So, Riaan Wolmarans, the M&G Online and Thought Leader editor, has finally come up with the goods and managed to get the effervescent human magnet, Ronald Suresh Roberts, to join Thought Leader. What a scoop! And to get Ferial Haffajee to join the fray … well, sheer genius. Who can argue that for the past week or so things have been quite exciting around here? That can only mean one thing for me: good times. Entertaining times.
In the very early days of this forum I posted an open letter to Riaan which I titled “Get ready to rumble” in which I implored him to start a tournament between the intellectual giants of the land and get them to do some mental sparring on Thought Leader.
We’re all aware of the deep philosophical question of “What happens when the dog actually catches the car?” I think that the Ferial-Suresh Show is offering glimpses to the answer. If recent developments are anything to go by, I think that when the dog catches the car he howls: “Crap. What now?” At least that’s how this particular dog feels at this moment.
I’ve often argued that engaging in debate is a moot exercise. This latest debate between Suresh Roberts and Ferial Haffajee seems to bear out my assertion that people, being members of the human race, argue for one reason and one reason only: to win. I know I do. Sure, I might start out debating from a point of principle. However, about 15 minutes into any debate, I will have long forgotten why it is that I started the debate in the first place. At that point all I know is that I must crush my foe and prove he/she is the intellectual equivalent of the zit on the ass of a pubic louse compared with me.
Once two members of the human race are locked in a combat of wills and brain power, you are very unlikely to hear one of them say: “You know, Ferial, I think you have a point. Say, let me call Benny my buddy and see if we cannot speed up this whole canonisation process for Mondli.” (Suresh Roberts is a very resourceful man — the idea of him having the Holy Father’s mobile number is not as far-fetched as it sounds.)
So, back to the Suresh-Ferial Fisticuff. I have an almost pathological need to be able to reduce complex situations to their most basic level. Through many years of drinking beer, I have managed to whittle my brain-cell tally to dangerously low levels. This manifests itself in my inability to understand complex matters. So I will now engage in my favourite pastime — oversimplifying another complex matter. This is a summary of what has happened so far:
1. Suresh Roberts posts a piece entitled “The chicken-hawks of the media wars“. The points that Suresh makes in his inimitable, suck-on-these-gonads style, I humbly submit, are:
opting to attend the “lavish” BMF banquet instead of a Sanef commemoration of the 1977 bannings; chickening out of a Sanef panel discussion (involving Hawk Roberts) at the last minute, citing someone’s death as the excuse; chicken-hawking out of submitting an affidavit surrounding the Sunday Times-Manto medical records case; oh, and before I forget, Nadine Gordimer and George Bizos are chicken-hawks too; and Ferial Haffajee agrees with me and she’s a great champion of free speech.
2. Ferial Haffajee responds with a piece entitled “How dare he?” in which she says:
3. Suresh hounds Ferial through the comments feature of her original response, pointing out factual inaccuracies. Ferial follows up with a piece entitled “Of ivory towers and diseased black men” in which she makes the following point:
4. Suresh responds to Ferial in the comments feature of her post to make these points:
5. Ferial responds to Suresh in the comments section:
6. Suresh responds again;
Yawn. I know, I know — tiresome business. And real mature and classy too. But I think you catch my drift, to borrow a phrase from the Eighties.
Just to recap; we started out with a debate about genetically-modified-to-hawks chickens and ended up in Suresh’s bedroom. My whole body just shuddered. Don’t get me wrong and think I’m saying that Suresh and Ferial are idiots with particularly crappy debating skills. All I’m arguing is that they are members of the human race, which means that they are programmed to end up exactly where they ended up — in their respective bedrooms. (Lest we forget that the debate entered Ferial’s own bedroom for a fleeting moment before Suresh steered the ship back into his own bedroom.)
Meanwhile, rational debate remains just what it was before — the elusive Holy Grail. But isn’t that the futility of all debates? We all start out by taking a side and just sticking to it, no matter what. I am ashamed to say that I have once had a three-hour debate with an individual I was trying to browbeat into admitting that Galileo was actually wrong. Until that day I was completely unaware of just how strongly I felt about the flatness of the Earth and how the sun revolves around it. I estimate that my blood pressure went up by an average of 40kPa at least and I collapsed a few minor blood vessels.
That is the sheer stupidity of it all. There is very little that is vaguely rational or logical about debates. When you hear someone say, “Can we have a rational debate about this?”, cut him or her off and say straight up that this is an impossible request and you cannot promise any such thing. We are members of the human race — our emotions are irreversibly intertwined with our thoughts.
Look at it this way: I have personally argued for about seven hours with a friend over the process employed to choose Constitutional Court judges. I risked a 17-year-long relationship by suggesting he was a liar in the process. During that seven-hour period I developed really strong feelings about the subtle differences between choosing the judge president and the rest of the other guys in funny dresses and wigs. I was going to win at any cost.
The next time another Thought Leader reader sends me an email along the lines of, “I find your serious comments on other people’s blogs spot-on and refreshing. Why don’t you ever write serious articles and get some debate going?”, I’ll send them a link to this post. Or another post I wrote on the same subject.
Debate and public discourse have let us down badly. I personally think Ferial and Suresh would have achieved exactly the same thing had they just started out by mocking and ridiculing each other from the word go. Or if they had sommer just tossed a coin: “Heads. Crap. I guess you’re smarter than I am, Ferial.” I hope no one is dof enough to claim that I’m saying the reason debate is a moot exercise is because there is never a clear winner. The first person to make such an absurd suggestion I will have arrested and sentenced to seven years of listening to Parliament Live “debates” between ANC and ACDP backbenchers. My assertion is that debate is useless because it never stays rational long enough to get a cross-pollination of ideas or sway the arguing parties’ thinking.
Meanwhile, back at the Silwane ranch, Ndumiso thinks about the next subject of his hallucinations. I think I’ll continue on the filthy-underwear theme I started in my last blog.
A prince with dignity and determination
Prince Ngarambe’s goals are to become Rwanda’s first transgender model and to uplift the country’s youth
The EFF’s principles are unshakeable
Unlike the ANC, the core values of the freedom fighters do not change with each leader it elects
