Debate only possible if issues are taken head-on
It is very, very hard to be sincere.
There are many reasons for that. Sincerity demands looking at the world with an unjaundiced eye. At looking over the many layers of petrified misery that has sifted into the skin of the earth and finding something worth hoping for.
Sincerity requires thinking there is a right answer to the world's various moral quandaries or that a solution can be found somehow. It requires facing a problem squarely, on whatever scale.
It also demands an almost impossible assembling of the self: an internal structure of values that can then be turned fully onto the world.
There are two ways to assemble a moral structure: take one from an already existing ideology or develop one for yourself.
For example, a devout Catholic has his or her value system pretty much already built for them. Any situation can be resolved head-on by referring to doctrine or what he or she believes God commands.
This Catholic has adopted an internal structure that has been constructed by many men over many centuries.
There are innumerable ideologies that are built for just this purpose, from political parties to sports clubs. Each has their own way to look sincerely at the world, and put unironic truth claims that help one keep one's place in it. For Libertarians: “The best government is no government.” For little league baseball coaches: “Keep your eye on the ball.”
For the rest of us who can’t easily identify with a single cause or idea, this internal moral and behavioral structure is makeshift and often very messy. The process of developing a clear system of self could not be more difficult. (What values go where? Are there are internal contradictions?)
It requires constant doubt, minute self-reflection and, as George Orwell put it, a power of facing unpleasant facts.
But, at the very least, it allows you some small portion of sincerity and perhaps some basis for original thought.
On the other hand, it is very, very easy to be insincere. The eye-roll and the sneer, the raised eyebrows and the distended nostrils: these are easy. They add nothing to any conversation.
That attitude is one that mocks everything and accepts nothing. They cannot be debated, as two sincere viewpoints can. Talking to someone who holds insincerity above all else is as useful as shouting into a storm.
Take politics, for example. Sorry as I am to say it, this insincerity seems to plague people on the left more than those on the right. Everyone who has ever thought saying “’Merica” or “Meerika” is funny falls into this category.
These people are unserious. For them, “America is worth being proud of” is an old and all-too-naive idea. They laugh at people who, wililng to serve in the military, are nevertheless physically unable. These are the people who think the most terrifying figure of the early 2000’s was Dick Cheney, over contenders like Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-il.
The ideas that America embodies — freedom of speech, representative government, freedom of (and from) religion — are easily forgettable. It’s much more "funny" (and subversive!) to think of America as just another evil empire, which can only do wrong, which is filled with idiots and rednecks and which deserves an ignominious end.
Gone is the great sincerity and hope for the future that imbued the revolutionary thinkers with the power to forge a great nation in the furnace of their dreams. Insincerity triumphs over sincerity. The sneer outshines the soft smile.
At the end of his famous essay E Unibus Pluram, David Foster Wallace talks about a new sincerity movement in literature: “Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk things. ... The new rebels might be the ones willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘How banal.’”
Make no mistake, this is the central issue that thinking people have to deal with. On any issue, the twangling ironic laughter of the apathetic ignorant grows louder and louder.
It’s up to those brave rebels to imbue with heat the petrified arguments of the past, wielding only a soft smile, an inner structure and sincere thoughts.