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Jul. 28th, 2024 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelavHeller: Dissent does have this positive implication as protest against injustice. But what is good dissent and what is bad dissent?
Glaser: If we characterize dissent as being mere disagreement we easily lapse into the eye-of-the-beholder argument: Is my view equal to your view? What is a good act as opposed to an evil act? You can get very Talmudic and convoluted in this ancient philosophical argument. But I think that there is some sense of righteousness in dissenting opinion, and that is generally the reason that it comes into being. We do know that, inevitably, powerful institutions begin to oppress those who have less power. This seems to be as fundamental a characteristic of the species as fairness. So in response to the whole notion of unassailable power, dissent is a positive response and, as the button I designed says, “dissent protects democracy.”
Heller: But as you have noted, dissent also protects undemocratic ideas. We are in political milieu today where fundamentalists have transformed their dissent into power to overturn laws and social contracts that we’ve accepted as part of a liberal agenda for much of the mid- to late twentieth century.
Glaser: Again, it all comes down to the difficulty of deciding what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, which is never an easy question. But we do know that there is, at least, an ethical core to the idea of dissent, and that dissent is very necessary because of the institutional instinct to move toward a totalitarian position—that authority, whatever its source, religious, political or academic, always attempts to marginalize people and movements considered to be deviant or not congruent with their objectives.
- design of dissent
Glaser: If we characterize dissent as being mere disagreement we easily lapse into the eye-of-the-beholder argument: Is my view equal to your view? What is a good act as opposed to an evil act? You can get very Talmudic and convoluted in this ancient philosophical argument. But I think that there is some sense of righteousness in dissenting opinion, and that is generally the reason that it comes into being. We do know that, inevitably, powerful institutions begin to oppress those who have less power. This seems to be as fundamental a characteristic of the species as fairness. So in response to the whole notion of unassailable power, dissent is a positive response and, as the button I designed says, “dissent protects democracy.”
Heller: But as you have noted, dissent also protects undemocratic ideas. We are in political milieu today where fundamentalists have transformed their dissent into power to overturn laws and social contracts that we’ve accepted as part of a liberal agenda for much of the mid- to late twentieth century.
Glaser: Again, it all comes down to the difficulty of deciding what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, which is never an easy question. But we do know that there is, at least, an ethical core to the idea of dissent, and that dissent is very necessary because of the institutional instinct to move toward a totalitarian position—that authority, whatever its source, religious, political or academic, always attempts to marginalize people and movements considered to be deviant or not congruent with their objectives.
- design of dissent
