We’ve been fighting for our choices ever since the time of the primitive man. “Is this rock strong enough to bash that coconut or do I need something bigger?”, or maybe “Is this cave safe, or does it look like the den of the apex predator in this jungle?”.
You get the drift.
However, in the larger scheme of things, these internal debates in the primitive man would have been few and far between, with immediate results to learn from. Their scope would have been limited to the present – in terms of time and place. Much simpler than what we’re dealing with every day.
Today, every choice you make can be subjected to scrutiny by your peers and strangers alike. If it isn’t, where do you get the oil of validation to keep the wheel of self-esteem turning? As a result, we are inundated by a bevy of internal questions, doubts, concerns that need answering – your very own constant and personal barrage of debates. “Is this outfit impressive yet subtle enough for work or do I need something better?”, or maybe “Is this picture safe, or will it be subject to the ridicule, or worse, ignorance of the apex predators on social media?”.
You get the drift (and hopefully the likes).
However, most of us don’t have it – the good fortune, the timing, the quality – whatever you might call the magic sauce that garners instantaneous mass appeal in today’s digital-cynical hybrid of a society. It’s there in the numbers – only so many pictures can be liked before the attention span of the horde wears out. (Psst… did you hear that Instagram is ditching like-count visibility? The horror!) This leaves most of our attempts at resolving our internal doubts about our own self-esteem unnoticed, languishing in the vast empty halls of social abandonment.
So, what do we do? Do we discard all hope and relinquish our ability to function as normal human beings? Shed a few tears? Obviously not. We do something much less dramatic, much more invisible and easy to execute as a herd – we seek the same doubt in others, hoping for at least a sense of company in our mutual state of dissatisfaction. Instead of fighting for our own choices, we secretly prefer being spectators to others, often literally, fighting for theirs. There’s no better expression of this than our obsession with watching debates.
Wherever two or more individuals will be seen debating (not discussing – huge difference), you’ll find an active/passive/mixed audience following their every word. While some might be genuinely interested in the topic of discussion, most will actually be there to enjoy the verbal joust and to see the self-doubt of either participant(s) be poked-until-ripe by the other(s). A mutual sense of self-doubt-satisfaction.
Might seem like perverse reasoning, but nothing else seems to justify our obsession with debates – so much so that we’ve put them on prime-time television. Nobody really intervenes until there’s physical harm imminent. Sometimes, even that’s off the cards for the sake of better TRP/laughs.
We criticise it, we deride it, we figure out so many things wrong with it – but in doing so, aren’t we just participating in another debate about how debates should be? Either way, it satisfies our latent need to feel the self-doubt that exists in others. It gratifies us to see it reach a place where they make a fool out of themselves, screaming their throats hoarse trying to make a point and clear the same sense of doubt. That, my co-existing self-doubting human, is why we love debates.
Don’t agree? Let’s debate about it.
Arnab Mukherjee 