There's nothing quite so amusing as "the conversation" that is, the conversation about race, sex and other universally divisive issues that we are always urged to have, but never really can have. Last week, a prime specimen of this overwhelming futility presented itself, ready for dissection. I mean, of course, the signs posted and lingerie angrily strewn about the steps of three Greek houses ("Signs contend Greek orgs. are racist, sexist," Feb. 25). I take it for granted that everyone thinks this was a silly and unskillful way to communicate a point, and I agree. And it wasn't just the way the point was communicated that made it ridiculous, but the point itself was off-balance I mean, going after Chi Gamma Epsilon for a shirt printed in 2007, when no current members were responsible for the shirts? It exemplifies reasons why we can't listen to each other, even in more civilized quarters, when we talk about gender and race.
The impossibility of communication between the people who covertly dump lingerie on fraternity porches and fraternity brothers seems to require no further comment. But it's interesting to consider what difference anyone could possibly think those signs would make. The situation is one of pitiful, cosmic ineffectuality. The houses reacted by issuing statements similar to, "We'd love to discuss these questions in an open forum and begin dialogue."
But the questions presented are so vague that it is debatable whether they ever could be debated. Essentially, the charge being made is just, "Frats are evil." And how are you going to debate that without some sort of advanced ethics seminar? It requires answering abstract questions, like "What is the Good?'" And, additionally, you would need to debate these questions with people who are at present totally anonymous. What amazes me is that posting these signs wasn't just a failure to communicate it's almost the opposite of communication, if you think about it, like Macbeth's famous definition of life: "A tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." There's some sort of deep, situational irony there.
Let's entertain, for a moment, the notion that fraternities and sororities (which nearly two-thirds of eligible students eventually join) are inherently racist and sexist. What, in this hypothetical situation, would be the proper way to remedy this? It seems that we should alter our behavior on an individual level, and humbly ask friends probing questions about what direction we should be heading in whether participating in certain hazing rituals is correct for example, or whether women frequently get a raw deal in sorority rush. That way, we can alter the world through means that are gradual and don't lead to absolute perfection, but make it a little less terrible.
I think that we should take a page out of Socrates' playbook rather than shout bitter truths at those who offend us, we can use the method of Socratic irony, in which we pretend to not know those truths, and through gentle and apparently disinterested questioning, get people to arrive at the same conclusions we have already reached. Slick and underhanded? Maybe. But clever and to some degree effective? Yes. Or, if you really don't know whether blanket statements like "Frats are racist" are true, you can practice some actual humility and just ask questions without presuming to know the answers. The latter course of action is probably preferable in the present circumstance.
In campus arguments about race and gender, people are so full of their own intellectual certainties that their views constantly rebound off the people they are trying to convince. And the people they are trying to convince are usually pretty disinterested and oblivious. The only person capable of any real listening or communication is the completely empty person and I mean "empty" in a positive sense. It is the person who admits, with Socrates, that "the only real knowledge comes in admitting that you know nothing."
Communication should be a subtle game, in which questions are deftly posed in ways that provoke actual thought. That way, as in the Socratic method, we puzzle things over together, and people arrive at the correct answers without feeling like those answers were forced on them from outside. As the Taoist sage, Lao-Tzu said, "When [the sage's] task is accomplished, and his work is done / The people all say, It happened to us naturally.'"
