The moderator went on to explain the debate format to the audience. While he did that, I despaired. Was I going to have to defend slavery? Every fibre of my being wanted to do the opposite. Though, it did make me wonder something: if they were having this debate, did that mean that slavery was a controversial topic? For them to even talk about it in the first place must have meant that there were some people who believed it was wrong.
This was really good news. My debate opponents and parts of the crowd considered slavery to be unethical. I wasn’t alone. There were people on my side.
The girl who had brought me here, Shifnal, leaned over and whispered to me, “Don’t be nervous. This should be a walk in the park for you.”
“It should?” I wasn’t convinced. Debating and arguing were never my strong suits.
“Yeah. This is a mock debate. The motion is something that everyone already knows is wrong. Our opponents are playing devil’s advocate. They have nothing against slavery. We’re the favourites who are expected to win this debate with ease. It is literally impossible for you to lose.” She gave me a two-second shoulder massage to get me fired up.
My hopes were crushed. “So, no one here believes that slavery is wrong?” I asked.
“Why would we?” Shifnal handed me some cue cards. “If you really struggle to come up with anything. Just read these.”
‘If slaves were freed, they’d be living on the streets.’
‘Slavery is an age-old tradition.’
‘So many businesses would fail if not for slaves.’
‘Enslaved individuals are property, and property can’t be taken.’
‘Slaves want to be slaves.’
I flipped through a dozen cards of awful justifications. I wasn’t going to use any of these, and I certainly wasn’t going to defend slavery. I wondered if I should walk out and yield my position as speaker to Shifnal.
“Are you alright, Yarm?” Newmill asked me. “I know this is against your beliefs. Should we leave?”
“No.” I felt like leaving was the wrong decision. This may not have been a golden opportunity like I had previously thought, but maybe it could have been a silver opportunity. I would even settle for bronze.
“What are you planning to do then?” Penrin said while helping herself to the jug of water on the table.
I thought about it and realised that there was a method for me to push my own beliefs. If I outright argued against slavery, I would be disqualified. They would not allow me to bat for the other team. To Penrin I explained, “If I am not allowed to teach why slavery is bad, then I’ll have to do the opposite.”
“Isn’t that in direct opposition to your morals? You’re fine with defending slavery?”
“Yes, but badly.” Penrin poured water from the jug into an empty glass for me. “Thanks.”
“Can you explain?”
“Don’t tell Shifnal this, but Nietzsche said that the best way to harm a cause is by defending it with deliberately faulty arguments. If I can argue for the existence of slavery so badly, I might cause some people to switch over to my side. I believe this style of arguing even has a name. What was it? Solemnly? Symmetry? Salami? Oh I remember, sodomy!”
“Sophistry…” Penrin said in a disgusted tone.
“Ah.” I squeezed my tongue between my lips. “Well, the name for it isn’t important. What matters is if I can execute it properly. I’ll give terrible reasons for the continuation of slavery, and the opposing team will get a free win.”
The moderator finished explaining the format. “Now, we’ll hear the opening statement from Mr Callington.” The crowd applauded as a late teen took the podium. He had sharp purple eyes and black hair. One side of his glasses had a circular frame while the other was square. It looked strange.
“Thank you for the introduction and thank you for having me. Today I will relay to you the core concepts of why the enslavement of men and women is wrong. First, consider that slaves are a shaky investment. You never know what you’ll get. You might buy a fine half-ox to work your fields, but who is to say that the creature will be obedient?” The audience listened attentively in silence. “There is a chance when buying a slave that they will not listen to you. Of course, you can break them with punishments, but not all slaves are able to be broken. Some will defy their master to their last breath. In such circumstances, the master has wasted a lot of money. He would have made more by just hiring a worker.”
That was all wrong. Callington was supposed to be arguing with ethics but instead he was appealing to finances. Saying that owning slaves happened to be unprofitable was different than saying it was wrong. He spoke from the perspective of the master rather than the victim.
“Second, if one is to use slaves for all their daily business, they will grow lazy. The seasoned master may use slaves to brush his teeth and move his feet. He will become unable to do things for himself.”
I dug into the table with my face. Callington’s arguments were all so bad that I had no idea how to do worse than him. How was I supposed to let him win the debate when he had just made a performance that could only lose?
Callington went on for about ten minutes. Each argument he made was somehow worse than the last. The crowd gave a loud applause at the end of his opening statement, not because they agreed, but because they found entertainment in debates. They weren’t here to have their minds changed. This was a pantomime. The two teams pretended to be at odds, but they really all thought the same way. This whole thing was an act.
The moderator then announced, “Now, please welcome our next speaker: Mr Yarm!”
I got up and stood at the podium. My mind was blank. I hadn’t thought of anything to say. The audience made me nervous. Everyone here disagreed with me and that was a frightening thought. “Uhm, first…” I really didn’t know what to say. I had ten whole minutes, and I came up with nothing. The crowd stared at me expectantly. Some started wondering why I wasn’t speaking.
My vision started blurring. Whispers came from all around me. “What’s he doing? Does he have stage fright?” The murmurs became louder and drowned out my senses. I started doubting myself. What was I doing here? I didn’t have the skills to pull this off.
“Do your best, Yarm!” Newmill’s voice cut through my worries like a butterknife cutting through margarine. Or like an inconsiderate person cutting in a queue at the supermarket. Or like a bandsaw cutting through the fingers of a careless carpenter.
“First,” I said with a newfound confidence, “Slavery is good because the slave has it good. Just think about how nice it must be to be a slave. You have free food, water, and shelter. Your days are simple and straightforward as everything is already planned for you. You have no worries about finding work because your master provides everything you need. In many ways it sounds better than freedom, right?”
The audience nodded and expressed agreement in muffled noises. Shifnal whispered over, “You’re doing great!” I even saw Callington looking impressed.
“Maybe some of you envy the simplicity of slave life and wished you were born a slave yourselves. Wouldn’t that be nice? You’d have a kind master who treated you well. They would reward you generously and do you no wrong.”
Everyone was delightfully captivated by my words. They had never heard an argument from the perspective of the slave. They were all now imagining what it would be like to be a slave, and that would be their downfall. “Of course, some of you would get unlucky. Some of you would have masters that humiliated you, masters that starved you, or masters that abused you. But that is a small price to pay! So what if the occasional slave owner beats his slave to death? What does it matter if an owner strips their slave of all dignity? Slaves are just property. It’s the right of the master to do whatever he wishes to them.”
You could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. Everyone who was imagining what life would be like as a slave, now imagined being ruled by a tyrant. They imagined how they would be treated as nothing more than objects under a wicked master.
“If a slave should die from being disciplined too harshly, they have only themselves to blame. Isn’t that so, comrades? A slave should know their place. All their suffering is ultimately their own fault for choosing to be born as slaves.”
“Choosing?” said Callington, who was seated close to the podium.
“You’re losing them, Yarm!” Shifnal softly cried out to me.
The audience was clearly conflicted. They truly thought that slavery was fine, but my arguments in bad faith made them doubt. I looked at one of the cue cards Shifnal gave me and used it as fuel. “And let’s not forget where the slave would be if they were emancipated. They’d be living on the streets. Wouldn’t you all rather be flogged a little than sleep on the cold stone pavement?”
My tone made it seem as if the former was superior but anyone who heard my words knew that they preferred the latter. The auditorium was filled with chatter. “This boy has the worst assertions that I’ve ever heard.”
“Why isn’t Shifnal speaking? She’d do far better!”
“Get off the stage! You’re making us look bad!”
As I spoke the audience’s disapproval had grown louder and louder. My voice was still audible though, so I went on. “Ponder for a moment what would happen if slaves were freed. They would almost undoubtedly try to get revenge on the masters who chained them. They would want their owners punished for their crimes, so they would take it upon themselves to carry out justice.”
I could feel the room rumbling from hundreds of students all discussing the folly of my arguments. The moderator tried to calm them but even his voice amplified by a microphone-rune could not reach them.
“To close, let us keep slaves bound forever, so that justice can never occur.” My voice was the last intelligible word said in that auditorium. A rotten tomato hit me square in the face as the crowd erupted into jeers.
“Boo!” I felt my whole body vibrating from the collective sound of the audience. More food items were hurled in my direction. I didn’t try to dodge. I was pleased with these results. This audience that had come to have their beliefs validated, experienced the opposite. They were challenged. They were forced into a state of introspection, and they did not like it one bit. I knew none of them had their minds changed yet, but I had planted the seeds of doubt. Any critical thinking performed by the audience would water those seeds and make my flowers bloom.
Some stagehands dragged me off stage before things got more serious. The debate was cancelled and no winner was announced.
Backstage, I was scolded by Shifnal. “How the hell do you lose a debate that easy? You literally could have done nothing and won! There was no possible way to lose this debate, but you found out how to do it anyway.”
I impressed myself. I didn’t think I’d be able to speak so well, but the words just flowed out of me. Before coming to this world, I would have never been able to do that. There seemed to be a definite effect from my Mind level on my performance.
“I can’t believe I chose an idiot like you to represent me.”
“Me neither.” I handed the girl her mended glasses.
She put them on and then saw my face for the first time. “Ah! You even look like an idiot! If I knew you looked like that, I would have never picked you!” Shifnal stormed off.
After finishing wiping my face clean, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Newmill and Penrin were grinning at me. They were the only ones who understood what I was doing.
“I can’t believe you pulled that off.” Newmill hopped in place excitedly.
“They all think you’re stupid, but even I must admit that was genius. Well done.” She lightly punched my arm.
[-2 HP]
“Ouch!” That seriously hurt. A light punch from someone with a high Body level was quite painful.
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