ROB DUIKER

DISPOSITION

Ready to Respect You!

Often people will be interested in a candidate’s positions without considering dispositions.  The Google dictionary defines disposition as a person's inherent qualities of mind and character.  I would like to be known as someone with the disposition whereby I respect and treasure people with whom I disagree.

I believe I can play a role in bringing mutual respect back to public discourse and in particular to political discourse.  

Increasingly, we have seen in both Alberta Provincial politics and on the Federal scene, truth asserted, not as reasoned conclusions, but as dogma or doctrine. In doing so, our leaders declare people to be evil or deficient in some way if they do not agree with the “truth” being set forth.  We have squeezed out all room for legitimate disagreement by sanctioning disrespect for our adversaries.  This must change!

We all disagree with each other!  That’s a fact!  Our unity cannot and must not depend on our agreement.  Rather, we must learn how to disagree well.

Our leaders, in order to serve us well, must understand some basic things about how human beings come to understand truth.  The things that I know to be true, might be in conflict with the things you know to be true.  This is an obvious complexity of life that citizens, and in particular politicians must learn how to navigate.  In a democracy, we cannot begin by asserting that, “My truth is the real truth!”  Rather, our goal is a country where people with a variety of views on a variety of subjects can all meaningfully participate in public discourse.  

My contention is that any legitimate belief in free speech is founded on this sort of mutual respect.  In fact it is based on the notion that disagreement enriches our lives.

There are many ways that people will come to know something or believe something to be true.  Here are a few:

• Authority: I believe something because I trust the source from which I learned it. The source may be a book, a parent, a teacher, or a CBC reporter.

• Democracy: I believe something because everybody around me seems to believe it.  The reason that Canadian views around healthcare and gun control are so different from American views can be explained by this means of truth finding.

• Experience and Experimentation (also called Empiricism):  I believe it because I have first hand experience.  The belief that childbirth is a painful experience is believed by men and women for different reasons.  Only women experience it.

• Intuition:  I believe it because my gut tells me it is true.  Sometimes my gut tells me who to trust.  We all believe some things due to our intuition.

• Pragmatism:  I believe it because it works.  Much of our belief about how to deal with criminals is based on what we believe will work to keep convicted people from reoffending.

• Reason:  I believe it because it makes logical sense.  We tend to try to put everything into this category, because reason is respected in a secular society.  

• Revelation: I believe it because it is in a Holy Book or my religion teaches it.

All humans believe things for a variety of reasons.  No-one can claim to be purely scientific or purely reasonable.  No one can claim that everything they believe is in the Bible.  We prioritize these ways of truth-finding differently.  Leaders need to better respect all of the various ways that the people they represent come to know and believe the truths they hold dear.  

The key to repairing the broken public discourse in Canada rests on our ability to learn how to identify the things that we agree on; things like justice, health care for all, sound economic principles, an educated population, equality, and democracy.  We must major in the majors, minor in the minors, and acknowledge that we are going to disagree, and sometimes we are going to change our minds.

Canada is a beautifully diverse country.  Because of that diversity we will disagree on things like the right to die, on a woman’s right to choose, on free trade, on supply management, on troops in the Middle East, on climate change, on pipelines, and on restrictions to free speech. This disagreement is a fact of life in a country where we are free to believe in accordance with our own truth-finding tools.  This disagreement is a result of something beautiful.  

I too have a knowledge-discovering, truth-finding tool box; and you are entitled to know what is in it.  But more important than that is the disposition I offer to you as your Member of Parliament.  I will respect you if you disagree with me, because we all disagree.  And more than that, I will learn from you, and I will respect you.  

If you only know one thing about Rob Duiker, I hope it is this; he listens to me, and he respects me.