This is absolutely correct and as long we keep trying to find the sources of said hatred we might find each other in a place where we can see the kinship in us all. That’s what I believe at least. However, admittedly I am a fairly weak person I tend to back away before meaningful progress can be made.
Ah, well there’s the rub. Implicit in this is the assumption that people always approach discourse from this honest belief, and we know that this isn’t the case. So what this means is that the very act trying to meet this with civility plays right into their hands. They have literally no interest in whether their points hold up under scrutiny, their only goal is to sow disruption and discord. I read a lengthy quote about this recently that put it far better than I can, but I can’t seem to place my hand on it. Sorry if this seems to be a bit ‘assume motivationy’ but it has an awful amount of explanatory power for how extreme ideologies take hold.
But even if for some reason given the benefit of the doubt about their honesty, I fail to understand why it should be the onus of the oppressed to react with attempts to deny their humanity (sincere or not) with ‘civility’ - and historically, this approach has not worked out half as well as you think. Anger, though? Rebellion in the face of this? That has had some results.
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My point is and has been throughout this thread that some things are far easier to know are wrong, even if you can’t know you’re perfectly right. People thinking they’re right simply because they are insulated by wilful ignorance is very bad. When it is so easy (but a continual process) to disabuse oneself of some oppressive notions by doing research/gaining some domain-specific knowledge (seeing what is actually going on/listening/reading) then people who don’t need to change, not those they oppress. If someone will not directly benefit from becoming less ignorant then they may not feel compelled to do so - that is a privilege those they oppress often do not have.
Nazis don’t get platformed. The problem is anyone wishing to bring them a podium because of some warped idea of “debate”. Often that means it is because the person who would platform them is not the one whose life is being threatened. My denial of a fascist’s right to bring about an authoritarian state and eradicate me and many other oppressed groups is “100%” not the problem. If this forum sometimes doesn’t centre your opinions as the most important then you’re experiencing every day regarding every oppressed identity in most settings - this is why we must build these safer spaces where marginalised voices can be centred (it’s not silencing you, it’s reversing the silencing we are complicit in elsewhere). Becoming defensive about privilege and actually comparing being told that you’re in multiple oppressor classes (as am I) to Nazism is not a good look. Try to focus on our shared status as White oppressor - this is where I’m speaking to our commonality.
You may have been born White by happenstance (same as me) but that privilege, that history of oppression and continued oppression that benefits us is something we are responsible for dismantling. If you’re born holding a gun pointing at someone else then that’s just chance. If you don’t work to put that gun down then that’s a choice you are making. My and your thoughts and opinions about racism absolutely don’t matter as much as a person of colour who lives under that oppression. There is nothing “neo-Nazi rather than Dalai Lama” about that statement.
Oppressed groups will directly face increased harm at the hands of an incompetent racist queephobic misogynist tyrant and his lieutenants. The complex soup of motivations and justifications for those who enabled a corrupt billionaire establishment tyrant are less important than the above - that the first step must be the oppressors’ willingness to learn. This is what it means to be an oppressor (as almost all of us are in relation to at least some power vectors): our ignorance primarily harms others, not ourselves. Which is why the first step must be our willingness to learn.
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I’m saying, that I learned that many of those who voted for him did so precisely because they have been made out to be monsters and told that they are privileged and that their opinions don’t matter because they are white or because they are men or because they are Republicans and only care about money. They felt like they were coming under attack for simply being born the same color as the oppressors, and so they voted for who made them feel the safest.
Yes, you and I can see how flawed and ignorant that stance is, but they only knew their own life experiences and acted on those. Should they have sought out truth in our protests? Yes. Should they have thought about how unqualified he is? Yes. But don’t assume that they all voted for him because they are white supremacists. Plenty of non white people voted for him as well.
We can’t abandon our morality because it is tiresome. Go out and try to understand why people believe what they do, then we can work to educate them and show them where their logic doesn’t hold up.
Being a parent changed my perspective. If I don’t take the time to explain my reasoning, and to understand theirs we just end up yelling at each other. We have to remember that we are all humans, and even if you aren’t religious, the guiding tenant that we should treat others as we wish to be treated to me seems like the easiest and most true morality to hold.
Again, I totally understand where the anger comes from, but I don’t think that anyone deserves to be told their opinions don’t matter. I’m not telling you that your opinion doesn’t matter, I am just relating to you my experience dealing with children who are largely guided by emotion and how I have found far more success speaking to them and listening to their thoughts and feelings as opposed to shouting at them and threatening violence or punishment.
I am constantly thinking about the things I tell my children, and how I should be practicing what I preach. It is when my children feel like they are not being understood or when they can’t express themselves that they become most angry and violent, so giving everyone an avenue to speak and be heard, and for their ideas to be addressed and discussed in a logical manner is a core tenant to what I think it means to be a fair society.
From the Trump supporters I have talked to, they felt as though their voices were not being heard. Simple as that. When I look at your statements about how some people don’t deserve to have a place to speak freely, I can’t help but say they might be partly right in their feelings of being ignored or of being unfairly labeled as a whole. So I think that when I look at my own actions on social media, where I was calling people out for being wrong rather than trying to help them discover they were wrong through a calm examination of the evidence that made them come to their conclusions, I’d say if I’m being honest that I wasn’t helping bridge the divide between us and in fact I was further entrenching them and myself on our sides because it had become a fight and not a discussion.
I don’t trust this because
- I mean they’re not really helping their ‘not a monster’ case here are they?
- Over on another thread you claimed that people were portraying you as a monster based on a pretty mildly pointed response someone made. So I’m not sure you are showing particularly good judgement about who is under attack here.
Finally, privilege isn’t a dirty word. It’s a fact of how society is constructed right now. People can be aware of it or not. Having it doesn’t make someone terrible automatically (and I don’t think anyone is actually claiming that) but failing to acknowledge it can certainly lead to a distorted idea of what fairness looks like.
Like when you imply that it’s not fair when people say maybe you should talk less and listen more when discussing minority issues. Do you understand how tired people are with straight white male voices on issues that affect them? How half the time people only take notice if a straight white male famous guy stands up to defend them? It doesn’t mean you can’t contribute, but just… know when you are not helping. Listen when people tell you that and don’t take it personally, just learn.
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from what I have heard, from actually listening to them, they hoped he would shake up things and reverse what they saw as entrenched political corruption. Turns out so far he doesn’t seem to have lived up to that hope and promise, but in that case they were a victim of lies and made a mistake in trusting him. Hardly something they should be labeled as monsters over.
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here I am, speaking from my heart saying I feel like because I am a white male, I feel like my opinions and ideas are not taken seriously or as having any merit, and you go and say exactly that, and go on to say that people telling me I don’t get to have an opinion or speak about a subject because I don’t embody it is justified in your mind. I am opening up and saying that because I am white man, people assume what my motivations are and tell me I don’t get to have an opinion, where if my profile pic wasn’t a white man, I’d get listened to. Does no one else see the problem with this?
This was a post about how to know if you are wrong, and my opinion that we should listen to everyone’s ideas and address them logically was met with surprising opposition.
I cannot recommend enough Kathryn Schultz’s Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error. I’d put it right up with The Drunkard’s Walk and Thinking Fast and Slow as formative works on how to understand the world and the people in it. It doesn’t directly answer OP’s question of how we can know if we’re right, but it does answer why people are so, so reluctant to admit they’re wrong.
It kicks off from the point that the feeling of Being Right is one of the simplest, most accessible, most unimpeachable pleasures a person can have. People will revel in being right even when the outcome is bad (“I told you we’ve been walking the wrong way for 15 minutes!”). Being wrong is associated with shame, stupidity, ignorance and immorality. “Rightness” is a feeling our mind will perform impressive gymnastic feats to protect, to the point that we will hold two completely contradictory beliefs in our head at the same time, rather than admit that they can’t both be true.
To paraphrase, we have powerful social, psychological and practical reasons to think that what we believe is true. But we, individually, don’t think that these social, psychological and practical reasons contribute to why we believe something. We, individually, think something is true “Cuz It’s True.”
I believe that Ocarina of Time is the best game ever made. But when I’m arguing with someone about it, I’m not going to say that the reason I think it’s the best game ever is because I was playing it when I met my future wife, and one of the first things we did together was start over and play through it together. That obviously has nothing to do with why Ocarina is better than any other game, so it just as obviously has nothing to do with why I believe Ocarina is better than any other game. But if it were someone else, I would say “of course that’s influencing why you think it’s the best game ever.” {Yes, it’s not really “wrong” when it’s something this subjective, but it still illustrates how we’ll discount obvious external factors influencing our beliefs.} To borrow a quote that Schultz borrows from Ward Jones:
It simply does not make sense to see myself as both believing that [something] is true and being convinced that I do so for reasons having nothing to do with whether [that thing] is true.
Therefore, anyone who doesn’t believe as we believe either: doesn’t have the facts, is too dumb to understand the facts, or is willfully ignoring the facts.
The point isn’t whether or not we are correct in any specific instance, the point is that it doesn’t matter. This is our default position for any specifically held belief.
It can actually be pretty dispiriting to read at times. Being wrong, and refusing to budge from that position, can have disastrous consequences for yourself and others. It’s heartbreaking to read about people who have been wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of the victim, both from the standpoint of the wrongfully accused, but also from the standpoint of the victim, who 100% believes they have properly identified the culprit. Having that belief proven wrong can be pretty shattering. And there’s no easy answer on how to get someone to stop believing something that’s wrong. Just look at the current Seth Rich conspiracy theorists, who take every new piece of information that should, logically, dispel their theory and twist it into “proof” of a cover-up.
The book does, however, end on a relatively positive note, and that’s that if we want to do something about this, it’s actually pretty simple. We just have to admit that we’re wrong about being wrong. Recognizing and admitting error can actually feel great. It can be really funny! If we’re never wrong, we can never be pleasantly surprised. Artists intentionally depict a “wrong” world in order to reveal a more fundamental truth. Being wrong is a fundamental part of the scientific process. Error isn’t just inevitable, it’s essential. We have to stop acting like admitting we are wrong is the worst thing in the world.
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I strongly recommend digging into the history of 1930s Germany and how normalisation via discussion of all ideas has worked out in the past. You will quickly come to be less surprised at why people oppose platforming neo-Nazis and other eugenicists.
This is far from a singular event so any other good history of oppressed groups will provide similar insights but the history of how fascism grows and corrupts inside the scaffolding of a democracy is highly relevant and informative (and also written about extensively).
I have a son and a daughter and two more on the way. I am straight, but they might not be, and I have no problem with that and want the world to be fair to them and for them to be treated fairly no matter their orientation as I will treat them. So for someone to say that I don’t get to talk about these things is deeply personal and quite honestly insanely frustrating especially since I adamantly support minority rights and equal treatment, but any attempts at speaking about these issues are met with severe opposition only based on my personal orientation or life experiences, or frankly what others assume my life experiences are just based on me being a white straight male.
So it is extremely ironic that people who have spent their entire life being marginalised would then turn around and do the same to someone they perceive as being different than themselves.
This assumes that marginalized people have the power to marginalize their oppressors, which is demonstrably untrue. That’s the reason why white supremacy and white racism directed at members of oppressed communities carries so much weight; it reinforces and is backed by racism carried out by the state and its systems. The (justifiable) anger of the oppressed in response to conditions imposed upon them by their oppressors isn’t backed by any such systems, and therefore can’t possibly have that same gravity.
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In hindsight, we should have stuck to mathematics lol
Hello everyone. We’ve decided to lock this thread because the discussion has taken a turn. We don’t want to facilitate a ‘we have to hear both sides’ discussion that leads to horseshoe theory and quieting marginalised experiences.
We’re glad to see folks encouraging others to recognise their privilege and take time to listen to those with experience, since that’s how we most effectively learn. Remember that your right to speak doesn’t always require that you do so, and that sometimes the instinct to be defensive when challenged is best handled by stepping away.
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