THE PROBLEM WITH PREACHERS
by Kevin baldeosingh
Published:
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Many people in T&T know how to preach, but very few know how to make an argument. Indeed, most people believe preaching IS an argument.
Last week, I heard Vision on Mission head Wayne Chance on I95.5FM, where he co-hosts a morning talkshow, spend at least 20 minutes explaining how, if someone greets you by clasping both hands, it’s because they’re trying to exert mind control over you, and telling a story to show that, if someone gives you a multi-coloured bracelet, they might be putting a curse on you. And this man is a National Award winner.I’m not saying that Mr Chance doesn’t deserve his award, insofar as such awards have any merit. But he has been presented as an exemplar and given a forum to express his views. The radio station’s managers aren’t wrong to give him this platform, because the kind of superstitious nonsense Chance was espousing was praised by several listeners, so the station is only catering to its majority ignorant audience. But preaching instead of arguing, as most commentators do, undermines public debate on important issues.
Now by “preaching” I am not referring to religious sermons, but a method of expressing an opinion. Nor am I using the term “argument” in its quotidian sense of “disagreement” but, rather, in its technical meaning of “rigorous discourse”. Preaching relies on invoking an authority and/or making emotive or moral exhortations. Argument relies on logic and/or presenting evidence to support an opinion.
Take, for example, the question “Why should you be good?” The preaching answer is that God/Your parents/The Political Leader wants you to be good. This assertion rests on the precept that obedience is a virtue—which, of course, is an axiom that both religion and politics require to thrive. But an argumentation response to the question might be the Golden Rule—Do not do onto others that which you would not have done onto yourself, which is an Argument from Empathy; or that surveys show that pushing progressive values foster prosperity and peace, which is an Argument from Data; or even that doing good is an effective path to happiness, which is an Argument from Self-Interest.
But, in this place, even the most pragmatic issues are treated as opportunities for preaching rather than reasoned discourse. Take everyone’s prime concern: murder. Most commentators treat this as an issue of moral outrage—first, against the criminals (“beasts in human form, savages, evil-hearted demons”) and then against the police (“corrupt, incompetent”), the judiciary (“biased, lazy”) and then against the Government (all of the preceding, but only if the party in power is not your party). But few commentators actually offer evidence-based reasons for why murderers kill or why the legal infrastructure is so ineffectual at reducing homicide (eg, State funds going to gang leaders through URP, the illegality of drugs, a minimum wage making young unskilled men unemployable).
The lack of effective analysis is a key reason that the powers-that-be have been unable to contain the crime problem. The preaching approach also derails effective action on problems like domestic violence, since gender feminists habitually ignore the data showing that women are just as violent of men, short of murder, in domestic conflicts. So, instead of accepting that domestic violence can only be reduced through couples therapy, they persist in their all-man-bad approach, even arguing that, because it is mostly women who are killed in such incidents, there is no need to examine women’s role in domestic conflicts. Which only shows that feminists are more interested in moral signalling and furthering their careers than in actually saving women’s lives.
The preaching mindset similarly undermines discussion about the country’s flailing economy. Head of the Economic Development Advisory Board, Dr Terrence Farrell, has had to spend most of the past few weeks explaining the board’s recommendations, because commentators like Ralph Maraj (a master of preachy advice) and Trevor Sudama (a master of race rhetoric) apparently can’t be bothered to read in-depth. Finance Minister Colm Imbert has to send letters to the editor to point out columnist Michael Harris’s complete misunderstanding of fiscal figures, to which Harris’s only reply is to call Mr Imbert a “buffoon”—an ad hominem response which, apart from being wrong (Colm is bumptious, not buffoonish) only demonstrates that Harris, a politics preacher, cannot defend his opinions. But, without analytical debates about free trade, comparative advantage, privatisation, devaluation and so on, it will be that much harder for the country to extricate itself from its present economic morass.
The problem is, there is no balance, either in the society as a whole or the media in particular, not only in respect to the economy, but all other issues. This is because, human nature being what it is, the audience for preaching is always larger than the audience for argument. This is so even in advanced nations like Sweden and Canada, where the widespread acceptance of shibboleths about welfare and rape culture proves that secularism doesn’t eradicate the religious mindset. But in nations like those, the minority voices of reason and pragmatism still influence policies and cultural values.
That, of course, doesn’t happen here: which is one reason T&T is still Third World.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/columnist/201 ... -preachers
