This will be my judgment: Pav, read no further until you’ve posted your own . . .
. . .
i feel as though the debate was a draw, here’s why:
The topic itself raises two seperate questions:
First, do repression and coercion work for providing social stability? (Tab’s primary focus)
and
Second, ought repression and coercion be used in the first place? (this would be the “for and against” question - Tent’s primary focus)
- So, right off the bat, we have our two participants in the debate focusing on seperate issues, and in the ensuing confusion little (beyond what we already knew going in) is actually resolved.
Tab argues that repression and coercion work to provide the aforementioned social stabilty, at least for finite, though sometimes quite extended, stretches of time. Here, he seems to have the good fortune of arguing for the self-evident in that regard. Though he does so with his usual verve and wit (and cool little visuals), there is no escaping the fact that he is simply pointing out the obvious. Even Tent agrees with the basic point here. Now, Tab, as we all know, is a wiley enough debater not to stop there. He goes on to make the very interesting assertion that periods of repression are actually beneficial for societies in transition because they weed out the dross from the pool of potential up and coming leaders,
- Quite a fascinating proposal, but, here, he does not have the advantage of arguing what is already readily apparent, and, imo, fails to persuasively demonstrate his theory beyond simply stating how it might work if it were true, leaving the impression that it’s just a cool, clever idea he thought up over a bowl of wheatabix and camel-milk one morning, rather than something he actually knows to be the case. As for coercion, he again points out the obvious (as he very well should) when he talks of the need for recognized, legitimate enforcement of social rules and the essential role it plays in society as we have come to understand it, but does not make the case for the more extreme forms of coercion (brutality and systemic killings, say), or how those might be any more likely to stabilize, rather than destabilize, a given society.
Tent, for his part, acknowledges that both repression and coercion as described by Tab can work, for finite periods of time - but rightfully points to the perennial, social crash-and-burn that we see occuring throughout the history of highly repressive regimes, and so posits that it is time for an alternative approach. Reasonable enough, but he fails to really make the case, or to demonstrate the ways in which such boom-bust cycles might be maladaptive. Instead, he talks in vague terms of “restraint”, saying:
He fails, however, to demonstrate this, even admitting that the idea (as appealing as such a paradigm-shift might seem for many of us) finds little creedence historically. So, ultimately, he’s just doing what Tab did: making stuff up to suit his position. It’s good stuff, granted, but he doesn’t really develop it enough to be fully persuasive.
So, in the end, we basically have Tab and Tent kind of talking past one another: Tab making an empirical argument while Tent makes a moral one - and, alas, IMO, neither actually makes a fully developed case FOR or AGAINST repression and coercion.