A Greater Debate

Of course, arguments on Facebook become tedious at times. Most people only read far enough to formulate an answer, and are not at all reading to absorb new information. I’m guilty of this myself, sometimes. I do hate to lose an argument. Some are not even reading deeply enough to form a relevant answer, and satisfy themselves with something they think is clever, like a bad pun on somebody’s name, or some total diversion. Some, especially if they are politicians, will be waiting to give the answer which will most greatly benefit them in the short term, and the hell with the rest of the human race. But most of us, and I’m seriously guilty of this one, are hardened in our positions and will argue with anything that opposes them.
There are no winners, and that is the problem.
I was watching an episode of Star Trek (the original series) in which Teri Garr guest stars as a secretary in an office in 1968, when Kirk and Spock and some weird guy all beam back to try and protect the time line, except Kirk and Spock assume he’s a bad guy right till the very end. She says, at one point “That’s why kids in my generation are kind of crazy and rebellious sometimes. We don’t know if we’re going to be alive when we’re 30.”
The issues haven’t really changed since then. We still have poverty, war, environmental degradation, hostilities between nations, age groups, races, religions, genders, and a whole lot of just plain nastiness.
What we need, in my opinion, is a better way to converse, a better way to debate. Something that will not just be a tit-for-tat, barb for barb, shit flinging contest. Something that is actually designed to get at the truth of the thing, to isolate the best solutions and publicize them to the world.
Scientists do that. If the general public could, I believe we could have a utopian society very soon.