Public Moral Debate is Dying: The Prospective and the Reactive
The Difference Between Playing Defense and Not-Playing-Defense
For should the enemy strengthen his front, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his front; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6.17
Preparing to Lose in Moral Debates
There is a reason why Sun Tzu’s work, The Art of War, written sometime around the 5th C. BC, is still read, and bowdlerized for everything from how to date to how to run a business. Though I’ve written extensively in Christian ethics of war and peace, I’d never read this classic until listening to it on audiobook this week, and one can see why it’s been read repeatedly since its authorship.1
The prose is terse and invites contemplation to understand the deep logic of its statements. Think of it like the Proverbs: they’re ironclad rules for engagement, but a composite portrait of wisdom. As I’ve been listening to it, I’ve been mulling over this particular statement with reference to this question of how public moral debates happen by thinking about the relation of the reactive debate to the prospective.
The difference between these two modes is the difference between being torn between every cresting wave which calls for us to say something (James 1) and operating out of a calm center. So much of the publishing industry works in the former way: books sell (and sell in bucketloads) because they “speak into issues” or offer their partially cooked take in big rhetorical flourishes that are designed to be retweeted, or used as a pull quotes for you to use as an Instagram photo. These interventions in moral debates have the semblance of wisdom, but aren’t largely2 worth your time, for a two-fold reason:
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