2024 wrapped with an announcement that universities will be legally required to do better on free speech. The government is concerned that they’re not giving sufficient space to issues and events that are deemed controversial. And there’s no shortage of material that could be categorised that way. Just think of the Treaty Principles Bill, the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, and the haka that went round the world. The list goes on—debate about whether we should join the AUKUS security pact, exempting farming from the Emissions Trading Scheme, and the Royal Commission report on COVID-19.
We can expect more of the same in the new year. You could be forgiven for starting 2025 with sympathy for the universities and a case of conflict fatigue, hoping for an end to the dissension. But what if passionate disagreement isn’t a bad thing? What if it’s not a price we have to pay to live in a democracy, but something better than that—like a way that we love our neighbours?
We hear a lot about “kindness” and “fairness”, those Kiwi staples that can be code for “don’t rock the boat.” They can too easily be used to side-step hard conversations about important issues. This can create a climate of conformity, one that only highly motivated or highly disagreeable people will defy. That’s how a vicious cycle can set in. Conformity produces a backlash, which produces outrage, which enforces conformity.
It might help us break out of this cycle if we could borrow a different term from Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher and theologian. Aquinas famously said that to love is “to will the good of the other.” This goes far beyond feelings. If you genuinely love those around you—your family, your friends, your fellow citizens—you will want what’s good for them. And you won’t just sit back and hope it happens; you’ll be active and intentional.
Of course, not every disagreement is loving. Some arguments, and some people, are genuinely oppressive, intolerant, or self-interested. The kind of disagreement I’m talking about is different. It’s both motivated by love and done in love, in the sense that Aquinas meant. Because that’s based on wanting what’s good for others, it starts with a commitment to recognising their dignity.
That means recognising everyone’s agency—their moral freedom and responsibility to make meaningful decisions for themselves, even when we disagree with those decisions. Disagreement should therefore aim at persuasion, not compulsion, whether that’s literal compulsion or the kind that attempts to intimidate others into silence.
A commitment to dignity also rules out approaches that are dehumanising, objectifying, or abusive. That excludes obvious things like racism or religious intolerance. It also excludes demeaning and infantile rhetoric, like Rawiri Waititi labelling the Prime Minister a “drop-nuts” if he wouldn’t attend the Treaty grounds at Waitangi in February.
Instead, disagreeing in love is the kind of disagreement that’s characterised by generosity towards those with different views, and that tempers moral conviction with humility.
None of this means disagreement should be endless or an end in itself. At some point decisions have to be made, resources have to be allocated, and laws have to be passed. Recognising the value of disagreement doesn’t mean embracing moral relativism either. Some things should be straight forwardly ruled out because they conflict with the common good—that’s why we have a criminal law, for example.
But when we’re so used to seeing good-faith dissenters dismissed as haters and bigots, we need to recalibrate how we understand disagreement. When people are genuinely seeking truth and wanting the best for our society, they are paying us the huge compliment of caring enough that they’re willing to unsettle us.
That’s especially true when disagreement is costly, as it all too often is when swimming against an elite or mainstream consensus. At this point, Aquinas’ concept of love becomes a lot like the virtue of charity, or agape as it’s known in Greek. This is a sacrificial love, one that’s willing to do hard things and make itself vulnerable for the sake of others.
So here are two implications of this argument. First, those who are willing to disagree in love should reclaim the moral high ground that is so often denied to them. They are not bigoted, hateful, phobic, or any of the other epithets routinely hurled at them.
Second, we should revise our cultural attitude towards this kind of disagreement. Instead of seeing it in purely negative terms, we should recognise it as the positive that it is. Love for truth, love for justice, and love for our neighbours.
If we could change this attitude, perhaps we could begin 2025 open to debate rather than exhausted by it. And who knows, maybe one day we could even become the kind of society where universities embrace the expression of difference—even without the obligation of law.
This article was first published on 27 December 2024 by Stuff publications including The Post, the Waikato Times, The Press, and the Southland Times.
