Televised political debates: My suggestion for a ‘respectful debate’ format

We see debates all the time on television. Television channels love debates because aggressive debates, like action movies, increase their TRPs. Increasingly, the debate has moved from being a source of entertainment on television to an important - almost unavoidable part of election campaigns in many entrenched democracies such as US, UK, France and so on. European politics was a bit slow to adopt this American debate prescription, but as we saw recently in case of Macron and Le Pen in France, political leaders facing elections are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid appearing in a widely televised debate.

Before going further, I remember an old friend and my former manager, a great thinker, Prof. Subhash Sharma in Bangalore who had come out with the idea of 3D – Discourse, Dialogue and Discussion to build harmony. This was more than a decade back and at that time I had wondered why he did not come out with the idea of 4D – Discourse, Dialogue, Debate and Discussion to build harmony. I felt at that time that instead of Dialogue or Discussion, a fierce Debate more sharply brings out the intellectual flaws of an argument.

But since 2007, I have revised my views. Presently I am of the opinion that the current format of debates are not desirable as a means of showcasing the ability or competence of top political leaders. Let me quickly outline the reasons. I feel that since modern democracies and our pretensions of being ‘civilised ‘do not permit us to have gory and bloody sword fights, boxing contests, or shooting duels between leaders and challengers like in the ancient world, we have sublimed this ‘civilised’ aggression into what we call ‘debate’.

In a nice, friendly discussion, we are often willing to listen to people who make more sense than us. We are willing to learn and share knowledge. On the other hand, in debates, especially televised debates, there are often winners and losers. These winners and losers are either decided by the organisers of the debate or by public and media who are watching these high-profile debates. Since no one loves to be a loser, there is a higher likelihood that an opponent faced with a stronger argument would resort to insults and insinuations to put down the opponent, in another words, to give out (or believe themselves) the perception of ‘victory’.  

Increasingly, as seen by the debating style of Trump or La Pen, we see political candidates using aggressive name calling, vicious sarcasm or personal attacks to score winning points, get applause from their supporters or win acclaim on the social media. This use of heavy sarcasm for which there are no easy replies, personal insults and insinuations, creates anger between the debaters themselves. Of course, if the debaters are themselves operating in the realm of ideas sometimes the results of debate are good, but when the candidates want victory at any cost or if one candidate starts the trend of insults, we end up seeing an inferior discussion of ideas and less sensible arguments. The confluence of ideas that a great discussion could have been, degenerates into a feast of insults – liked often by TV audience, but bad for democracies where the public may decide their votes on the basis of the outcome of debates.

The audience, even in the Roman Colosseum, loved two men or animals savagely hurting each other to the point of one person’s death.  Today, in many TV debates, we have become this ruthless Roman audience who love to watch two people brutalise and wound each other through words in the form of a debate.

Secondly, is there any guarantee that a good debater who is sharp-witted will necessarily be a good President or Prime Minister?  If arguing well was the sole or the most important requirement of being a great visionary or leader, why shouldn’t the post of Presidents and Prime Ministers in democracies be reserved for the best lawyers in a country? After all, the best lawyers, by profession, are trained to be experts in arguing. 

In my opinion, the present form of debate seen on television is merely a competitive sport, like chess or tennis. If we do not expect our political leaders to be winners in tennis, chess or football, why should we expect that good visionaries and leaders will be winners in debates, especially the time-bound short format debates that we see nowadays on television?

Of course, some of my friends may argue that even in ancient India, which I often quote in my blogs, there used to be debates. I agree with this. One such legendary debate, the debate between Adi Shankaracharya, the reviver of Hinduism and Mandana Mishra (in around 8^th century AD), can be quoted here, for an understanding of the format of a fair and ethical debate. (The source is given below the text) 

“Mandana Misra was a distinguished practioner of the mimamsa philosophy. In this school of thought, a particular ritual is done, and the results are achieved instantaneously…. Mandana Misra was a perfect and adept ritualist who preached widely. The young and charming advaita vedantin philosopher, Adi Sankara, on his country wide tour was eager to debate with Mandana Misra, who was by then already very old. Mandana Misra reasoned that since he had spent more than half his life learning and preaching mimamsa, it would be unfair to debate with a youngster in his twenties who barely had any experience. Hence, with the intention of being fair on Sankara, Misra allowed Sankara to choose his own judge. Sankara had heard greatly about Misra’s righteousness and appreciated him for his act of fairness. But he was quick to decide that none but Mandana Misra’s wife herself can be the most appropriate judge for this debate. The debate between them commenced, and continued for six months nonstop.

Thousands of scholars gathered every day to watch and learn. Mandana Misra, at a ripe old age, still remained a man with very sharp intellect and a very solid grasp of logic, but he was slowly losing. Despite being such a young man, Sankara’s realization of the ultimate Brahman and his knowledge of Maya, enabled him to win over Misra’s arguments easily. At the end of this 6 month period, Misra was almost ready to accept defeat, when his wife, Bharathi, declared that in order to defeat a man in debate, the opponent should also defeat his wife.

Bharathi was a learned scholar herself and a very clever one at that. Knowing very well that Sankara was a strict celibate, she immediately started discussing conjugal relationships and marital obligations. Sankara confessed that he had absolutely no knowledge in this area, because he was a celibate. However, Bharathi felt that she should give Sankara some time to study about this topic before resuming the debate. Sankara immediately accepted the offer and left to start his studies. Through his yogic powers he came to know of a certain king who was about to die. He instructed his disciples to preserve his body, which he temporarily left to enter the dying king’s body. The king happened to be a very evil man. Yet his wives were loyal to him and were in tears when the king was in his deathbed. Suddenly, when the king’s body woke up, one of the wives noticed that the king had recovered under rather mysterious circumstances and appeared to have become a changed man. Sankara learnt from that woman, all that he needed to know about conjugal experiences and on his way out of the body, he blessed that lady who had taught him so much. Empowered with this new knowledge, Sankara returned to resume the debate with Bharathi. This time, he was clearly unbeatable. Bharathi and Mandana Misra bowed their heads in humility and accepted defeat and became followers of Adi Sankara and staunch vedantins.”

Excerpt from source : https://ourdharma.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/the-mandana-misra-vs-adi-sankara-debate/

Without delving deep into the contents of the debate, there are key learnings for us, from this format of debate.

1. The debate takes place in an environment of respect and fairness. Mandana Mishra, shows his fairness when he asks Shankara to choose his own judge. Shankara,  on his part, instead of taking advantage of this offer and choosing a biased judge, decides to further excel in this fairness by choosing Mandana Mishra’s own wife as the judge.

2. The debate is not concluded within 1 or 2 hours like our present day TV debates, but within six months, which gives time to the debaters to rest, reflect on their arguments, concede various flaws in their logical positions etc. In short, in today’s TV debates the person with the quick acerbic tongue often wins. However, in long debates, conducted over several days and weeks, there is time for each opponent to evaluate the arguments and calm their minds enough to focus on ideas rather than persons or insults.

3.  Shankara, despite being a great thinker and philosopher had the amazing humility to confess about his lack of practical knowledge in the area of sexuality because he was celibate. He did not pretend to know about an area just in order to win the debate.

 4. Bharathi, the wife of Mandana Mishra again showed fairness, when she allowed Shankara time to study sexuality in depth, rather than using Shankara’s lack of knowledge of sex as a point to declare victory. She allowed Shankara to gain sufficient expertise in that area and then come back to resume the debate. This clearly tells us that the purpose of both opponents through this debate was to ensure the emergence of higher knowledge and ideas and not to be declared ‘winner’, as we see in the bitterly fought television debates conducted so often nowadays.

5.  Bharati and Mandana Mishra, when overwhelmed by superior ideas and logic, showed their greatness and humility by becoming the followers of Shankara’s ideas. They did not resort to sarcasm or violent personal attacks to massage their own egos or to pretend that they did not lose the debate.

Of course, in today’s busy world, it is not possible to have this kind of a quality debate spread over weeks, between opponents like Trump/Hillary or Macron/ Le Pen. Hence, my prescription for a compassionate model of debate, tweaked for the present age is as follows. To begin with, in this respectful model of debate, in a televised discussion/debate, it must be clearly mentioned that there are no winners or losers. It should take the form of a discussion in every way. The two political candidates must start with spending ten minutes in silence. This ten minutes of silence, should be telecast live. This time for silence, would be meant for only for meditation, introspection and calming the mind. During the introspection/meditation breaks it must be compulsory for the debating candidates to close their eyes and spend time with their own minds and not distract themselves with any activities such as peering through their notes or engaging in conversations. 

After this ten minutes silence, the candidates would discuss the issues in a spirit of love, compassion and sharing ideas. They should give credit to each other for good ideas and be willing to revise their own ideas. They should be encouraged to ask questions to each other in a spirit of camaraderie. If one candidate becomes aggressive, sounds angry or highly sarcastic, the moderator must immediately pause the debate and further provide a five-minute introspection/meditation break to calm the agitated minds. After the break, the candidates must shake hands or hug each other again and start afresh with a spirit of compassion and affection. If required, the debater who first made the aggressive remark must apologise to the other debater and withdraw the remark. If the apology and withdrawal is not forthcoming, then the whole debate must be terminated. 

Some people may laugh out loud at this prescription by me. After all, there are still some parts of the world where it is considered to execute law-breakers by stoning them to death, and here I am, talking about respectful debate. I am sure, when the first human fight-to-kills were proscribed in various parts of the world, those who were used to these sadist games of gore and blood must have laughed at those who stopped it or ridiculed them as faint-hearted idiots.

The point I make is that as we evolve in our humanity, our approach to every issue must also evolve and become spiritually and ethically refined. Gently, but firmly, we must remove the violence and aggression which are in human minds. Seeds of aggression and violence exist first in our minds, then they come into our words and finally translate into actual physical violence. Hoping that our judiciary and legal systems will prevent physical violence, when we callously allow violence, anger and aggression to seep into our minds at every step of public interaction - that is not a long-term remedy. When we incentivise the use of sublimated aggression like we see in televised debates and give our implicit approval of nastiness in televised debates, as sources of entertainment, we are sending the message that verbal aggression, without use of explicit 4-letter abuse, is ‘okay’.  

Western civilisation is unnecessarily obsessed with the macho image culture which glorifies aggression as something desirable. Since aggression in the form of physical violence is increasingly becoming unacceptable in our lives, we have sublimated this aggression to our workplaces to some extent (in our use of power as the tool for getting work done) and in our debates. In my opinion, the earlier we get rid of this sublimated aggression from various areas of life, the easier it will be to build a compassionate, harmonious world.  The choice of political leaders is the first area from which the practice of aggressive television debates as a means to campaign and win votes, must be removed. I am happy to hear the news that Theresa May, Prime Minister of Britain will not have a head to head debate with Corbyn before the elections. 

©Staju Jacob, 2017.

Staju Jacob is the author of the path-breaking book Karmasutra The Karma of Sex, which deals with the karmic spirituality of consensual sexual actions. This book is available globally on various Amazon sites in Paperback and Kindle, Sony Kobo, Google books, Iphone Ibook etc.  He may be contacted on Twitter @KaRmasutraTKOS