Delphic Maxim 32: Be impartial
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.
32. Be impartial
We live in hyper-partisan times. Or perhaps more accurately, we live in hyper-connected, opinion-saturated times. Because of the speed of access to information and the rate at which new events around the world are thrown at us, people are being conditioned to offer an opinion on things much faster than they have been in the past. That speed makes it much more difficult for us to take a step back and be impartial. We offer hot takes without thinking, we get angry, we signal our values and virtues without stopping to look at the merit of a particular situation.
All of this isn’t especially helpful for the wellbeing of our public debate and civic discourse. For a lot of people, this might not seem like such a problem: the type of person who is concerned about ‘public debate and civic discourse’ is a) a wanker and b) doesn’t really get the point that most people have bigger fish to fry like being overworked, having to pay savage phone bills, maybe looking after kids or paying rego on a car, and then squeezing in time for Married At First Sight or whatever else might be on the telly. It’s nice to be able to ponder things like civic discourse, but maybe a bit of a luxury for people who live in ivory towers?
Maybe. But I’d venture that a lot of people engage in that very civic discourse — whether they want to or not — on social media. And a lot of the opinions that get vented there, regardless of political orientation, are based more on quick emotional takes than they are on careful, reasoned, impartial consideration.
Impartiality doesn’t mean that you don’t get to take a side — it’s actually the opposite of that. Impartiality is about taking a side without determining that side prior to considering the evidence. Being impartial involves having an open mind, or at least being open to the arguments and ideas of a range of positions. An impartial person takes their time to move to a particular position, and when they do so you can be sure they’ve established a strong rationale for doing it. This makes their intellectual position all the more credible — they’ll have a stronger case and more evidence to back their ideas.
I think impartiality isn’t just a good ethical position to carry into the world — it’s good for our emotional state as well. Perhaps I’m alone in this, but getting riled up in debates on social media is deeply stressful, and despite the fact that I’ve been in my fair share of Facebook arguments, it’s very rare that I’ve found them enlightening or productive. Debate is fine — people need to take sides on particular issues — but a debate between people who are being unreasonable, who haven’t arrived at a position through impartial consideration, is a deeply toxic and counterproductive experience.
My tip for bringing this maxim into daily practice? Withholding judgement, for a start. This doesn’t mean not judging, but simply holding back for longer than usual. At first maybe for a day, so your mind can turn something over, hopefully take the heat out of your assessments. Or perhaps you might simply pause and ask yourself the question “could I look at this another way?” or “what kind of evidence supports the position opposite to the one I naturally take?”
Doing this helps you to slow down your critical thinking and better assess the things you’re about to argue. You may still arrive at the same position. But you’ll be better equipped to argue it — and hopefully a little calmer in the arguing as well.
