Frost/Nixon: the truth is out there

When I was teaching in England I had to prepare students for their final exam, which would be having a debate on current affairs. And I am still wondering about the pedagogic effect of such practice. To learn languages is perfect, as it allows students to use language purposefully. But what about its consequences in educating them to language? It depends on how it is done.

The problem is that the difference between animal communication and human communication is that human communication is very creative. In other words men can lie or invent the most manipulative ways to get what they want. The funny thing is that this is one of the things that distinguish us from other animals.
But what is interesting is that we are all Pinocchios: we tell lies all the time, often not being aware of it, but we are very bad at recognizing them. Is this advantageous? Probably for the individuals who can speak all the time and be heard, but not for the majority of listeners. Very bad as far as the whole species is concerned.

Going back to debates, while preparing these debates for the students I realized that for certain topics I lacked the knowledge of the facts. In that case my arguments ended up being pure rhetoric, they could say anything and its contrary with no logical contradiction. A pure game. No relationship with the facts. Like some debates on TV. In other cases I knew certain facts that made the whole game completely fall apart. Like that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Bush, Blair, Berlusconi and many others wanted just to steal some oil from other countries, that they were not interested in spreading democracy because their allies were despotic countries such as Saudi Arabia, but that they just wanted to make money for themselves and the richest people in their countries while telling lies to the rest of the population.
And I will never forget myself pretending to be in favour on the war and asking a student this question an American student asks Chomsky: if we can benefit from it, why not? And he was 15 but he looked at me with such a disgusted face that I felt ashamed of what I had just said. Because to me it made a little bit sense...after all that writing essays on Machiavelli. I will never forget his look.




However, when we did debates where no facts where available due to my ignorance, the students might have thought that both the arguments were true at the same time. But no. They were valid but not true. They were valid arguments but nothing to do with the real world. They could have ended up believing that nothing is true in this world or two opposite things were true at the same time. But no. The truth is out there. Objective knowledge is possible if we have facts. They can destroy any biased knowledge (lie)or any biased knowledge disguised as objective (double lie). And the students need to be aware of how poweful and misleading language is and that facts are important.

This is what is the major theme of the movie Frost/Nixon, which should undoubtedly have won an Oscar... Two guys going along speaking for a whole movie, debating until a document comes out that explains everything and Nixon cannot but admit that he ‘was wrong’. And this is what should happen: journalists should find out facts and confront politicians with them. So that they could not tell lies anymore.

Now this language that allows us to lie is worrying. It probably appeared by chance. And it became a feature of the whole species as the individuals who could lie best and more were in a position of advantage and could reproduce more. But the final proof on whether this is advantageous for the species as a whole or not would be only the fact that from our species there will develop other species with the same feature. Like from the fist birds developed many other species with wings as it was advantageous to have them. If we go on lying like that and believing in lies we’ll end up destroying our habitat and I doubt that this will happen. But apart from being very selfish and good at telling lies we are still clever after all...

The problem with Pinocchio is that he could not see the truth which was clear in front of him (he had a pine in his eyes, from this comes his name in Italian). But once he could see and stopped acting as a puppet being manipulated by others and became a real boy.