Sunday, March 01, 2009

The Trump Card

Knowingly or not, most of us love to play "the trump card" whenever we get involved in debates.

donald-trump (by changyang1230)No I am not talking about this guy. -->

I am talking about some values which some people so fondly embrace as the fundamental truth of the universe: The sanctity of life, democracy, human rights, social stability, honesty, faith, anti-racism, gender equality, ownership of a land and so forth.

When occasions arise, one of us is bound to join the discourse, choose an appropriate fundamental truth, stick to it throughout and happily use it as the ultimate trump card. By repeatedly invoking the truth and tagging all contrary opinions as immoral, we often proceed in the discourse in blatant ignorance of the outright subjectivity of our value. Despite evidence to the contrary, and examples of why our values aren't always applicable; most of us will nevertheless come out of the debate with the conviction that we are right, and they are wrong.

That's all because we have that imaginary trump card.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

yup, very well described. the purpose of a discourse is to look at a topic via different perspectives.If we enter a discourse with the intention of defending our perspective (either intentionally or not), then we might as well not have the discourse at all.