The world in which we live is full of issues that can be debated. This is the beauty of a democracy. Every person is given "certain inalienable rights;" one of which is the right to speak freely concerning whatever issue may weigh heavily on the conscience. And therefore, dear friends, I have decided that it is my responsibility as a scholar, as a Christian and as a concerned brother to train you in the right ways. So, without any further ado, I present to you the most effective forms of communication as revealed by the habits of my generation through its favored voice: Facebook.
The first rule of effective communication is to keep free from the pollution of your opponents' arguments. Those with whom you disagree will use any means necessary to convince you of untruth. You must, therefore, be sure to steer clear of their perverse speech. When they present their case, do not listen. Twiddle your thumbs. Evaluate their fashion sense. Determine their socio-economic class. Do whatever is necessary to keep yourself from allowing their lies to penetrate your clear mind and to muddle the truth of your opinion.
Secondly, and in a related category, make sure that, since you have been careful to avoid dignifying the enemy's speech with diligence, you do not agree with those vile ones on any point. If, on the rare occasion, your enemy is intellectually capable of producing a multi-faceted argument, you must necessarily present an antithetical point-by-point response. However, make sure that your response never even nears correcting the errors of her logic, but merely comment on the odor of her body or on the weakness of her logical faculties based solely on a grammatical analysis. An argument cannot be effective if one does not thoroughly discredit the opponent. Therefore, you must not waste words defeating an argument; it is your task to beat the individual.
Finally, and of the utmost importance, is to be confident in one's position. When one enters an argument, she must be entirely convinced of her viewpoint, so that no one will be capable of deterring her. The method for actually presenting the argument is as follows: 1) Calmly enter the arena, and state your case. 2) Sit quietly, making sure to employ the techniques described in the first rule, while your opponent speaks. 3) Stand up, and repeat your argument. Make sure to express yourself with more vigor and volume than your primary address. If your opponent's initial rebuttal seemed passionate (remember, you shouldn't have actually listened), be sure to include several curse words. After having repeated yourself with the necessary profanities added, turn your passionate vengeance towards the character of your opponent, never evaluating and addressing her claims. 4) Repeat steps 2 through 4 with increasing passion until you have won the day.
These three steps, dear friends, will save you much of the unnecessary inconvenience involved in critical thinking and logical discussion. Hold by my teachings, children, and you will become effective communicators. And so, I commission you. Go. Speak. Be heard. And change the world.
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6 comments:
While I totally disagree with everything you said, and only skimmed the actual blog to see if my name occurred, i will say that you carelessly forgot an important one:
5) Try to only discuss your views on the internet. This is important because actually being face-to-face with another person may cause you to have to treat them like another human being and not like a book report, which is the only way to actually gage ideas. The best method of finding an arena for such discussion is either to find the facebook group concerning your topic or just google search through the blogosphere for the topic and then let your arguments fly, hoping the person allows outsiders to comment. Remember that in no case you should your internet conversation be the minority part of your relationship with the person, rather know that you are most likely to affect complete strangers with your ideas, since everyone you actually know already is probably an idiot or completely agrees with everything you say.
And best of all, don't forget to keep archives of your really good blog comments to copy and paste into the various sites. This will save you time as you attempt to accurately defeat each stupid argument on the internet.
The best part about the internet is that people can't really accuse you of being a hypocrite, since they don't actually ever see if your walk matches your talk. So take advantage of their electronic ignorance of you.
(I hope this corrects all the lies you said above, and hopefully you'll get saved or something from reading this.)
That said, (Note: This comment does not follow the ironic tones of sarcasm, irony, and hyperbole that my previous comment and the original author's post were using, and therefore should be read literally.)
That said, there are some interesting phenomenon (and not just the typos in my previous comment) occurring in this discussion.
First, we, like first century people (or humanity in general), tend to produce boxes in which to immediately place other people. Fashion, language, friends all serve as markers for us, despite our repeated claims to see people as individuals. The internet only serves to heighten that by keeping us from knowing people (we know their views on predestination and whether crack cocaine is acceptable hermeneutic for interpreting Revelation, but we don't know a personal thing about how many brothers/sisters the person has. It's a dangerous medium that allows us to dehumanize both our opponents and ultimately ourselves. They all gradually turn into the issue we're against so that we don't see them separately, and we gradually merge in our own minds from people trying to find and articulate to truth into people embodying the truth itself. I can think of only one person who actually embodied Truth.
Second, the focus of most internet debates within Christian groups among people my age is usually surface-y at best and kingdom-undermining at worst. Last night, Brad Fogerty was talking about debating what is sin is baby Christianity. The Bible, by and large, tells us pretty plainly with "don't do X" and "do X." If we're still at that level we're spiritual babies. Interesting thoughts that I think apply to many current things going on in the world.
Third, apathy is not the solution for peace. The other extreme from actively debating these issues is usually to just say "I don't care," which usually ends with us still caring about the debate somewhere deep in our wounded souls and leads to us ironically NOT caring about the people we were talking to. Someone wants said peace is always the byproduct of war. I don't really agree with that, but they're on the right track. Peace is always the byproduct of death. Something has to die, surrender, give up its rights for peace (ideally, all parties would surrender to each other..."submit yourselves to one another in the Lord...") Winning an internet or real debate is not nearly as important as pointing other people to God. Who cares if we convince someone that abortion is murder if we alienate them from knowing the God who breathes life into every human? What if we took the offensive in laying down our rhetorical arms before our opponents tried to? What if we took the criticisms of those attacking us ad hominem not as martyrs for a cause, but as intercessors for those attacking us? What if we followed through the commands of Jesus regarding turning the other cheek and loved, did good to, blessed, and prayed for those we find ourselves in opposition with? (That's the Luke 6 edition of the commands, btw.)
It's not easy to write this because I know, know, know I am terrible at everything I just wrote above. But I've been trying to live more by these ideas lately than before, and I'm hoping that's making a difference in those I interact with. This comment is as much confession as it hopefully is encouragement that there is a better way than either full engagement in fights or total apathy about important issues. There has to be.
and by the way, I miss you and want to hang with you. My summer looks a lot more suitable to hanging out with people than it did a few weeks ago. so we got to catch up on that as well. Peace, bro.
Hey Collin (by the way, that's a stupid name. Strike one.)
You're stupid, and here's why:
1) Facebook is capitalized, as it is a proper noun.
2) The first hit on dictionary.com for the word "gage" is a glove. How can we glove ideas, Col? I think you mean gauge, as in a standard for measuring. Idiot.
3) In your "serious" comment (which, ironically was more of a joke to me), you had a hanging parenthetical. Do you ever plan on finishing that aside, Nancy?
4) I hate you.
5) I withdraw point four if you are of a homesexual orientation (highly likely) or of a race in the minority demographic. (excluding African Americans and Mormons.)
With limited respect required,
the Incomparable Ian Scott Paterson.
No, I didn't get a new car. I am currently the proud driver of a rental.
Yeah, I have problems. But I talk to Jesus and he makes everything better. Then the voices in my head drown him out.
OUT DAMN SPOT!!!
you guys crack me up.
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