“Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”
– John Milton
“If an idea or practice is truly legitimate or ideal, it surely can welcome the most rigorous of questioning.”
– Me 🙂
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If someone is advocating an idea that you deem egregious, you have a few options:
1) Label the idea as absurd and the person as insane, horrible, and unworthy of speaking
2) Entertain the idea without accepting it – engage in specific discourse about the nature of the argument
3) Do nothing, let the idea float on its own, and spend your time more productively
Stop choosing Option 1.
Consider a hardware store that sells lightbulbs that continually break, causing numerous customers nuisance. The store owner insists the light bulbs work fine, he doesn’t change products, and the problem continues. Customers flock to different or new hardware stores, and the faulty hardware store goes out of business.
There’s no need to fight back against this stubborn business owner. His reputation suffered on its own, and his ‘belief’ in his light bulbs was naturally debunked.
If you deem it a valuable use of your time, you could choose Option 2. You could complain effectively, and seek to persuade him to sell better bulbs.
Or you choose Option 3, and open or patronize a better store.
Let this apply to the realm ideas. There’s no need to silence dissenters because when tested through the scientific method, an idea will prove factual or fictitious. Or, elements and threads of both will come to light.
Legislation on ideas only wraps truth in insecurity. Rigorously auditing beliefs not only helps produce sound, reasonable thinking, it’s a crucial step in the process. If people are afraid to question the status quo because there is an intolerance of unpopular opinion, philosophical progress is only thwarted.
But Joel, what this person is saying is offensive to specific groups of people. It’s unacceptable.
If a person is not accepting of diversity, that’s definitely disappointing, frustrating, and infuriating.
Engage with the specific irrationality of the idea, or just abandon the conversation. Let the idea go out of business. Go build more profitable ideas.
Just don’t squash intellectual diversity in the process.
