Your blood drool attracts the flies… Agreeing on how to disagree #QLDlitprize

I wrote an article on New Matilda about the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award.  In short, it’s a vanity project for premiers; it achieves very little and is difficult to justify when cuts are going to be made to important programs.

There are ways to dispute my argument.  You could say that there’s some error with my reasoning.  Even though it only advantages a very small number of people, that small number of people do amazingly wonderful things which is good for the community… or something.  You could say that there’s no error in my reasoning but there’s a bigger picture; despite me being correct about everything I’ve said, there’s some bigger issue.  Even though it’s true that it’s a vanity project for premiers, advantages a vanishingly small number of people, and will mean that important projects will be cut by an extra quarter of a million, that’s all okay because there’s a prophecy that Space Nazis will attack the Earth if the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award is abolished.

These are, broadly, the two ways people have a discussion or engage in discourse: find an error in the interlocutor’s reasoning or identify how the interlocutor could be correct in the specifics of their argument but incorrect in the broader application.

I’ve said it over and over again, but the number one reason why politics and the media are spiralling down the lavatory vortex is that people can no longer engage in discussion sensibly and productively.  I noted it in passing with the ‘300 bills = good’ discussion: no matter what I said, no ALP supporter can explain why 300 bills is an indication of a good government.  This is the reason why there are no productive discussions about the ABC; people complaining about ‘balance’ have no workable definitions — it’s just bellyfeel reaction to anything IPA-related or rightwing-related.  It’s why conversations about important policy issues go utterly nowhere: you have teams and you yell your teams mantras until one of you passes out from exhaustion.

The colloquial expression is: ‘to talk past each other’ and I’m now seeing this problem emerge routinely in news websites and blogs. I’m also worried that we see it more and more on shows like Q&A and Insiders where the hosts quickly shuffle on to the next topic instead of moderating deeper discussions between parties who disagree.  As the guests know that they’ve got vanishingly small time to get their message across, they resort to one-liners and triviality in order to be remembered.

If we want to see better political discussion, perhaps we need to get better at it ourselves.