Respect and contempt in scholarly discourse

Two voices in my head, two voices. Our guest lecturer shows us rocks that look like carved human faces and says that they are not carved. One voice says, "That can't possibly be true." Another voice says (to quote Shakespeare), "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I said during class that I had the voice saying, "That's ridiculous! Of course it must be carved! It's impossible that it isn't carved." I said I wasn't buying into that voice, but that it was there. And it's interesting that was the first voice I expressed out loud. I didn't express the other voice in my head, the one that said, "That's interesting. Wonder how the stones got to be that way?"

What I noticed, in reflecting on it afterwards, is that my reaction was just that – a reaction against, a dismissal of, a rejection of. Why did my response have to be preceded with "That's ridiculous?" Ridiculous = deserving of ridicule, and I most certainly don't think that the statement "These are not carved" is deserving of ridicule. It is, instead, deserving of curiosity. But … a lot of my training in Western scientific ways of speaking, and of academic discourse in general, was to use contempt as a tool in arguments. I watched my father (a professor) use this again and again in arguments, and I certainly observed some of my mentors at my postgraduate university do it. So I picked it up as an unconscious habit. It's what you do in an argument when your most important goal is to win rather than discuss, and when you don't want to have to do the hard intellectual work of really engaging with the other person's idea. I've recognized that this is an unhealthy tendency for years. Using contempt is abusive, and just because I observed powerful people doing it doesn't mean I have to do it. I have spent years trying to un-learn these habits of speech and attitude, but they crop up still. And it's exactly the attitude taken in "scientism" towards anything not already explained by current theories. It's exactly the colonial attitude towards other systems of knowledge that I object to and hope to change. And here I am, enacting exactly that attitude.

My reaction to the lecturer's statement was not phrased as the response of someone curious about finding out more or interested in engaging with the topic. I could have asked a question (How did it get to be that way, then? What does it mean to say it's not carved?), or just made a statement of fact (My understanding is that things don't take that shape without humans carving them) that might start a dialogue. Well, since I don't think I really do hold a dismissive attitude, I can try to be more expressive of curiosity.