How did we get here?

Speech and Debate

What is the biggest issue in the world today? One of my fellow debaters said that this question was asked at a job interview, and someone's answer may say a lot about how they think. Common responses may vary from things like economic inequality, lack of world peace, climate change, human hatred, or things along those lines. All of these are fairly logical and exist as huge threats towards modern society, so I don't blame someone for saying something like that. However, my answer is a little different because I went down and tried to find the core issue in society, and I think I've nailed it: The biggest issue in society boils down to people's lack of ability to critically think and discuss new ideas.

My argument stands as this: What is the biggest thing that stops us from solving any of the listed issues? It's because not everyone is on board with the same idea. In a perfectly intelligent society, evil may not exist because the majority would recognize it and not allow it to come into form. Absolutely nothing prevents us from stopping evil except for the fact that we cannot decide what is evil and what is the best way to stop it. If everyone agreed to work around the usage of carbon emissions in their day-to-day lives, then we could stop climate change. If people weren't so prone to higher-class propaganda, then we could stop class inequality. It's very hard to word this in a way that doesn't come off as "Well if everyone just had the SAME ideas as me, then everything would be fine!" because I am also prone to propaganda, sadly. However, society has too many idiots that actively restrain it in favor of things that make no logical sense like racist views or a weird allegiance to rich people who don't actually care about their problems. Only then can we create solutions that ultimately benefit society.

So, what does this all have to do with speech and debate? Well, for anyone who hasn't taken it, speech and debate is built on the idea of critical thinking and optimally-built solutions. Some say that it's easier to win an argument with a smart person than an idiot because an idiot will never admit that they're wrong. In a proper debate, there is a winner and a loser, and you have to accept whoever the spectators decide that is. In a proper speech, you have to consider every viewpoint beyond your own to not invalidate how anyone in the audience feels. Most importantly, critical thinking is the most key aspect of speech and debate. You cannot give a speech where you think everyone will just mindlessly agree with whatever you say. You have to fully consider the other side's view in a debate. That is, by definition, critical thinking. A perfect world to me is one where everyone is willing to do this because at that point, I'd argue that idiots no longer exist.

I wouldn't say that I was an idiot before doing speech and debate. In fact, I wouldn't even say that it got me to think MORE critically. Rather, it gave me more of an appreciation of the art. So many people are straight up just bad at arguing, but I feel like anyone can do a debate if they really take the time for it. Nothing bad can happen from being smart. Okay... that's not totally true, but it's one of life's greatest virtues. I consider myself smart, damnit. Nearly everyone around me has told me that they think I'm smart in some way, so I feel justified in that belief. If that is the case, then I can somewhat describe the experience of it. One of the smartest things that someone can do is accept that they are wrong, and it doesn't even hurt that much. I live so much more peacefully knowing that I can have intelligent conversations with people. There's never a reason to be afraid of someone that you can reason with, and I hold those reasoning skills. It's weirdly freeing. At some point this becomes a humble brag, but I can't help it. I think that everyone should strive to be smart and some type of a critical thinker. Speech and debate can really help with that.

Competitive Speech and Debate in my junior year is the best class that I have ever taken, hands down. Debaters are some of the greatest people to be around. We really want to see the world become better, and a lot of us give benefit of the doubt to just about anyone. Some of the nicest people that I've met came from speech and debate. Okay, this is really starting to sound like a humble brag now... so I'll talk more about just being in the class. Being surrounded by peers THAT likeminded was a real game changer for me. Humans connect through conversation, and we loved to converse about complex ideas. There were smart people in that class - people who were PRACTICALLY smart, not computationally smart. I feel like even the average man can appreciate a practically smart person because there's a lot to learn from them. It never hurts to share ideas. It never hurts to learn. It never hurts to just be your best self. There was a sense of community in that class from us wanting to find people like ourselves (who aren't immediately obvious from the outside) and finally being able to do that. To me, it may just be the greatest group of individuals that I have ever had the honor of being around.

Now, it's wrong to act like speech and debate as a sport is all sunshine and rainbows. Making a speech that's an upwards of 10 minutes while being fully researched and written in such a way that's easy to grasp for others while still being very informative is a doozy. Then, you have to memorize the damn thing, and oh god, the MEMORIZATION is horrible. I wrote 5 speeches over 2 years and memorized every one of them. For every speech, I want to say that I spent anywhere from 5-9 hours memorizing it in one day. Memorization is the biggest barrier that stops a person from doing speech and debate because there is no way to make that fun. It's long, tedious, and completely drives you insane while making you question your existence during the process. Sometimes, you'll even go through all of the effort of making a speech only to go to your competition and realize that it's not as good as you thought. You think that you wrote a good speech until you listen to someone who ACTUALLY wrote a good speech. Going to those all-day weekend competitions where you hardly eat a thing, listen to speeches that are better than yours, and not even end up placing can be extremely debilitating. I would know, as despite my passion for speech and debate, I rarely ever placed, or ate food for that matter.

With all of that negativity aside, I still love speech and debate as an art and as an experience. It did teach me that being the best in your mind and convincing others that you are the best are two very different things. Because speech and debate is so competitive, judges are the ones who ultimately decide how well you did instead of an objective system like other sports... so that's fun. Judges are supposed to leave you feedback in your online ballots after a competition, but that feedback is not always necessarily good. Any competitive debater can confirm that. There is a real art to dumbing down for the average person. Presenting yourself is half the battle (literally for public speaking). I think that was my main weakness in my speeches. They would be well written and researched, but that damned autism would make me sound a lot less natural and make me not connect with my judges as much, and that led to me scoring lower. This is NOT me making an excuse because that is literally part of the competition - though, not every judge is particularly fair, either, I'd like to give a shoutout to the one judge at my state competition who ranked me in last place and gave me the incredible feedback of "Interesting speech." Not every judge is a winner.

Can you believe it, though? I just learned that I could be the smartest person in the world, but a lack of ability to properly present any intelligence will hold me back, and I'm not even mad about it. I guess that it's beautiful to me in a way. That kind of system wouldn't be part of my ideal world that I spoke of earlier, but at the same time, it's so rewarding TO actually get that connection. It feels so right to have to account for someone's lack of understanding sometimes. I should be mad that I never did that well in my competitions, but it was really a competition of presenting myself in which is a skill I do not possess, and I accept that as a reality. It ends up being my biggest takeaway from speech and debate despite any friends or memories that I made. I'm glad that I see people a bit more clearly now as I'll be able to adjust myself for it. Maybe it's not ideal, but who cares? It's workable, and that's still significant to me. The moment that I start to live for my ideals is the moment that I start to reject reality. I love speech and debate, and I will continue to push it as something that everyone should at least try, but I also totally get why the world is this way.

On this day, I am proud to be a public speaker and a debater. I'm proud to be willing to hear ideas that aren't my own and imagine hypotheticals from them. It's a damning skill to have, and even if not everyone understands me for it, that's okay. I love speech and debate anyway. With ideas like the ones in speech and debate, I've been able to build up some type of internal culture and belief system that I'm honestly kinda proud of. I'm still happy that I learned something which will be useful knowledge for the rest of my life. Thank you, speech and debate. Cheers to my debaters!