Before I debate anyone, I run a quick test. Is the debate based on identity, ideology, or reality? Two are dead ends. Only one of these foundations opens the way for further conversation, understanding, and connection. I’d like to believe that every conversation or “debate” is an opportunity to learn, but that isnt the case for everyone, so this rubric helps me decide when a debate or “conversation” is worth my time.
Level One: Identity
If someone leads with identity, I am out.
Take abortion. Someone says, “This affects me as a Black woman.” That is where it ends for me. This is not because of their identity. They would love for me to base my opinions on their identity either way, because now I’m on their court, playing this game on their terms. However, objectively who they are does not matter, because identity is not an argument. It is a shield. It gets offered as proof, as if being a certain kind of person settles the question. This is the lowest and laziest form of argumentation because it requires little legwork, thought, or attention to detail.
Despite this, It’s a winning argument. There is nothing I can say that makes you not a Black woman. So if your identity is the argument, there is no argument. Nothing to test, nothing to weigh, nothing to move. You have handed me an immutable, unchangeable fact about you and framed it as a position.
It is a brilliant tactic, which is exactly why political parties love it. “You are a woman, so you deserve this.” It feels like solidarity; it builds solidarity, but for the opps it builds animosity, distrust, and aggression. The only place that road leads is tribal warfare, because identity was never up for discussion in the first place.
Level Two: Ideology
Ideology is a step up. At least there is a claim on the table. But it is still a dead end, just a slower one that masquerades as an intelligent argument. Most people fall for this argument because it’s not as cringe as identity arguments, but still appeals to our emotional and tribal selves. Many college students fall into this trap. They have very little real-world experience, but they have enough academic knowledge to develop ideologies that are loosely based on the real world, so much so that these arguments seem credible until it’s time to test them in the real world.
Let’s get back to the political hot topic of abortion. One person believes abortion is murder. Another believes it is fundamentally a woman’s rights issue. Technically, this is a good baseline for a debate.
However, in practice, this becomes another dead end. The one flaw with ideology is that it is almost certainly not something a person has “reasoned into,” and you can’t reason someone out of a position that they didnt arrive at with reason. A person’s ideology was not picked up yesterday and often is tied to their inherent genetically derived personality traits, how they were raised, or their life experiences. While it is possible to change these, none of these can be changed easily. Ideology is deeply rooted and is built over a lifetime. It is synonymous with identity in many areas, such as religion or political party.
Nobody wakes up conservative or liberal one morning. That leaning came from years of family, environment, and experience. It is like religion. Most people feel they were born into theirs, which, as I have mentioned, is synonymous with identity in most respects.
If you believe abortion is murder, there is very little the other side can say to move you. It is a brick wall. And if your entire frame is women’s rights, you are debating on your own turf, inside your own narrative. So it stops being a debate and becomes an arguing session. Two walls facing each other.
Level Three: Reality
Reality is where I live.
The question I care about is simple. Why are we discussing this at all? Not the theory. Not the narrative. Not your identity. Not your ideology. What is the real thing, in the real world, that we have to decide?
With abortion, reality looks like this. The Supreme Court did not rule on whether abortion is right or wrong. It ruled on a different question entirely: is this federal, or is it left to the states? Then you get to a specific state, and the question gets concrete. Where is the line drawn? Are there exceptions for rape, or for the life of the mother? What does the actual legislation say?
Now we are talking about something real. Something that has to be written, passed, and take effect in the world. That is a completely different conversation from “abortion is wrong” or “as a Black woman.” Those are three separate things, and only one of them is a policy discussion.
I want to debate real law and real consequences. What is ACTUALLY happening, what is the context, who is involved, who is affected, and what do we need to do about it?
Fighting to Win vs. Reasoning Together
The Greeks have already run into the problems I’ve laid out here. They split debate dynamics into two modes.
The first is eristic, from eris, meaning strife. Eristic argument aims at victory, not truth. It is the polemic, the disputation, the adversarial fight. The sophists made a living off it: winning trumps honesty, and the point is to beat the other person, not to learn anything.
The second is dialectic. In the Socratic tradition, dialectic is reasoning together toward truth through question and answer. It is dialogue, deliberation, inquiry. Socrates called his version maieutic, the midwife method, because the goal was to draw ideas out, not to shut them down.
Here is why this matters for the three levels. Identity and ideology debates can only ever be eristic. There is no truth to reason toward, because nothing on the table can move. Identity does not change. Ideology barely does. So all that is left is the fight itself. Victory or defeat, tribe against tribe.
Reality is the only level where dialectic is possible. When the question is a specific law, a specific line, a specific decision, there is actually something to figure out together. Two people can disagree on where the line goes and still be reasoning toward the same real answer, because the answer has to exist in the world, not in either of their heads.
So the three levels are not just about what you are debating. They determine what kind of debate you are even allowed to have.
The Dead End We All Chose
Since the extrapolation of social media in the early 2000s, most people are anchored to either identity or ideological debates. A lot of this has to do with age. Social media tends to be a playground for younger people. Also, a lot of this is our society’s snubbing of classical wisdom. Almost everyone has parked themselves on the first two levels. Everything is identity or ideology. Only by understanding debate can we move beyond the algorithmic clashes we see every day. We can start by at least attempting to start from a foundation in reality so that at least both sides are on the same playing field and understand exactly what they are debating, instead of nebulous feelings about what their identity means to them or attempting to rationalize their ideological chains.
