Two recent articles in MercatorNet have been a cause of deep concern for me. I have puzzled about what generates that concern and found it difficult to both identify and then articulate the reasons for my uneasiness, indeed, dismay. I am sympathetic to the authors’ concerns and probably we have many values in common.

That said, I think the basis of my concern in both instances are the ways in which they have argued their cases in that they fail to acknowledge any countervailing arguments against their positions or at least to recognise that such arguments exist.

The first article opposes a “Yes” vote in the upcoming referendum on amending the Australian Constitution to include recognition of a First Nations Voice to Parliament, by focusing on the horrific situations with which many Aboriginal people must contend and implicitly raising the question of whether we want such people influencing Parliament. The second article makes satirical fun of the relentless campaign to promote so-called “woke” values. I believe both approaches are serious mistakes and will do far more harm than good.

The first article that caused me concern was, “How will The Voice bring peace to indigenous ‘war zones’?” by John Paul Baladi, subtitled, “Palaver in Parliament will not solve the problems of remote communities”. As I explained in a comment on it, which I posted, in detailing the appalling situations in the Northern Territory with which Aboriginal Australians must cope, it could be read as proposing that we should vote “No” on the Voice, because we would not want these people being able to influence Parliament. I hope that I am wrong with respect to this being an accurate interpretation of that article, but if so that needs to be made clear.

The second article was “And the inaugural Montgolfier Award for Sustained Stratospheric Virtue Signalling goes to…” by Kurt Mahlburg, subtitled “Tenacious struggles against reality ought to receive public recognition”. Here’s how Michael Cook, the editor of MercatorNet, introduced it:

Two hundred and forty years ago, on June 4, 1783, the world woke up to the power of hot air. A balloon made by the Montgolfier brothers in France rose to 6,000 feet and drifted along for 10 whole minutes. Eventually, sustained only by hot air, passengers were able to soar over the French countryside.

To commemorate this momentous event MercatorNet has instituted an annual Montgolfier Award for Virtue Signalling. Nowadays our governments and corporations produce hot air in industrial quantities and it is only right that their achievements be recognised.

In today’s lead story, Kurt Mahlburg lists this year’s nominees and announces the winner. 

The article is a clever satire lampooning “woke washing” by some major companies and institutions. Nothing wrong with that. Therefore, similarly to my reaction to the first article, why did I find it so unsettling?

I believe the reason in both cases is that this is the wrong way to argue against values positions we see as seriously harmful.

If we want the people with those values to listen to and consider our views and arguments against their values, we must first respectfully listen to and consider their views and arguments. “Moral humility” requires each side to listen to and consider each other’s stance. Not to do so, fosters division rather than reconciliation. My fear is that these two articles will have that effect.

We must keep in mind that people who promote “wokeism” are often doing it based on remedying past wrongs against people who have suffered discrimination, alienation, and terrible injustice. Speaking against “wokeism” must not be able to be interpreted as denying those wrongs or denigrating those people. When we are fearful that what we see happening to others might happen to us, we can seek to differentiate ourselves from those others through stigmatizing, scapegoating and discriminating against them. That is a bad mistake and unethical from many perspectives, including promoting conflict by making it much less likely we can find any common ground.

We must identify what our purposes are in entering debates on values and the ways most likely to fulfil those purposes. If we want to influence people, especially younger generations who are in the process of forming their values, we need to be open and accessible to hearing them and certainly not to alienating them.

My concern about these two articles is that they are likely to do just that. We must seek shared spaces and experience some commonalities, not emphasise and, in the process, augment our divisions and conflicts. Finding some common ground allows us to have an experience of belonging to the same moral community, an experience that can reduce the hostility of our conflicts when they inevitably occur.

American political theorist Michael Walzer explains a phenomenon, which, at first glance, might seem counter-intuitive, that thick boundaries – those that have substantial overlap with each other - provide more opportunity for finding common ground that thin boundaries. The large overlapping space of thick boundaries creates a “no man’s land” where both sides can feel that they are still at home, yet encounter the other without destructive conflict. Moreover, they can often find they have more in common than they realised or, if that is not the case, they can engage in civilised disagreement.

Thin boundaries do not allow this to happen and we each retreat into our sealed off world and usually are certain that, without question, we are entirely “right”, the other entirely “wrong”.

Years ago, and in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the Canadian Government set up a National Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS. My colleague at McGill University, Professor Norbert Gilmore, a leading physician in the fight against HIV/AIDS, was the committee chair. I was a member. Professor Gilmore and I wrote a paper, which argued, counterintuitively for many people, that taking a protective and supportive approach to people at risk of HIV infection would be more effective from a public health perspective than a coercive approach. We subtitled the paper “Overcoming ‘Them’ and ‘Us’”. In contrast to the Americans, the Canadian government adopted this approach. As a result, the International HIV/AIDS conference for that year was moved from Boston to Montreal. The Americans had refused entry visas to HIV positive conference participants, the Canadian government issued visas.

In summary, we need to identify carefully what we hope to achieve, our purposes, in entering societal level values debates, such as the two MercatorNet articles present. Then we must consider which approaches are likely to be the most effective for achieving those purposes and, at least equally important, which approaches might have the opposite effect and even do harm. A sine qua non is mutual respect in all our encounters. My problem with the two articles discussed is that I believe they did not manifest the required respect.

In dealing with the often unprecedented, major ethical values challenges our world and each of us faces, we need to take the Bible’s advice “to be as gentle as doves and wise as serpents”.