The Value of Values

I've had an interesting experience this past year... I was called upon to become a high school debate judge for my son's debate team, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  Somewhat familiar with healthy debate myself, it has been interesting to watch these young people be given topical resolutions, and then to prepare arguments for each respective side of the issue.

In a recent discussion online, my son, who is an energetic, enthusiastic and quite talented debater (even though this is his first year), argued a particular side of an issue "just because no one else was."  That got me thinking.

I began pondering about all the "resolutions" that one could come up with regarding current societal issues, and which ones would be open to legitimately exploring different sides of a given issue, and which issues seemed to be inherently "indefensible."  Or whether there really were such issues?  In other words, can every conceivable issue be intelligently and legitimately debated?

In debate, as I have observed, a topical resolution is provided, and then both sides reduce their respective position into an arguable set of defensible factual points.  Each side analyzes the resolution, and then assigns a "value proposition" that frames their argument, and then "contentions" to support their analysis and value proposition.

It's all very fascinating to watch and the opportunities for real-world application of these skills, particularly in the legal profession, are very easily observed.

It got me thinking, though... while arguing for the sake of learning formal debate skills, solid research techniques, and thinking on one's feet is one thing... is it wise or justified to carry that over into the real world on every issue?  I suppose the question occurred to me, "When should something be defended (in the absence of someone defending it), and when should it not?"

As I enumerated in my mind the various issues that I thought logically indefensible, it occurred to me that what I was really tallying was a list of my own personal values, and that the more importance a given value had to me, personally, the more indefensible the opposing position to that value was.  At least in my mind.

It's always a slippery slope when I muse on philosophical issues at O'Dark Thirty.

The cascading torrent of thoughts that followed enticed me to explore the possible reasons why others seemed to be able to attack issues that I had always held indefensible with such amazingly brazen ferocity... and it occurred to me that what I was munging on was nothing less than a subtle societal shift towards moral and ethical devaluation.

I'm a child of the '60's.  Even in the midst of the love-fest of the Flower Children and Beatnicks, there was also a greater societal foundation of values and taboos... a long-lost word in our 21st Century vocabulary, but a very functional one in a society that held certain values dear.  Taboos were behaviors, practices, and ideologies that were so far off the societal radar that they weren't even thought worthy of discussion.  To be against them was "common sense."  To defend them was unthinkable.

As time has trudged on however, values have waned, taboos have been emboldened, and the societal values we once held dear have been diluted to the point where they are only barely perceptible passing thoughts anymore.  We have spent so much societal capital trying to be politically correct that we have, in the process, devalued the "dollar" of our common ethics and morals to the point where we don't have enough left to buy gum.

Author Richelle Goodrich commented on this: 

“When you devalue ethics and morals by proclaiming that our attitude toward them should be casual or lenient, you can't be surprised by a rising generation who then behaves disrespectfully; treating life, people, and choices as if they possess little value or worth.  For whether or not that was the intention, society has taught them to believe thusly.”   (Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway, Purple Papaya LLC)

Without trying to sound too ancient, I miss the "Old Days." 

In the "Old Days," societal ethics and morals were part of who we were as a people.  They were what set us apart.  They defined us in a very real way.  Today, those values have been reduced to a set of contentions that can be interchangeably argued at will, with equally valid conclusions. 

The side that "wins" is simply the side that makes the most convincing argument.  Not the side that's "right..." for there is no "right" or "wrong" anymore.  In fact, in this increasing "enlightened" age of relentless "Progressivism" and its ugly sister "Relativeism," morality and ethics have become nothing more than quaint curiosities.

Debates, whether in high school or the real world, are now merely exercises in evidence-gathering and argumentation skills.  They have no real meaning beyond the scope of teaching students how to collect and process data.  The actual intrinsic value of the issues being discussed is negligible.  Discussions based on the respective ethical and moral merits of those values don't happen very frequently, and more often than not, moral and ethical evaluation has simply a long-forgotten remnant of a bygone day and a former era, and is seen as having no functional value in society.  We're far too occupied trying to ensure that no one's feelings are hurt.

This freight train was heard rumbling down the tracks in 1915.  In an essay by social scientists titled "Social Degeneration," they observed;

"Social degeneration is the breaking up of the coordination existing between the various social elements, individuals and the subgroups which cooperate in the social process, — by the growth of so many antisocial elements that social unity is destroyed. This comes about by the growth of degeneracy among the individuals who make up society. Therefore, individual degeneracy has a direct bearing upon social degeneration, for degenerate individuals are either unsocial, or antisocial and are unable to cooperate in the aims and purposes of society.

"Social degeneration, then, arises from the decline of the individual who fails to perform his part in the social activity. This causes a breakdown in the social mechanism and a decline in social activity. So long as each individual may be replaced by another as he fails or declines, society may be perpetuated, if not destroyed by outside influences. Just as a diseased member of the body may eventually destroy the individual, so a diseased part of society may be the cause of the destruction of the whole body. Social degeneration, then, is an evidence of social disease."

My fear is that our stubbornly consistent devaluation of solid moral and ethical principles as a society is nothing more nor less than devastating evidence of Stage 4 Societal Cancer from which we may never recover.  And perhaps we ought to debate THAT before it's too late.