Deliberation Over Debate: On the Importance of Civil Discourse

I posed a question this weekend as part of an intellectual exercise to explore a question I find fundamentally important:

Do we become increasingly committed to and invested in our deeply-held beliefs as we grow and, if so, is it worth it to “debate” these beliefs with others, especially if doing so can hurt important relationships?

After a great deal of dialogue on and consideration of this compound question over the last couple of days, I’d like to share my current thesis as to its constituent parts:

1. Yes, as we age, on average, we are less likely to change our minds about deeply-held beliefs – perhaps because we believe we’ve explored them more fully, because of our selection bias in terms of news sources that corroborate those beliefs, or, most cynically, that we are so committed to those beliefs in public and in private that our ego won’t allow us to change them. (Note: I was surprised to find limited academic research that only tangentially touched on this question; I will ask for help from my social science circles).
2. It is exactly because of the assertion above that it is so critical that we engage in constructive civil discourse about deeply-held beliefs, especially as we age and are more inclined to be committed to a position.
3. I worry that engaging in a traditional debate around a core belief may be a counterproductive exercise: it plays into our ego’s desire to be right, to compete and win, and to dig our heels in. As debaters, we’re trained to do exactly that: compete in defense of a position whether or not we may believe the “side” we’re assigned as a show of intellectual prowess and to “win the debate”.
4. Instead of debates, what if we entered into these conversations as deliberations on a topic? What if we engaged in these conversations not to prove we’re right but to explore how we might be wrong? What if the objective of the deliberation wasn’t to change the other person’s position but to nuance our own position? And what if we concluded these deliberations by explicitly recognizing that nuance and refinement of our position thanks to the deliberation? It’d no longer be a competition we’re winning against an opponent but an introspective exercise against our own point of view.
5. Yes, while it may be incredibly rare to change our minds about deeply-held belief thanks to one deliberation, over time and over many deliberations, we will adapt, we will grow, and we will find our way to increasingly more well-considered beliefs. In short, we can’t give up on constructive civil discourse. We must create environments for it and we must invest the time it takes to pursue knowledge. Not doing so would be giving up on society and on progress.
6. I still struggle with the final part of the question around jeopardizing important relationships and need to deliberate on it further; at the moment, I feel that deep relationships are more important to me than deeply-held beliefs, and I’d rather preserve the relationship than deliberate a topic when that is possible. But, who knows, after more time and more input on this question, I hope to find a more nuanced position.