Vassnti
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The wisdom of G.K. Chesterton or how to write so people read it rather than just pissing people off.
Any blogger seeking to argue his/her case runs the risk of offending, alienating, or enraging. In fact, for some bloggers these risks have turned into objectives; for them blogging has become a purposeful attempt to provoke rather than to persuade. This is not good. When debate sinks to the level of shouting matches, when intimidation rather than illumination becomes the strategy of choice, our problems can only get worse. As Chesterton himself put it, people generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
How did Chesterton make his case in a way that promoted debate rather than stifle it? Here are a few instructive quotes that will help show us the way.
1. Humor
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
2. Penetrating Insight
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.
3. Reframing the Issue
The test of a democracy is not whether the people vote, but whether the people rule.
4. Uplifting Point of View
There are some people, nevertheless and I am one of them who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.
5. Finding the Center
Briefly, then, we dismiss the two opposite dangers of bigotry and fanaticism, bigotry which is a too great vagueness and fanaticism which is a too great concentration.
6. Putting Opponents in a Positive Light
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues.
7. Identifying Yourself with Your Opponents
Somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century, we English came to the conclusion that we could not think.
8. Focusing on the Big Picture
In the darkness of barbarism men knew the truth without the facts. In the twilight of half-civilization, they saw the truth illuminating the facts. In the full blaze and radiance of complete civilization they found all the facts and lost the truth forever.
