Meta-debating 2: You make the rules

You make the rules


You define for the judge how the debate should be evaluated: what grounds and what terms should be taken into consideration and why yours are more truthful, legitimate, or proper than the opponents.

Often time, each duo of debaters portray the world through a certain view. You must be able to compare these overall views of the world and identify where the strengths and weaknesses of each are.

A team which advocates the reduction of injustice in the world may propose that the world is currently injust, which is harmful and should be rectified. As the opposition, you will probably argue the world is either not injust, should be injust, that injustice is not harmful, or should not be rectified. Each of these is a position and carries a myriad of approaches in it's own right.

Approaches:

A. Portraying the world as just will likely involve examination of the evidence the opposition has presented and criticizing it or eliminating it, as well as advancing one's one evidence of justice existing in the world.

B. On a more normative level, the notion could be advanced about how injustice is either acceptable or not as harmful as the opponent portrays. Evidence could certainly be advanced asserting demonstrating the triviality of the injustice or the consequences that it brings. If one makes an argument about how economic inequality leads the poor to lead lower quality lives, you could argue that being poor does not necessarily make one less happy. Happiness need not be material; and a poor man could easily be happy about many other factors which need to correspond with possession or wealth. Happiness may correspond to social worth, artistic worth, freedom to pursue individualistic endeavors, personal ability, and many others. In such a scenario, the injustice of economic inequality is reduced by the poccession of other non-economic possessions which balance out that injustice.

C. On the other hand, one could even argue that economic injustice is desirable or morally or philosophically inherent, necessary, or acceptable. One could proceed to demonstrate the absurdity of equalizing all measures of quality in the world and eliminating parities in anything. One could go even deeper and say the levels of differences between individuals is what contributes to one's identify in an otherwise uniform world: That one's level of education or income or privilege is what sets human beings apart and gives meaning to the individual. That one can mark one's own distinction in the world only through the ability to be better or worse than others. At the point where there can be no differences in qualities affecting individuals, there is no longer any distinction between people- they are identical and replaceable. When individual's self qualities are undermined, their reason for existence is undermined and they lose any real meaning to exist or take any action in life.