Speaking up is good; silence is bad.
This dichotomy is continually reinforced in discourse at Duke. We are encouraged to speak up when we know of injustices and call out those responsible for perpetrating them. We are told that remaining silent about injustices puts us almost on par with the perpetrators themselves.
Of course, this language of “speaking up” and “remaining silent” is mostly used as metaphor. To speak up about an issue doesn’t always mean literally speaking out loud about it; it means using a variety of means to increase awareness or to seek to better understand a problem. Speaking up often involves altering one’s actions—choosing not to buy clothing that is manufactured in sweatshops is a means of speaking up. Likewise, remaining silent often means continuing to participate in a problematic activity or culture without working to correct it.
Failing to name and correct injustices is bad indeed. But we shouldn’t let our disdain for this kind of silence turn us off from choosing not to speak…so that we can listen.
Duke students love to talk. We talk about all kinds of things, from the mundane happenings of our daily lives to the grand existential questions of philosophy and science. If we really kept track of all the things we say from day to day, we’d probably find that a lot of our words are useless. How many times do we feel like we have to say something—literally anything will do—to break an awkward silence in class or in social settings? Duke students are a cohort of silence breakers, who can speak up with little thought.
But more than liking to talk, I think we like listening to ourselves talk. We’ve been unfortunately primed for this—in our education thus far people have affirmed our special talents and lauded our exceptional ideas. Naturally, they’ve wanted to hear from us. We’ve been the ones who spoke up in class, the captains of the debate team and the speakers at graduation.
Now that we’re at Duke, this predisposition to speak has left us with a problem—we don’t know how to pick our battles. Although I try not to, I occasionally find myself embroiled in a Facebook debate regarding a particularly aggressive post to which I feel personally obligated to respond. In most cases, I end up arguing with people who are as convicted of their own opinions as I am of mine and are as unlikely to change their minds as I am. Don’t mistake me, I get a thrill out of arguing for the sake of arguing. I’m a debater and I do think it can be a valuable intellectual exercise. However, in an organized debate the speakers must remove themselves completely from their own opinions on a topic. The goal is to convince an unbiased judge with the use of reason and rhetoric, not to engage with the real-life opinions of another individual.
The debate world is not the real world. In real life, people are emotionally and intellectually vested in their opinions. And it barely needs to be said that Facebook debates don’t really change people’s deeply-held convictions. There is nothing to be gained; we only stand to alienate and injure each other in a careless and heated exchange of condescending remarks. Spats like this make real dialogue difficult, because they further entrench people in their respective camps and cause people to feel attacked.
Worse yet is when we feel compelled to talk about things we don’t actually care about. Our penchant for talking often causes us to voice an opinion—lest we be left out of the conversation—before we’ve truly formed it in our minds. We feel pressured to offer a view on things we haven’t considered critically or researched at all. After all, Duke students fear nothing more than admitting “I haven’t read enough about it to know” or “I’ve never heard of that before.” In a competitive academic environment, this kind of honesty feels like failure. It’s pretty easy to see how this can diminish conversation: look no further than those classes, I’m sure you’ve had one, where someone always raises his or her hand to ask an unnecessary question or contribute a barely-relevant comment lest they go unnoticed.
What do we do if we don’t have an opinion? What do we do if we don’t know enough about something? The obvious answer is to listen. Listening requires silence—not a passive, complacent silence—but an active and engaged silence, seeking to learn from others. As a man, I’ve been moved by listening to some of my female friends give their thoughts on rape and sexual assault. They speak from a perspective I don’t have, and I’ve realized that there’s more value in what they have to say than I.
This is what picking our battles means—only choosing to speak up when we’ve actually thought through an issue and formed an opinion, and doing so in a setting that actually has the potential to do good.
More importantly, it means choosing silence so that we can listen. This is not the silence of complacency or ignorance; it’s the silence of maturity and reason. We can’t listen to others and learn from them if we never stop talking. Being able to pick one’s battles is a sign of intellectual and emotional maturity, and it’s a skill that will stand us in good stead in our careers and relationships after Duke. Let’s start practicing now.
Zach Heater is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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