Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
It's great to be back at Hamilton.
I cannot believe it has been more than 20 years since I was a student here.
And I have to say one of the best parts of my time on the hill
were the meaningful and memorable conversations I had while I was here.
And I think that we're having a somewhat different college experience
because of the different types of environment that we've grown up in.
Now, this may shock some of you,
but I don't have Snapchat and I just got Facebook a few years ago.
Email wasn't around until I was in law school,
and I was 35
before my boss finally got me to understand
the importance of appearance and perception
over and above technical skills and capabilities.
Whereas you'll have grown up knowledgeable that you're being judged all the time,
you've grown up with the instant feedback of appreciation and condemnation
found in social media.
Before you even got here,
you knew that perception is reality, in terms of your reputation.
Your peers are always online, watching and responding.
So, I think in that sense,
your experience has perhaps better prepared you to be part of society.
We were just a lot more naive.
Now, in my first year at Hamilton,
we had a lot of conversations about controversial topics,
and I think you guys are having the same types of conversations.
I just think that my generation's lack of experience in managing our reputations
let us to behave less guardedly with one another.
We weren't expecting
that a single conversation would result in condemnation or praise.
We didn't think that a single expressed opinion would somehow define us.
I just think you guys are a lot more sensitive to the judgment of your peers
than we were.
So, in my first year at Hamilton, we talked about these issues.
We talked about social problems,
we talked about a lot of controversial topics,
and one conversation in particular has stuck with me.
We were talking about abortion,
and I asked my suitemate whether he was pro-life or pro-choice.
And, you know, he thought about it and said,
"Well, I'm pro-choice now,
because if my girlfriend got pregnant I'd want her to have an abortion,
but when I'm older I'll probably be pro-life
because people shouldn't have abortions."
And I have to say that that answer shocked me, at the time.
I was a little taken aback, I had some strong feelings on the matter,
and I was shocked at what I saw as an amoral opinion
on something that I felt so strongly about.
But my very candid suitemate, in that moment,
said something that was guaranteed to please no one,
and I'm so grateful for him for his willingness to share that opinion.
You see, since then,
I've experienced over and over how people feel that a particular rule
should be different when applied to themselves
as they would apply that rule to everyone else.
So I now view that moment as one of the greatest learning experiences
not only of my time at Hamilton, but in my entire life.
And I'm worried that you all won't have such an opportunity,
not because you're not self-aware,
not because you shy away
from that conversation on a controversial topic,
but because you fear the judgment of your peers.
Social anxiety can trigger what's known as the fight-or-flight response,
the instinctive reaction that's knwon as a survival instinct.
It's a chemical reaction.
It triggers our brains to shut down our higher reasoning function,
so that we can concentrate and focus on the threat at hand.
We stop listening, processing, learning,
focusing solely on surviving to the next minute.
Now, in conversation,
the survival instinct can be triggered by threats to our identity,
the threats posed by hearing a view that's hostile to our own opinion,
or the threat of negative judgment by our listener.
We process disagreement as an attack, and go into defense mode.
We go into our reptile brains and we just stop thinking.
And this isn't to say that when I was 20
the survival instinct and social anxiety wasn't around,
because it certainly was,
but unlike you, we had far fewer opportunities
to experience and internalize these threats.
I just think that when you look at some of the research that's out there,
what you'll see is that repeated triggering of the survival instinct
primes the brain to recognize similar situations
and respond more quickly by going into the fight-or-flight mode.
And that's why I want to talk to you today about the devil's advocate,
the role the promoter of faith played
in the Catholic Church's canonization process
and how that role can help you
have meaningful and memorable [conversations] today.
So, the first saints were martyrs killed for their belief in Christ
and acclaimed by the faithful as inspirations.
It's important to understand that this was a populist movement,
ultimately recognized by Church leadership,
but it was begun by the Church community.
And eventually, it wasn't only martyrs who became saints,
but holy people too, and by "holy people"
what I mean is people whose perceived relationship with Christ,
along with their performance of God's works on Earth,
were venerated by the faithful as models of Christian life.
And eventually, the Church came to recognize saints
as more than just people worthy of admiration and imitation,
but as intercessors whose prayers could win grace from God.
The Church community started going on pilgrimages
to visit saints' graves and see their relics.
They started praying to them for intercession and help from God.
So Church leadership determined that they needed to develop
a much more formal process for canonization,
to ensure that only those most worthy were raised to that level.
And so, a process known as the contradictorium was developed.
Now, like our modern judicial process, this was based on Roman law.
Now, in Roman law,
there are three parties that were required
when there was a dispute that required adjudication.
You had the accuser,
who levied an accusation against the accused.
And then you had a neutral party, the judge,
who would make a determination.
So, you might know this as a plaintiff, a defendant and then a judge, right?
But in Roman times, the whole community might be aware that a wrong had been done,
or a crime had been committed,
but for whatever reason,
the victim was unwilling to make the accusation.
And in those cases, from time to time, the judge would then serve a dual role,
serving as both a proxy for the accuser, as well as that neutral judge.
But this compromised his neutrality,
and it led to a perception of bias, unfairness,
it limited his effectiveness.
So eventually, the role of the prosecutor was developed.
Now, in the Church,
there were also proceedings, judicial proceedings that went on,
like if people failed to tithe,
if you had a priest accused of misconduct,
and in judicial proceedings in the Church,
that role of the proxy for the accuser was known as the "promotor fiscalis."
But, you know, in this separation of roles and responsibilities,
it's important to understand,
it's crucial to ensuring both the fairness of the process
and ensuring that it's robust enough to yield truth.
But when you think about the canonization process
and the saint that you're seeking to recognize,
you know, this holy person, we're not putting them on trial to defend themself,
we're seeking to recognize his great holiness.
And there's a massive appearance issue.
The faithful are out there saying, "Make this person a saint."
You won't have the promotor fiscalis stand there and say, "No, no, no."
And so, by the 1500s,
what happened was they developed a new role,
that of the promoter of faith,
who would stand in opposition to canonization in the contradictorium.
Now, the people who were clamoring for this individual to be proclaimed a saint
needed a proxy as well,
and that proxy was known as the postulator.
Now, the postulator's primary role and responsibility
was to seek out all evidence in favor of canonization
and present that evidence in the contradictorium,
where it would evaluated before neutral judges.
For this reason, in common parlance it was known as the "advocatus Dei,"
or the "advocatus sancti," the saint's advocate.
And because the promoter of faith's responsibility
was to identify any potential objection to canonization,
they were known as the "advocatus diaboli,"
or the devil's advocate.
Now, while you might think
that the saint's advocate and the devil's advocate were like rival football teams,
battling it out on the field,
they were in fact united in their service to their Church
and in their shared responsibility
to promote the faith, seek the truth and prevent abuse.
Now, let's fast-forward about 400 years.
By the 1960s, the church needed to modernize,
and Pope John XXIII convened what's known as the Second Vatican Council,
or Vatican II.
Among the reforms that were instituted were, for example,
having the mass said in English or the language of the congregation,
instead of in Latin;
having the priest face the congregants, instead of facing the altar;
things like that.
By the 1980s,
massive changes in canon law had been instituted,
including in the canonization process.
These changes came for a number of reasons.
First, you know, a quasi judicial process is not exactly swift,
and the backlog of saints to be considered was quite lengthy.
Additionally, if you think about the early Church,
you had a lot of eyewitness testimony about the deeds of the saints,
the holy people and what they'd done.
But in the modern era, you don't really have a lot of eyewitnesses.
What you have instead are a lot of documents,
and these documents require expert analysis and review.
You need different experts from different fields,
philosophy, theology, history, medicine, etc.,
to examine these records and evaluate and present their views.
Experts are generally presumed to be neutral.
And because this process now looks a lot more academic than judicial,
they did away with this role of the devil's advocate
in presenting objections.
Instead, the experts would get together, evaluate, consider and make a conclusion.
Now, if the Catholics have become far more academic in their approach
and done away with the contradictorium and the role of the devil's advocate,
why would I be asking you guys, the academics,
to become devil's advocates in your lives?
How does this make sense?
Well, in my opinion,
I think you need advocacy in order to effectively evaluate an issue.
If you don't have a contrarian,
someone who's going to express a view
contrary to the opinions of everybody else,
you can't be sure your discussion will be robust enough to yield the truth.
You need that opposition, you need that other voice.
In corporate and military circles, it's known as "finding the mavericks",
the people who express that contrary view
and thereby help prevent the mistakes that come from groupthink.
A maverick or a contrarian
is someone who doesn't really care about the judgment of their peers.
But on the other hand, anyone who disagrees with the pack without purpose
is frankly just plain disagreeable and a pain to have around.
I mean, anybody who makes up reasons to go against the pack
and just disagrees for argument's sake is not exactly a team player.
So, how do you do this?
Your devil's advocate hopefully will arise organically in conversation,
but if they don't, you need to ask someone to take on that role,
you need to ask someone to take the opposing view
and staunchly defend and present those opinions,
because you can't just keep preaching to the choir.
We are judging people every second of the day.
Studies show that we form an opinion about people
within the first seven seconds that we encounter them.
But when you say, "Hey, I'm just playing the devil's advocate here,"
you're asking your listener to judge you not on the views you're expressing,
but on the value you add to the discussion and the quality of your arguments.
How do you gain the freedom to speak something
without fear that someone's going to immediately reject it, or reject you?
You distance yourself from that view
in a way that your audience can understand and appreciate.
And more importantly, by doing this,
you're enabling your listener to hear what you have to say.
You see, I think trigger warnings began in an effort
to help people prevent the descent into the reptile brain
and the perception that what they're about to experience here or read is an attack.
So, when you say, "I'm just playing the devil's advocate here,"
you're giving your listener a chance to hear what you have to say
because just the awareness
that something might trigger their fight-or-flight response
can help them prepare and help mitigate that reaction.
Our survival instincts have endured for 200 millennia,
but they need to be adapted to modern threats,
threats to our identity,
threats posed by speaking and hearing uncomfortable things,
threats to the group by strongly-worded opposing views.
Don't shirk the challenging conversation.
Don't shy away from the unpopular or the inappropriate opinion.
But on the other hand,
if you're expecting to be like Paul on the road to Damascus
and have a conversion experience and change people's minds instantly,
you're doomed to disappointment,
because lasting change comes from evolution, not revolution.
Lasting change comes from meaningful conversations
that have been internalized and wrestled with.
Change can only happen
when someone is willing to speak in opposition and can be heard.
Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Become a devil's advocate,
and listen to the devil's advocates around you.
In that way, you will lead a life that can be examined
and will therefore, I promise you, prove worthwhile.
Thank you.
(Applause)