Being Emotional Isn't a Form of Debate

Being Emotional Isn't a Form of Debate | Intellectual Takeout:
"Discourse, especially in schools, is miserable these days.
As Randall Smith, the Scanlan Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, argues, there are only three options when it comes to uncomfortable topics, “Non-judgmentalism, furious indignation, or ironic detachment.”
...“My experience with students is that as much as they say that no position is any more true than any other, they are no more willing to tolerate things they consider ‘unfair’ or ‘unjust’ than those who profess a belief in objective moral truth.
Their insistence that things be done ‘right,’ absent any defensible account of ‘rightness,’ merely confirms in them the conviction that all such demands are merely expressions of a person’s will or desire.
Having systematically insulated themselves from every kind of rational argument, the result is that not only can they never lose an argument, they also can never win.
College students often have only two gears when it comes to public discourse: ‘non-judgmentalism’ and ‘furious indignation.’
In one gear, they proclaim endlessly that ‘this is just what I think,’ that they ‘don’t want to judge anyone else’ and that they ‘don’t want to tell anyone else what to do.’
And yet when they come upon some activity or expression they find unacceptable—usually something they have been taught to view as a sign of an unacceptable prejudice or bias—their response is loud and furious: a shrill protest of indignation.

• The more students dismiss the resources of critical reason, the less faith they have in reasoned judgments.
• The less faith they have in reasoned judgments, the more likely they are to assume every decision they find offensive is based on ill will or gross stupidity, and the more indignant they are likely to be in their condemnations.
• The louder and more intractable the disputes between parties, the more those with less stomach for the fight will withdraw into postmodernism’s ‘ironic detachment’: the shrug of the shoulders and the ubiquitous ‘whatever.’

Allowing an ideological simulacrum of rational argument to continue to dominate public discourse—with its shrill assertion of self-righteous indignation, the ‘unmasking’ of one’s ideological opponents, and the ironic detachment of those who have ‘seen through’ the whole illusion—will only destroy the possibility of a discussion that, with patience and good will, could be mutually illuminating.”"