Value Commitments and Value Disagreements
Last night I watched this week’s episode of 30 Days by Morgan Spurlock. If you are not familiar with the Show, Morgan Spurlock is the creator of Super Size Me, a documentary where he ate nothing but McDonalds for one month. Actually, he did not finish the one month duration since his Doctor told him it would be too unhealthy for him to continue.
Last summer, his show 30 Days debuted on FX. Currently, FX broadcasts is on Wednesday at 10pm EST. The basic premise of the show is that a person submerges him/herself in a culture that conflicts with his/her belief system or immerses him/herself into a way of life that is unfamiliar in order to “walk in their shoes” for 30 Days. Along the way, Morgan Spurlock travels the country, interviewing people, and presents “both sides of the argument.” At its best, it is enlightening for the people involved; at its worst, it is banal, possessing that “if only you saw it my way you would be free of your false consciousness,” and reducing a controversy to a false dichotomy. Sometimes, the show creates so much tension in the people’s lives that you can feel it as you watch; other times, it is a train wreck from which you cannot turn away.
In the last episode, a train wreck occurred. In “Atheist/ Christian,” an atheist moves into a family of evangelical Christians who live in North Texas. While the atheist moved in with the family to explain her views and see how the other half lives, the evangelicals sought to convert her. At its most interesting point, the Christian family sat with a group of atheists and the husband said, “It is Love thy neighbor not Love thy Christian neighbor.” At its least effective point, the atheist discussed her views on life on a local radio show and the Christian family listened. When she returned, the husband from the Christian family stated, “I do not know what you believe.” Tension must have been high in the household since the show pulled an unusual move—it brought the family of the atheist to say with the Christians. This almost never happens (I can only think of one other episode—the minimum wage episode where additional family members were brought on the show, but that was to show the impossibility of living on minimum wage).
This last episode suggests that when individuals adhere to certain values/ worldviews that shape their lives, persuasion is not possible. While everything may have a rhetorical aspect to it, not everything can persuade. In this case, the Christian family was unable to persuade the atheist (Two notes: First, 30 days may not be enough to alter fundamental world views. Second, I am not sure if the atheist was trying to persuade the Christian family—her intentions were not as clear. Though it was clear that the Christians were trying to persuade the atheists.)
Here are a few questions I am throwing out to you:
(1) What are your limits of persuasion (what can you not be persuaded to accept)?
(2) Is it ethical to persuade someone? (A very liberal position, stemming from Kant, is that it is unethical to do this because it would violate the rights of an individual? Persuasion would be linked to coercion. This is “The Rhetorical Situation” and would should address this point.)
(3) How do you formulate public policy when there are incompatible world-views? (The show mentioned crosses on public ground in Utah—though the intent of these crosses was to memorial fallen police officers and not promote religion and the “In God We Trust” in American currency—which is an endorsement of religion (there is no doubt about this) but may be de minimis (without significance) for the Court’s to touch).
(4) How do you cultivate morality/ virtue/ and ethics within society without making appeals to religion? (Kant’s categorical imperative? Secularize religion but lose the meaning of religion?)
(5) If you are atheist or agnostic, how do you raise your children? If you are religious, how do you teach you children to respect the beliefs of others? (The Christian family in the show seemed unwilling to accept the disbelief in "something higher." The atheist family discussed their disgust that their children were thrown to the ground and tanted when the atheists' children refused to say "under God" in the pledge.
If you have not watched the Show 30 Days, FX will broadcast a 30 Days marathon this Saturday (8/12) beginning at 12pm EST. I highly suggest taping and watching them all, but if you could only watch or tape a few, do not miss: Atheist/Christian, Muslims and America, Minimum Wage, and the best one, Immigration. (The other three are very entertaining and informative; however, in these four episodes, the show deals with subjects that are more political and more hostile for everyone involved.) Here is the schedule”
12:00 Anti-Aging
1:00 Binge Drinking Mom
2:00 Atheist/Christian
3:00 Muslims and America
4:00 Outsourcing
5:00 Minimum Wage
6:00 Immigration
3 comments:
This episode reminds me of an episode of one of those wife-swap shows where moms from Christian and atheist families switched places. It was really entertaining. The Christian mom went nuts and was screaming at the top of her lungs about how the other family were not Christians. Accordingly, she said that the money earned from her participation on show was the devil's. She actually tore up her $20k check on the air (although I hear that she later agreed to take the money).
Regarding your first question: I think persuasion is limited to the extent that the parties outwardly share some common ground or fundamental belief. Solon, you know Burke far better than me, but I believe his idea of identification might come into play here. Burke says that you can only persuade someone if you can talk his or her language. Of course, this is not just limited to speech and gesture, but also includes those attitudes, ideas, images, and orders which are implicit or "built into" language use. In short, you have to identify your ways with your opponent's before there exists even the possibility of persuasion.
The difficulty we face in this Christian/atheist situation is that religions, according to Burke, are often built antithetically to one another. For example, Christianity was formed in opposition to paganism, just as Protestantism was formed in opposition to Catholicism. So in a sense, religion is created through negative rhetoric, for what is not. The rhetorical patterns that follow these negative formations eliminate any possibility of identification: how can anyone find common ground in an "us and them" situation, especially when we're talking about something so fundamental as religion, the very thing through which most people order and make sense of their worlds?
Now certainly this kind of persuasion is possible, as many have Christians are converted atheists (C.S. Lewis, for example) and vice versa, but I don't know how it becomes possible.
At the risk of coming across as a bit 'froo-froo,' Harrogate declares himself an atheist with pagan leanings.
That said, he would never attempt to dissuade someone of their religious beliefs. He resents prosylatizers because when they come, they come not for discourse or identification, but to pour meaning into the head of the 'receiver' like pouring into a pitcher or a jug, rather than a human being.
Harrogate is a human being and will therefore not indulge those seeking to pour something into him without listening, getting to know ehere he's coming from. He loves conversation, and loves to discuss, and will get as animated as is wanted, with those who have wildly different convictions.
For Harrogate, conversion is not the issue--Oxymoron makes a great point when he reminds us that so many of these belief systems depend upon negationist rhetoric in the first place. But take two people who are willing to discus their differences and perhaps each of them will reach a broader perspective of the world and their place in it. More importantly, this is one of the primary ways in which relationships blossom and grow.
(1) While, Buke would be a good starting point, a better one would be Chaim Perelman in The New Rhetoric. In The New Rhetoric, Perelman is very insightful on the "starting points" for argumentation.
With Perelman, there is also a separation between "persuasion" and "conviciton," which needs to be explored in a separate post. Next, people must take in consideration that if you engage in a debate with someone, one possible consequence is that you have to be open-minded enough to consider and, possibly, acceot their belief (to see things as the interlocutor sees them-- an idea which can be dangerous based on the idea). Furthermore, in another post, I would like to explore the idea of the fanatic, as one who "adheres to a disputed thesis for which no unquestionable proof can be furnished," and refuses to put his/her thesis in an open debate and Perelman's discuss about the fanatic that becomes a despot or tyrant when adhering to abstract values (cannot find the quote).
(2) Chrsitianity and negative rhetoric. In the show, the Chirstians forced the atheist to say, "I do not identify myself as anti-God or anti-Religion." The atheists dialectical pairs revolved aound reason- non-reason or logical and no-logic, which were another pair of false dichotomies. Another antithetical pairs used by the Christians (in a Bible study class) was the sciecne and religion divide, which again, are not accurate dichotomies.
The atheist and the Christian mother could find common ground on "motherly" activities-- talking about the home, the "duties" of a "house-wife," and helping the children with their homework. At another point, when the atheist's husband (A.H.) arrived for the weekend, the A.H. shared a conversion expereience with the religious wife: the tremendous feeling of freedom when each found their destiny (the each destiny was different.)
But it seems that the Christian husband and the atheist could not find any common ground at all, which is why they could not speak. They did not share any values, even lower values on the value hierarchy, which brings up a lot of other questions.
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