Let’s take a break from the nitty-gritty, the personal stuff. Rewind, fast-forward a bit. In a nutshell.
In a nutshell, debate is best described as “anything goes,” especially in a tech round. There are articles about anything, and as long as you can prove an argument, whether it’s through logic or empirical evidence, it stands. Thus, nonsensical statements proliferate in debate, from silly things like climate change being good to downright bigoted things like how the opponent (white, male) of my friend (black, female) once said that white people are discriminated against just as much as black people.
Obviously, this discourse is bad, but debate has transformed from an activity meant to educate students and promote research into a game that debaters play to win. This gamification excuses dogmatic language with many debaters claiming that “what happens in-round stays in-round.” But this is also obviously not true. No matter where it happens, the things we hear and say have impacts on our lives. As the illusory truth effect psychologically proves, the more we repeat something, the more we genuinely begin to believe in it, regardless of whether it’s factually true or whether we believed in it in the first place.
This calls back to when black debaters first started reading critical literature in-round as advocacy: they saw the bigotry narrowly disguised as a strategy to win the game and wanted to protest it. By reading the K and removing themselves from the structures and norms of the space that perpetuated the negative ideology, they’d found a way to combat it.
Unfortunately, Ks themselves have been co-opted into the space as well. People now read them, especially in PF, because opposing teams aren’t familiar with this type of argument and therefore don’t know how to effectively respond. Instead of advocacy, Ks are now treated as another strategy to win. Many who read Ks don’t even understand its critique and complex literature, nevermind believe in it.
Of course, there are deviants from this trend, and I consider myself one of them, especially with my initial disdain toward progressive arguments. I read the terror talks K, which critiques America’s violent counterterrorism efforts and how they’re ineffective because they consider terrorists bestial barbarians rather than holistically considering the phenomenon, including the root cause, which is American oppression. I read the immigration securitization K, which critiques America’s surveillance systems, especially at the southern border, since it uses military weapons that would be used during wartime, creating a perception that migrants are a military threat that requires subduction. As a first-generation immigrant and after an opponent in-round called undocumented immigration a “looming threat” and “terrorists” because why else would they come without documentation, this K was proven particularly true. And I read the orientalism K, which critiques America’s portrayal of China as solely an enemy that we must constantly fight against, often constructing threats out of thin air, and therefore perpetuates racism against Asian Americans.
Of course, Ks aren’t the only progressive argument that applies to real life. Framework does, too, as a way to evaluate a round and a way to evaluate what action one should take in their daily lives. As they say, every decision is an opportunity, and how you go about taking advantage of that opportunity depends upon the framework through which you see the world. I’ve recently been into Kant’s philosophy.
Kant lays out the groundwork for what he thinks should outline ethicality, which is much more complicated than critiquing concrete actions or policies. In fact, he doesn’t believe in the tangible impacts that result from an action, or even the action itself. Instead, he’s concerned about the intent behind the action.
Take this example: you’re checking out at a shop, and the shopkeeper decides not to shortchange you. Scenario 1 why he doesn’t do so: because it would hurt his business if word got out that he did. Scenario 2: because he was feeling nice that day. Scenario 3: because it’s morally wrong to do so. In which scenario is the shopkeeper ethical?
It’s the third one, of course. In scenario 1, he only cares about himself, and in scenario 2, his actions are arbitrarily determined by his mood for the day. But in all three scenarios, the action he ends up taking is the same: not shortchanging you, the customer. Thus, the intent behind the action matters in determining whether the action was ethical.
Another one of Kant’s ideas is that humanity acts not as a means to an end but as the end. He calls this the omnilateral will—actions should intend to preserve humanity’s ability to will things to happen, which is what differentiates us as rational agents from other animals, and any action that doesn’t is unethical. For example, training soldiers to kill is unethical since a dead person cannot will. Slavery is unethical because it prevents the slave from doing what they will. Etc., etc. I generally agree with this idea in that some should not be sacrificed for the good of most; according to Kant, sacrificing any is unethical. For example, I am staunchly anti-war because not only do people get killed, which is already very un-Kant, soldiers sent to the front lines are sacrificed for the betterment of the rest of the country, which is a horrible take. And these soldiers are trained to become unfeeling killing machines, which suppresses their natural will to preserve life, too.
Of course, Kant is still a product of his time, and many of his ideas are bigoted. He was homophobic because gay couples cannot reproduce and therefore don’t preserve humanity—but preventing gay couples would also prevent their will, which is un-Kantian. Many modern theorists say that Kant was not a very good Kantian, which I agree with.
Kantian framing goes far, far more in-depth than what I’ve explained here, and even what I know scratches only the surface of how the framework is utilized in debate. Ethical arguments are most often used in LD, and I am just a silly little PFer.
Indeed, the technical level of PF has grown exponentially, to the point where novices today are more likely to understand Kantian framing than those who have been graduated from the activity for two or three years (Speaking from personal experience. Over 20 debaters in the room, and the only ones who didn’t think we won the round were the judges. Even our opponents were devastated for us.).
Comments