Thank you so much, Scott. And ha I know - I feel endlessly grateful and privileged to be able to visit my hometown that often. The offline break particularly felt reinvigorating ❤️
I was blissfully unaware of Kirk before the events last week and I didn't realize his whole thing was being a 30 yo man debating children? (no offense to college students but like he wasn't even debating his peers?)
To be fair, when Kirk began his career, he was in college himself. He found success with a particular approach, so it's no surprise he continued it for a decade.
Also, to be fair, he was beginning to engage in longer form debates with people who were his own age or significantly older:
Correction, just to be clear and accurate: He was college age when he began his career... He did not attend college, choosing to found his organization instead.
Sophie: Distance-- geographic and digital-- clearly focused you. This is one of the finest pieces of writing I've read on Substack-- smart, perceptive, and relatable. Welcome back.
I would say that this phenomenon you're mourning is something that did exist, and, frankly, still does exist. This influx of desperation to be correct, though, is something I would pin on the very real stakes that comprise so much faux-debate we see online, which can mistakenly trickle into debates with no such stakes (because, subconsciously, we're attracted to the rush, I guess?).
Because if we understand true debate as a collaborative back-and-forth in pursuit of an observable truth, what we're instead seeing nowadays are premises that assert the "debater's" ontological core as the "correct" one. The purpose of Kirk's debates was to foster cultural acceptance of trans erasure, Muslim erasure, women's subordination, and a general intolerance of the personal sovereignty of anyone who wasn't a Christian white guy. That cultural acceptance would enable legislators to seize this personal sovereignty from their respective peoples, which would feed back into the cultural violence against those people. It has to be violence, because someone's existence can't be incorrect, and therefore can't be debated.
It's a product of insecurity; the matter in which one inhabits life can't possibly be wrong if theirs is the only accepted/visible way to do so. It's like if I loved The Dark Knight, you hated The Dark Knight, and I tried debating you on the unforthcoming premise that I don't believe Dark Knight haters should exist/be acknowledged, because I'm incapable of squaring the validity of my love for it in my own personal reality. "Prove me wrong, feed my banality." Elementally senseless.
And I'll cut myself off there out of respect to my non-committal plans to write my own post about this. Wonderful to see you back, Sophie ❤️
As always, your observations are so sharp. Oh to be blissfully unplugged in Greece for even a day would be a dream for an American such as I.
Thank you so much, Scott. And ha I know - I feel endlessly grateful and privileged to be able to visit my hometown that often. The offline break particularly felt reinvigorating ❤️
Welcome back!
I was blissfully unaware of Kirk before the events last week and I didn't realize his whole thing was being a 30 yo man debating children? (no offense to college students but like he wasn't even debating his peers?)
To be fair, when Kirk began his career, he was in college himself. He found success with a particular approach, so it's no surprise he continued it for a decade.
Also, to be fair, he was beginning to engage in longer form debates with people who were his own age or significantly older:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnZT7Gz_VSN5I5G0LQk7sTY0CWEP12wV4
Correction, just to be clear and accurate: He was college age when he began his career... He did not attend college, choosing to found his organization instead.
I love everything here!! Also, I want to throw in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (Sidney Poitier, of course!) Welcome back :)
Sophie: Distance-- geographic and digital-- clearly focused you. This is one of the finest pieces of writing I've read on Substack-- smart, perceptive, and relatable. Welcome back.
I would say that this phenomenon you're mourning is something that did exist, and, frankly, still does exist. This influx of desperation to be correct, though, is something I would pin on the very real stakes that comprise so much faux-debate we see online, which can mistakenly trickle into debates with no such stakes (because, subconsciously, we're attracted to the rush, I guess?).
Because if we understand true debate as a collaborative back-and-forth in pursuit of an observable truth, what we're instead seeing nowadays are premises that assert the "debater's" ontological core as the "correct" one. The purpose of Kirk's debates was to foster cultural acceptance of trans erasure, Muslim erasure, women's subordination, and a general intolerance of the personal sovereignty of anyone who wasn't a Christian white guy. That cultural acceptance would enable legislators to seize this personal sovereignty from their respective peoples, which would feed back into the cultural violence against those people. It has to be violence, because someone's existence can't be incorrect, and therefore can't be debated.
It's a product of insecurity; the matter in which one inhabits life can't possibly be wrong if theirs is the only accepted/visible way to do so. It's like if I loved The Dark Knight, you hated The Dark Knight, and I tried debating you on the unforthcoming premise that I don't believe Dark Knight haters should exist/be acknowledged, because I'm incapable of squaring the validity of my love for it in my own personal reality. "Prove me wrong, feed my banality." Elementally senseless.
And I'll cut myself off there out of respect to my non-committal plans to write my own post about this. Wonderful to see you back, Sophie ❤️