Disagree, don't be disagreeable

"Although I wouldn't go so far as to repeat what the French Enlightenment writer and advocate of civil liberties, Voltaire, said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I respect the "right" of others to be different."

February 10, 2010
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News (Guam)

To a thesis, there are antitheses; to the Chinese yin, there's a yang; Buddhists who see war also see peace, and peace pairs with war. After day there's night; after birth, there's death.

The concept of journeying is spoken as "samsara" in Sanskrit -- a cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. The cycle continues, as Buddhists, Hindus and adherents to Jainism believe. The interactions between thesis and antitheses bring a synthesis, the yang finds the yin, and the wheel of life turns. In common parlance, "your turn will come."

My mother, who died of starvation under the Khmer Rouge, taught me as a child that humans argue and don't always accept each other's views. But she insisted I would learn maturity if I disciplined myself to listen to what others have to say. She called the process, "learning to live a human being's life."

My father was taken away and executed on the day the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. The man I thought had failed to comprehend a child's incapacity to absorb so much recited in his after-dinner evening teaching that only when different minds meet through humbly talking, listening and thinking does a man's true vision emerge.

Through trial and error, I grew up. Many years later, I read a Chinese proverb: "A teacher opens the door, but you must enter by yourself."

And I read French-born educator Jacques Barzun's words: "In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for 20 years."

Many years later, after I finished teaching my politics classes and held my office hours at the University of Guam, I drove my old, black, smoke-spitting Mazda to Asan Beach. The sky was blue and the afternoon breeze was heavenly. The ocean waters were green and clear; the waves slammed the reefs and washed ashore feet away. I pulled out reading materials from my backpack, rested my back on the trunk of a coconut tree, and became submerged in Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel's words in his speech to the graduates of Boston University in 1992.

He told them that he walked in the footsteps of those who lived before him, that he is "the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you."

A Holocaust survivor at Auschwitz, now an American citizen, this Jew from Romania said: "The knowledge that I have must not remain imprisoned in my brain. ... I need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude."

And so I read and read, to learn what Weisel had to share with the world.

As I stared at the horizon where the sky and sea become one, I thought of what I had told my politics students about Greek philosopher Aristotle, who said, "All men by nature desire knowledge."

Do they, really?

I remembered some forced smiles on some faces, and I remembered telling them that a few weeks after I arrived in the United States for college I learned the saying, "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink."

A student scratched his head, asked permission to speak: "Ecclesiastes 3:1-8! In due time, the light bulb in a person's brain will light up."

Ah, touché!

Patience is very much needed in education. It takes time to see the fruit. When a push on the button brings results, time and patience are in short supply. Yet the Chinese say, "One generation plants the trees, and another generation gets the shade." Someone presented an antithesis: What makes us think that the next generation would want the shade with all the problems the trees will bring?

Back to my mother and father. She taught me that people argue, people disagree and no one wants to be wrong. I must learn to listen to what others have to say. She called that "living." My father taught me to have humility, to be considerate and respectful of those with different views.

Now that some strands of my hair have turned grey, and with a doctorate degree I keep somewhere in the loft of my shed, the "light bulb" in my brain has lit up. I am reflecting on the words of those who raised me, as I had many doubts about their wisdom at the time.

Indeed, people disagree. But disagreements are healthy in a democracy where ideas and thoughts are allowed to bloom, providing opportunities for learning and picking what's best for development and progress and for the human species to survive.

Where disagreements are forbidden and a uniformity of thought is required, totalitarianism thrives. Modern autocrats love "unity" in thoughts and in actions. One who adheres to one's individualism becomes a "traitor" to the autocrats' dictates.

In the words of President John F. Kennedy, "The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion."

Although I wouldn't go so far as to repeat what the French Enlightenment writer and advocate of civil liberties, Voltaire, said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I respect the "right" of others to be different.

Disagreements are not a problem. Gentlemen disagree -- they agree to disagree. But men of superior minds don't stop dialoguing, don't stop posing more questions and don't stop looking for more answers, until a multitude of options emerge before them to choose.

The problem lies in being disagreeable. To be disagreeable puts up a roadblock to knowledge. Nothing can get in. Period.

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.