read "Alice through the looking glass" as a child. I always remember this quote in particular, not because I understood it at the time, but because of a vivid memory I have of my father rattling off the quote at dinner. He has something of a superhuman ability when it comes to remembering little quotes and bits of trivia. It seemed a terribly clever thing to say, as does so much in the Alice books, and as anything that is truly clever, it peaks interest instantly while taking a fair bit longer to really understand.

I had initially believed the quote to be a fairly straightforward logic question. Who defines a word? the person who says it, or the person who hears it. Lewis Carroll was a mathematician, and as such was perhaps more familiar with abstractions and working confidently with terms that are not always clearly defined. If I write an equation, then "A" doesn't need to be simply the letter of the alphabet, its whatever variable I say it is. So it seemed that he meant words are defined by the speaker.

As I've grown however I begin to suspect that perhaps Carroll's beautifully free mind realized that in a way words are themselves similarly abstract. Yes, of course, we have a dictionary to tell us precisely what something means, or at least, what it's broadly accepted meaning is at the time of the dictionary's writing. But as anyone with a passing interest in etymology can tell you the meaning of words can be fluid. Words today are derived from older words, sometimes from various languages mixed together; sometimes distorted by what may have been misuse at their time into new meanings which find stronger perch in the collective psyche than the original. The reality is that, whatever their intended definitions, words are living things that break free of restrictive meanings once out in the wild.

Frustrating? yes, of course. We have words supposedly to understand each other. Ideally when one is spoken we should all instinctively know precisely what was intended by it. But as we all know this is not the case, else we shouldn't need such a word as "Miss-understanding"

I moved during my teenage years from a country that speaks Spanish, which had until then been my primary language, to one that speaks English. I spoke pretty good English already at the time. I had learned it in part from my dad (who is Irish), in (very small part) from TV and school. Mostly, having spent one year as a child with my family living in Scotland, I simply absorbed it that year in school. 

However my English was not the English that the people around me spoke when I moved here, not quite. I remember my aunt and cousins laughing at me when I said "one would think", rather than the colloquial, if technically incorrect "you would think" or "You'd think". They said it sounded terribly posh. I learned quickly not to say that anymore. Through that and other experiences I learned quickly to become en-tuned not just to what it is I want to say, and how it should be correctly said, but also to mind what it is that's likely to be heard. I understood then that I only controlled part of the meaning in my speech, and that attempting to force others to apply my meaning to hat they heard is a loosing game. Much easier for me to adapt to what they will understand. It is my concern as the speaker to do all I can to be understood, and so I should try to predict any cultural break and account for it. I'm the fish out of water at the end of the day, I'm the one who wanted to befriend the locals who have a totally different culture than me. it's me who has to sink or swim.

In political discourse too, language is often evolving. more-over I believe the process is sped up. Politicians attempt to use words and their loaded cultural meanings to their personal advantage. I notice with distressing frequency as messages are flung out with words attached that are at times misunderstood and all too often intentionally twisted by those opposed. Example: "Black Lives Matter" is not intended to mean that they matter MORE than other lives, but that in the face of injustice towards blacks it can seem as if they don't matter at all, hence people feel it needs to be said that they do matter. I find that so obvious that that's how that message is intended to be read. But others will fight around the idea that its racist because they think it gives more value to black lives thank others. Politicians who want to win over such voters might intentionally pretend to also misunderstand the message. Some are less clear, with no one truly valid meaning. Brexit just means the UK leaves the EU, but depending on your view it can be about Xenophobia or about Sovereignty or about a buch of other stuff. Don't think for one second that politicians, on both sides, haven't attempted to use irrational fears and the loaded sub text of words to manipulate the debate.

My motivation in writing this is in particular however is around the Venezuelan crisis. lets break down two sentences here into some contentious words:

"The elected President of Venezuela, Socialist Nicolas Maduro"
"US-Backed ,self-appointed interim President Juan Guaido" 

These sentences say pretty straight forward things, but both are massively loaded with sub-text. Both are also, in a very strict sense, true. However if I write these without further explanation, and they are read by someone who doesn't fully understand the context, I know full well the meaning I can expect them to take from them. Venezuelans chose Maduro, the US is meddling and trying to set up a replacement. Those sentences don't say that, but I know what many people will read into it. It would be somewhat negligent of me to wash my hands of the unintended message by simply claiming that it isn't what I wrote.

Maduro was elected, but those elections were condemned. Not only by the opposition, as many articles simply say, but by much of the international community and all non-government internal observers. All prominent opposition figures were barred from running, so he won elections that were fought practically unopposed, not to mention all the other problems I wont bother listing now. Saying the opposition condemned them isn't really good enough. You might expect the opposition to condemn them, maybe they're just sore losers. Certainly if Maduro lost completely legal and transparent elections I would expect him to condemn them. Saying that alone leaves it down to who you trust.

Juan Guaido did, in the end, declare himself president. He stood there and said "I swear to take on the responsibilities of president" and there was nobody opposite him saying "do you swear" first. I think, personally, that was something of a PR mistake, it would have made better theater to find someone legitimate sounding enough to do it; but in the end it would have been the same. He did so after much deliberation inside the national assembly, It was not a decision he came to alone. He had the assembly's backing. the whole thing was planned. The Constitution, written under Chavez, gives him the power to do so if the president is deemed illegitimate or the presidency vacant. The assembly declared it so, and so legally it was his job to declare himself president. legally speaking, he didn't really have a choice, and you might correctly say that the assembly declared him president. If you just say "Self-declared" and "he claims he has the right under the constitution" it kind of sounds like he just got up that day and went "you know what, I'm gonna be president". If any random guy had done that they wouldn't have 50 countries saying they are indeed the legitimate president. regardless of whatever shady interests, it just wouldn't look right, it wouldn't play. So at a certain point not just calling him President, or Interim President, or not adding that entire explanation to every instance of calling him "Self-declared" falls towards not "Un-biased" but rather biased against. Calling him "US-Backed" at every opportunity is also true, he is backed by the US, AND 40+ other countries. You could just as easily say EU backed, or Canada backed. When you say US backed you can't pretend not to know that much of your audience is reading "Trump-backed" and coming to a bunch of conclusions. It makes him look like a US puppet, so it's an insult hidden as a factual statement. This is meaning that likely isn't intended, but those who write and report should be concerned about how they're understood.

Of course this doesn't just happen in the Venezuelan debate. I have near daily arguments with people over the use of the word Socialism. Everyone thinks they know exactly what it means. Of course, it has a dictionary definition, but it also as a lot of history of people using it in different contexts and in different ways in different countries. Many Venezuelans now repudiate the word after the experience there, yet at the same time Sanders and his like are gathering unprecedented support using it in the US, as are others across the world. Never mind how they each define it, they go into the shouting match assuming theirs is the only valid interpretation and think "god what fools they" as the other side simply doesn't get what they're saying. One side thinking they're talking about protecting a free market and the other thinking they're talking about protecting the poor and vulnerable, both so righteously sure of the clear sense in what they say, and in a way both, in my view, ARE right. As with so much in politics, they're having two different arguments, not with each other but with a loaded word they refuse to acknowledge has a life beyond what they believe. I believe when we break loose of the strict definitions and open our minds to hearing what people actually mean we find we have much more in common than we thought. 

Words are wild things, we need to use them carefully, and never simply assume that both sides are using the same dictionary. In today's hyper polarized society we need more than ever to make efforts to understand what others mean and not place our own presumptions upon them. many more of us would agree than we realize, I'm convinced of it. 


So, "Which is to be the master?". Words don't have a single master Humpty. you just have to get used to that.