Method and process

Today I spent only about 2 hours working at the Inside Books Project, packaging and mailing books requested by inmates in Texas prisons. On its face, the project has little systemic value in changing the process of incarceration and criminal justice even in Texas, but being there revealed much more than a human benefit. The process of reading letters sent to the project, then flipping through stacks of donated books, the dregs of a freer literary world and hoping for a reasonable fit to their requests. Too often there’s nothing to send that works. I put that next to the importance books have in my life and feel some sort of shame in being confronted by that. The point I would like to make comes next. The project on its own may have little systemic significance, but the process of carrying it out puts in sharp relief the intersecting realities of an unjust prison system with an overabundant consumerism beyond the walls. The process reveals something that has value that could not be accessed any other way.

This explains what debate does for me. Independently, the game has mostly esoteric and isolated impacts. Good debaters gain notoriety among themselves, gain skills that have the most application only to themselves, then move on. Debaters speak about the world in a way that suits debate but few other activities. Resolutions are arbitrary but simultaneously vague questions of policy in only loose relation to governmental practice. Essentially, debate doesn’t get much further than the walls of the academy as an intrinsically valuable activity. However, the process of talking, researching, thinking about the world through debate brings ideas into focus in context, and provides guide posts to learn about the world in a way I would not have accessed any other way.

Duncan