Debate Desensitization

In an activity which is meant to deconstruct contradicting claims, forcing judges to choose between sides every round, debate itself is a living contradiction. On one hand, debate is uniting, bringing high schoolers together from all over the country as they pour hours into research and preparation. Lifelong friendships are made at every tournament, and high school debate is an unforgettable experience for so many people. On the other hand however, debate is detaching; not in the human sense, but in something far more important. One of debate’s largest selling points is the education it offers; research of current events, comprehension of foreign policy, etc. It is a well established fact that debate molds us to be the future policy makers of the world, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. In our never ending quest to formulate the best arguments and win rounds, too often do debater’s miss the forest for the trees, focusing so much on gaining an advantage, beating an opponent, or picking up ballots that we ignore the weight behind our words and actions. Like any modern policy maker, votes and victories have distracted us from what truly matters.

Of course, this is not intentional. Every debater does their research and gains their topic knowledge with the noble pursuit of winning rounds, but this motivation is exactly where everything goes so wrong. The rules of debate morph our worldview from one of empathy to apathy. Outside of debate, the loss of any human life is overwhelmingly tragic, but within debate, the death of millions is nothing more than a statistic. World-altering policy changes are simply known as “hypothetical implementations.” Extinction impacts come across as just words with green highlighting, its true meaning never finding its way into our hearts. The ultimate evil, the death of billions, the conclusion of countless bloodlines stretching eons, all compacted into a single word as we spread into the next contention. Atrocities like nuclear war, pandemics, terrorism, are normalized from round to round as  these words register only as impacts in our mind and nothing more. This desensitization to such devastating outcomes stems from debate’s view of these events as mere hypotheticals instead of real world possibilities.

This desensitization stretches far past the debate round. The calculus and rationale we develop through debate ingrains itself into our everyday life. I remember once in eighth grade, I was considering writing a contention about the war in Ukraine. When I searched up the death toll, the war had taken the lives of 5,000 people at the time. Audibly, I told my friends: “I don’t know if this argument is good, the impact will only be 5,000 deaths.” In a sense, I was right. Wars throughout history have killed millions of people, so 5,000 casualties, particularly in debate, is relatively low. Unfortunately, as I was saying that, my leadership teacher walked by, skidded to a stop and proceeded to ask me in disbelief: “Did you say ‘only’ 5,000 people have died?” For the next couple minutes, I had to awkwardly justify my thought process as I tried in vain to explain the norms of debate to him. That conversation will always stick with me, a constant reminder that debate’s rationale is extreme in a normal setting. Deprioritizing objectively horrific things just because they have a “comparatively small” impact is generally looked down upon and for good reason, but debate and its game-like nature don’t seem to think so.

More than just impact calculus, debate affects the way we react to the world. Because many of us spend so much time eating, drinking, and breathing debate, it is constantly on our minds. Instead of paying attention as our calculus teacher drones about derivatives, we daydream about the next argument we will discover in the depths of the internet. This level of involvement is another way debate distances us from reality; we view the world through a debate-first lens. When the Israel-Hamas War first began, I know many people who’s first reaction was to try and cut a new impact scenario. When Iran fired its first missiles against Israel without retaliation, escalation responses were finished and in our blockfile before the sun even set. When Biden dropped out of the election to make way for Kamala, the politics argument on the surveillance topic was immediately adjusted by almost everyone at camp. When Kamala’s poll numbers shot up past Trump’s, “Kamalatics” flipped from an aff argument to a neg one overnight. These examples only show how debate shapes our realities, how it makes us consider the effects of real world events on debate arguments even before our lives.

There is no instant remedy to this way of thinking. To an extent, it is installed into anyone who has entered a debate round. This effect comes naturally with debate and its competitive structure, but by no means should we accept it. Debate is important, but it should not skew our perception of the world. We can allow debate to narrow our worldview and continue to disconnect us from the rest of the world, or we can use debate to bring us closer. Instead of using the knowledge we gain from debate solely for ballots, we can use it to inspire positive change around us. Debate can be detaching, but debate can also be truly uniting if we make it that way. It’s up to us to be the judge and decide for ourselves which side we want to choose.