Debate

So, I wanted briefly talk about debate class. The teacher, who describes himself as the Debater of Japan, ok, I will post his name as soon as I find it. I can definitely characterize him a little bit, he is a follower of the teachings of the "Book of the Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi, who is considered as the greatest of all Samurai. Our debate is clearly based on those philosophies.

Generally our debates go something like this, we break into 3 groups, the positive side, the negative, and the Judges. Each side has 3 people, a Rock/Air Person, a Fire/Water person and a void person. The void judge is the head judge. According to the teacher's philosophy Air represents logic, Rock represents Fundamentals, Fire represents Emotion, and Water represents the coming of everything together. The void can become any one of these. These are by the way the titles of the 5 Rings in the "Book of the Five Rings". The way the debate goes is the positive side's Air/Rock person makes an "Air" speech based on "facts" as to why their side feels the way it does. The speech is usually about 2 minutes, after wards the other's side "Air/Rock" person cross examines them by asking questions for about 2 minutes. At this point the 'Void' can jump in if someone becomes stuck. After this part, the sides are switched, and the Negative's side's person makes an "Air" speech while the other side's "Rock" cross examines them.

After this is done we have a "Saka debate" or "Free" debate. Where both sides throw arguments at each other, and try to respond to each other's challenges. This is organized somewhat differently from debate to debate based on the Judge's feelings. Afterwards the negative "Fire/Water" person makes a "Fire" speech. The purpose of the "Fire" speech is to sort of put some emotions into your argument rather then facts. The positive side also makes a "Fire" speech. The debate is then concluded by two "Water" speeches. The purpose of the "Water" speech is to calm everyone down, thank their opponents for their good debate and make sure that everyone leaves happy after ward, but each side also re enforces their points.

The judges then make their decisions on who they felt "won" the debate. The "Air/Rock" judge mostly judges the "Air/Rock" person, while the "Fire/Water" person judges the "Fire/water" speeches. The Void judge makes the overall decision and serves as a tie breaker.

Some of the questions we have debates so far include "Bushido (Code of the Samurai) can mix with Christianity", "Beautiful women are more successful in careers then not so beautiful women", and "Barack Obama was more influenced by his Mother then his Father". Debates are usually made with minimal research and are based on personal experience rather then facts, both sides take about 20 minutes to prepare for the debate, we generally do not get to choose what side we are on.

Several things I can, its amazing, what 3 heads put together brain storming can up with with very limited information. Like for today's debate I had to debate against that "Barack Obama was more influenced by his Mother then by his Father". Now, what we did know was that Obama's father left when he was 2, he met him once, and he visited his grave. This was a difficult side to debate, but after some thinking my group came up with a point, that the absence of a father could have been more influential, or rather was the root of Obama's relationship with his mother, therefore making his father more influential by not being there. I don't know if really agree with this, but this argument allowed us to go head to head with a side which seemed to have the better points.

The other interesting thing, is when you start becoming convinced by the arguments that your side is making, at times I disagreed with the judges and felt like "My side won because they convinced me of something I did not agree with before. " So, debating is fun, I don't know what next week's debate is going to be except that it will have something to do with "Jealousy".