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by Dylan Adelman
Dylan Adelman competed for Lakeville South High School (MN) and was the 2014 NSDA Nationals runner-up and Final Round Champion in International Extemporaneous Speaking. He previously finished 7th and 11th place in the same category his junior and sophomore years, respectively. Dylan was also the 2014 Minnesota state champion in extemporaneous speaking, as well as the two-time state runner-up to former NSDA national champion Ashesh Rambachan (2012 and 2013). Dylan will be attending the University of Pennsylvania in the dual-degree Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business.
Someone once said, “One death is a tragedy, but one million deaths are a statistic.”
Whether we realize it or not, we analyze the world from the perspective of power, hegemony, and numbers. It is not entirely our fault, as our standard news sources (such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal) feed into this mindset. But this mindset is a HUGE problem. We see the world through the “extemper’s lens,” myopically describing conflicts and crises without giving credence to the unfathomable human suffering that they invariably entail. We could never imagine the pain experienced by citizens in war-torn Iraq and Syria, but we downplay that dynamic when we make intro jokes that trivialize genocide or just mention in passing that “150,000 people have died in Syria”—as if a body count the size of Topeka, Kansas constitutes no more than a drop in the bucket. That earlier quote is from Stalin; he saw millions of dead citizens as “statistics.” But if we speak about people dying in Iraq or Syria as statistics too, then what does that make us?
I am not saying that every extemper is a Stalin-in-the-making (there is quite a difference between reciting statistics and causing them). But I have seen worrying trends. I have met extempers who want North Korea to attack South Korea, since this would give them ammo for their “projectile dysfunction” missile puns. I have met extempers who were happy to see the ISIS attacks in Mosul and Tikrit, since this gave relevance to their previously outdated Iraq files. I have met extempers who are excited to find statistics on deforestation, poverty, and oppression since those numbers add “depth” to their speeches. When others’ suffering becomes a tool for our own competitive advantage, it is a telltale sign that the extemper’s lens has irrevocably altered our worldview.
This dehumanized mindset has an impact far beyond the speech world. Later in life, many extempers attain high-ranking positions in government and diplomacy; their worldview becomes our nation’s worldview. In its current form, extemp teaches students to analyze events through “realism”—a perspective that emphasizes power, geopolitics, and hegemony as the currencies of global affairs. We can thank realism for: India-Pakistan hostilities, North and South Korea’s tense stand-off, an inability to further reduce global nuclear arsenals, and Putin’s belligerence against Ukraine. And those are just this week’s headlines. Realism’s longer list of accomplishments include: the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the rest of the Cold War, and **insert every other conflict here.** When we produce extempers who wholeheartedly embrace this mindset, we produce future leaders whose worldview inherently devalues the individual and his or her suffering. When we create a future where every decision values a nation’s ‘power’ over its ‘people,’ we have created a future no brighter than our past. Extemp shapes the ideals of our future leaders, and we must shape those ideals in a way that benefits humanity.
Critiques only work with an alternative, so I offer several. First, read Nicholas Kristof’s column in The New York Times. Seriously. He details the real human suffering that our traditional extemp sources gloss over, trading numbers for names and covering prescient topics through the eyes of their too-often anonymous victims. The Christian Science Monitor is another great source, forswearing geopolitics and opting instead for a more humanistic perspective. Traditional sources like The Economist and Bloomberg analyze issues through such lenses as political power and stock market growth—issues that matter only to a small and elite population. Meanwhile, sources such as Nicholas Kristof and The Christian Science Monitor emphasize the issues facing the silent majority of the world. When reading a source, ask a simple question: do they speak down on the world’s underprivileged, or speak up for them?
Second, speech camps must play a role in altering this mindset. Camp instructors must encourage extempers to analyze issues beyond the pillars of political, economic, and military power; teach students that micro impacts matter as much as macro ones. Practice analyzing impacts from a bottom-up perspective: how would X affect the life of a typical citizen in country Y? Reward students who eschew realism and embrace humanism.
Third, be cognizant of the human element. Recognize that behind every number is a human, just like you and I, who is living an infinitely harder life. Keep that in mind the next time you think about cracking an intro joke during a speech on ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. On a similar note, give meaning to every statistic. We might cite the World Health Organization positing that “conditions of poverty kill 30 people every minute,” but that number carries a deeper emotional impact when we emphasize that “210 people will die from conditions of poverty by the end of this speech.” Context begets comprehension, and comprehension begets compassion—the emotion our activity sorely lacks.
Learning can mitigate nearly every shortcoming we encounter as extempers. If we lack knowledge on Turkmenistan, we read about it. If we over-gesture, we hold soup cans to be aware of our hand movements. If we use the same intro about “looking to the stars” each weekend, we (should) invent a new one. But our activity’s lack of empathy is different. Empathy is not about learning, but understanding. We cannot teach empathy like we teach economics or energy policy, because empathy is not a lesson—it is an emotion. I have no doubt that some extempers will attempt to use empathetic stories and feign the emotion as a strategic tool in their speeches—and I have no doubt that this will fail. That is because learning about the humans behind the headlines is progress, but not a panacea. In the same way that we cannot learn happiness from reading cheerful stories, we cannot learn empathy from reading tragic stories alone.
Learning and awareness are a step in the right direction, but true change will come from embracing a more humanistic and empowering mindset in our speeches. We can forget about realism and its myopic focus on geopolitics, hard power, and lifeless economic indicators. We can abandon the extemper’s lens of über-realism as we abandoned notecards, paper file tubs, and the boy’s/girl’s extemp divide. We can eliminate our collective lack of empathy by understanding conflicts and crises from the perspective of their victims. Above all, we can see the world through the eyes of its citizens. If we walk a mile in their shoes, it will take us infinitely farther.
Through empathy, we can understand the humans beyond the headlines.