Compass Points – Discourse Before Debate
Seek Understanding Before Argument
Compass Points enjoys a good debate. Sports are a kind of debate. One football team says, ‘We’re the best.’ The other team says, ‘We’re the best.’
The two sides go at, blocking, tackling, and hitting to win. It is all in the game.
For complex issues, though, debate is too simple. Debate reduces a multi-sided complexity to just two opposing sides. It is like reducing the points on a compass to just the East and the West. That kind of simplicity leaves out too much.
Compass Points uses the traditional compass rose, with ‘Marines’ at the center, as its emblem. It is a visual way of showing that Compass Points wants to bring broader thinking and deeper understanding to the complex issues surrounding the Marine Corps and national security.
The answer to expanding and elevating the complex discussion about the Marine Corps is not through more debate, but through more discourse.
Debate? Discourse? What is the difference? The objective of a debate is to win the debate --- to defeat the other side’s arguments. The objective of discourse is for all sides to reach a new, higher level of mutual understanding. Where debate is antagonistic and very much a zero-sum event --- I win, you lose. Discourse is ultimately collaborative in that all gain broader and deeper understandings of the problem space.
Debate selects, weights, and organizes facts to build a narrative to win an argument. Discourse seeks multiple perspectives and strives to represent accurately the whole of a complex system to better understand its functioning.
Debate tends to focus on direct causes; discourse seeks to understanding second and third order effects. The temptation of debate is over-emphasis on selected facts which can lead to gross misrepresentation of reality to win an argument.
Debate tends to reduce multiple perspectives and insights into bifurcations and ultimately polarizations. Discourse seeks multiple perspectives and strives to incorporate them into a unifying concept. Debate tends to be exclusionary of other perspectives and ideas; discourse tends to be inclusionary.
Going forward, Compass Points seeks to raise the quality of discourse to make progress on its stated goal of “acting as an independent voice for a stronger Marine Corps.” It is a challenge. We all live and work in a highly polarized, either-or culture. The current culture and media tend to entertain rather than enlighten. This can lead to sleepy passivity rather than to understanding and action.
The majority of Marine leaders and friends of the Corps want to move beyond ad hominin attacks. It is certainly true on Compass Points. We sense those subscribing to Compass Points share our mission and want serious, thoughtful elevating content.
Nothing wrong with some humor, entertainment, and passion, but we need Compass Points readers to help us stay focused less on debate and more on discourse. With your help, we can not only help build a stronger Marine Corps, but we can do so in a way that provides an example of how other national complex issues can be solved.
So, let the debate begin over which football team is best, but let the discourse begin about the future of our Corps.