You don’t win hearts and minds through rational debate

Or: why you should read Eleanor Gordon-Smith’s new book

NB. This is a (mostly) Google-translated — hence here and there somewhat clumsily translated — version of a Dutch review I wrote that appeared in the newspaper Trouw.

Stop met redelijk zijn: Het leven is geen debat
Eleanor Gordon-Smith (vertaling Huub Stegeman)
Uitgeverij Ten Have, 192 blz., € 20,99
★★★★★ (Yes, all the stars I had at my disposal.)

You can order the Dutch translation of the book here. Or the original here.

The author
Yes, who is Eleanor Gordon-Smith? I had never heard of her, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from her. In the distant past, Gordon-Smith was a world-class debater, and she is currently writing her dissertation at Princeton University. This book is the result of the radio program “This American Life”, in which she did her utmost to enter into rational conversation with men who catcalled her. Unfortunately for Gordon-Smith, those conversations were not a success; luckily for us this book is the result of her disappointment. This is her first book, we can only hope she is already working on the next one.

Reasonableness is messy
If we had to believe philosophers, we should question everything, we should never simply believe what someone else says, should consider our emotions not to provide us with reasons, we should believe things based on convincing evidence, and only change our minds when confronted with new, convincing evidence. On the basis of five (true) stories, Gordon-Smith makes mincemeat of all these dogma’s. Changing your mind is a very “messy process”. The ever-doubting philosopher is not a cognitive superhero, but,

“someone who is incapable of ordinary intimacy and swings back and forth between paranoia and contempt.”

Ouch, but true.

Responding to weirdo’s?
Gordon-Smith tells these stories not only because they are moving in themselves, and make us think twice about what “reasonableness” really is, but also because we have for too long based public debate on an incorrect ideal of rational persuasion. Consider: inviting weirdo’s to a debate and then arguing against them with solid, rational arguments. We forget that the words of some people are never heard or constantly misunderstood (women who say “no”, for example), while the words of weirdo’s, who get the attention, keep pounding on, even though they preach bullshit. We also forget that with cold argumentation one doesn’t win hearts. We are currently leaving the non-rational aspects, and the actual art of persuasion, up to “second-hand car salesmen” and “bosses of advertising agencies”. Tricky business.

Reasons not to read this book
Truly the only negative thing I can mention about this book is that there is no sequel yet. OK, Gordon-Smith also does not say very much about the alternative form that public debate should take, including public broadcasting, political debates, and journalism. And yet such an alternative seems to follow from the stories she tells and the accompanying philosophical insights. So who is going to replace the “second-hand car salesman”? How should we go about doing this? We want to hear more.

Reasons to read this book
This book first and foremost tells a powerful story in terms of its content. Gordon-Smith almost dances from one philosopher to the next (and rightly puts original, contemporary, and mostly female philosophers in the spotlight). But she also writes damned well: visually, playfully, lively, empathically. When Susie, from chapter three, discovers something terrible about her husband, it feels to her as if “her heart disappears into the depths like a rattling anchor chain” — the translator also deserves explicit compliments here.

Moreover, Gordon-Smith is refreshingly blunt (“I’d better be honest about it and just admit that I think it’s a stupid argument”) and she has a sharp sense humor, which she uses tactfully — and with charm — against a small platoon of dead, male philosophers. Anyone who thinks, for example, that they can make genuine progress with pure, argumentative persuasion, is someone who will be,

“rather lonely on his syllogistic mountain peak and must sit and watch how, far below him in the real world, the Nazis and polio have returned.”

This book shines on several different fronts, which is not something you come across very often. It would be unreasonable not to purchase this book this very instant.