At times, I wonder why I write. I have always wanted to inspire people and promote change, even if that change is as small as taking a second look at what seems ordinary and common. So often though, it feels like the only people who bother to read my columns are those who already agree with what I have to say, or else those who read my columns agree with what they have always believed and discard the rest.
But you and you alone, dear reader, must decide what to do with what you read. My only decision is whether or not to keep writing, but that itself is an interesting question: Do I have the right to inspire change? Do I have the right to critique or praise?
In this, an election year, questions of rights come up all the time, especially the rights relating to one’s own political voice. We may claim to be the land of the free – happy and content under the First Amendment – but much of politics consist of arguing that one’s rival can not, should not, or must not say a given thing. For instance, there is the argument that during a war, critique of the government should not be allowed, and also the argument that those who themselves would never go to war should not be advocating a war others would have to fight.
Far more relevant to our campus is the question of whether we, as college students, have a right to critique. So often I hear that what we say and do and write does not matter. We are young; we do not yet understand how the world works.
And that is pure baloney, without any additives or preservatives. Age has nothing to do with whether an argument is valid or not. Would a 10-year-old saying “Socrates is a man” be any different than an 80-year-old saying the same thing? Truth is independent of the speaker, and yet, for whatever reason, truth spoken by the young does not create the same impact as truth spoken by the elderly.
(On the rare occasion I see youth praised for its intelligence, the praise has nothing to do with original critique and everything to do with aping what elders have already said. Political commentator Ben Shapiro has been praised for being a young and successful syndicated pundit, yet I found that he simply repeated the party line and taking it as the God-given truth, instead of arguing why it must be correct. I was ashamed rather than proud of him being the youngest syndicated columnist of the time.)
Although anyone has a right to critique, one must be careful in one’s critique. It is not enough to point out the flaws in another’s argument, as Shapiro has done; no one listens to a braggart or a bragging contrarian anyway. Instead one must turn the critique inwards and analyze our own beliefs. Not only does this change the argument from “You are wrong because I am right (and never you mind why)” to “You are wrong for these universal reasons;” it makes the critique and the critic that much more believable; it makes arguments less about victory or defeat and more about improving the world for all of us. Those who would ignore an argument because of preconceptions about the author of the critique only prove their own ignorance, and those who choose to pay no attention to critiques at all only show how weak their beliefs must be, if the threat of a single honest critique would bring them crashing down.
Yes, I may be young, and, yes, I may propose changes to long-standing traditions and critique my elders. I do so with the understanding that my knowledge about such things will not and can never be complete no matter how long I live (which is just as true for my elders as for me), and I always accept the possibility that I might be the one who is wrong.
So do not be afraid to speak, do not be afraid to take some action. The effect of your acts may not be to spark a revolution, but it might spark some serious thought. And at times, a serious thought is worth far more than a revolution.
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