How many times this year have I seen a frustrated political post like this one (on Facebook)?
As someone who loves a good argument (I prefer to lose, as I learn more when I was incorrect to start with), I have enjoyed parrying with old friends over the past decade. My kids grew up as I did - as critical thinkers - thanks to the habit of always checking {"speed bumping"} their convictions. A lot of this goes back further than my high school debate team. My dad would explain what a "fallacy" was starting when I was 4 years old, and I'd hear him explain it again to my younger brother and then younger sister (so I got it 3 times).
Unfortunately, as Socrates learned, the majority of people prefer confirmation bias, and get irritated if they are on the losing side of an argument. This is playing out in social media, and I'm observing a consequence in "cancel culture".
Thesis: As people click to de-friend opposition opinion, they lose antibodies. Like a too-clean floor (no longer recommended for toddlers), they lack exposure to true disagreement. And consequently, they go after moderates.
{Good Essay by Elizabeth Bernstein in WSJ}
I've been increasingly posting only moderate, borderline inane, positions on my own Facebook page. "Nuance is Underrated" or "Piling on is Over-Practiced". And people I still am positively acquainted with - including Trump Voters I disagree with frequently - are saying thanks to me and offering appreciation. And liberal friends who de-friended those Trump Voters a year earlier are now criticising ME, for "giving them comfort".
A left leaning relative literally accused me of "throwing a hand grenade and walking away rather than taking a position" for my post that "Piling on is Over-Practiced". There was nothing political in my statement, it could have applied to either a conservative or a liberal position. But he took it to mean that I was criticizing his wife (who has a Wanted poster at the PO for piling on, I suspect).
Late last night, another acquaintance admonished me for "my habit" of posting this kind of "the left is making rhetorical mistakes, and if they'd only talk correctly then maybe we'd get somewhere stuff."
So praise of nuance is a hand grenade, a "rhetorical" attack on the left. And I realized that perhaps these two friends now have so few right-leaning "followed" relationships, that they see moderation as an attack on their view.
Obama warned against "cancel culture" in a very, very apt talk on this subject, and I guess is failed to sync in with some of the "Bernie Brothers".
My thesis is that society is improving, more slowly than we would like... but improving nonetheless. When I look over the 5 decades I've observed this improvement, I witness a lot of centrist Lyndon B. Johnson maneuvers which moved the ball forward, but in hindsight might be depicted as less than radical. But I observe the "hockey stick" of polling after progress is made.
In poll after poll you see 50% of "conservatives" opposing X. Interracial Marriage, for example. Then the courts rule (unanimously) on Loving Vs. Virginia (1970) that states cannot make laws banning interracial marriage, based on the 13th Amendment... Then, the "hockey stick"...
A few short years after the progressive ruling, the same poll asks about whether laws should ban interracial marriage. And now 85% of respondents are on the Progressive Team, only 15% oppose X.
Very kind and good people are responding to fear. That applies to both the left and the right. And Steve Pinker (Harvard Psychology Brain-Mapping Guru) for one can explain how fear works on the brain. And Ph.D Robert Cialdini boils it down further to "Persuasion".
"Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile." This does not describe a "bad person".
There are good things and bad things about social media (Facebook is the lighting rod). We are simultaneously able to expose ourselves to contrary ideas, and to silo ourselves into confirmation bias affirming cliches. The key, for me, is our ability to manage statistics, relevance, and get things accomplished.
Photography has made such tremendous technical progress over the past two decades that any example, no matter how rare, can be seen by everyone. Planet Earth series by BBC, or "Our Planet" on Netflix, or JoySafariBay on Instagram, offer stunning close ups of the rarest animals. Populations of wildlife that have been reduced 80-90%, through habitat loss and poaching and bushmeat consumption, are more "visible" today than Jacques Cousteau or Diane Fosse could have imagined.
As something becomes rarer and rarer, it becomes more visible. Racism is the same... If I observe it to be declining, and am attacked for ignoring "systemic" and historical racism, that probably means the person criticizing me wants to demonstrate their "wokeness" but has no other social friends to react to, having pruned their conservative branches to such an extent that Robin I becomes the conservative lightning rod.
Sure, Malcom X and hard liners like Fred Hampton were collateral damage, and deserve statues. I remember as a kid how frightened by white relatives were of the "Black Panthers", who were explained to me a violent terrorists... who excused Fred Hampton's assassination in his own bed as "law and order" restoration. Those people in my family were wrong. They were loving and kind people, and had Fred Hampton been a neighbor invited over for barbeque, I'm sure everyone would have liked him. But Steve Pinker was right about what they believed, and Robert Cialdini is right about how they would eventually be persuaded, in hindsight, that the civil rights movement was NOT a threat to them.
People are "getting cancelled", and they are retreating into their silos. It's spooky. I can simultaneously accept that the progress of the past 50 years does not in ANY sense excuse the home assasination of Breona Taylor in her own home, and accept that a police officer is 18.5% more likely to be killed by a black man than vice versa.
I'd never post the latter on Facebook, because it would be twisted immediately by my friends on the right as an excuse for Breona Taylor's victimization, and twisted by my friends on the left as "apologism" for racism. And my "silent majority" of friends who are, like me, able to hold two ideas at once in three dimensions plus time elapsed, recognizing progress and disappointed by its pace.
The left and right are angry at speed bumps. But speed bumps exist to reduce collateral damage.
I grew up spending summers in a very white and isolated Ozark/Appalachia, and school years in places far more racially integrated than Boston. I then made a career trading with Africa, Asia, and Latin America, following a brief stint as cross-culture trainer for USA Peace Corps. My wife wants me to stop commenting on Facebook. She has retreated completely, no longer posts or reads posts. That's collateral damage.
"If you believe X, just de-friend me now!"Or this?
"I've de-friended people who continue to post about X, and will do so again"
As someone who loves a good argument (I prefer to lose, as I learn more when I was incorrect to start with), I have enjoyed parrying with old friends over the past decade. My kids grew up as I did - as critical thinkers - thanks to the habit of always checking {"speed bumping"} their convictions. A lot of this goes back further than my high school debate team. My dad would explain what a "fallacy" was starting when I was 4 years old, and I'd hear him explain it again to my younger brother and then younger sister (so I got it 3 times).
Unfortunately, as Socrates learned, the majority of people prefer confirmation bias, and get irritated if they are on the losing side of an argument. This is playing out in social media, and I'm observing a consequence in "cancel culture".
Thesis: As people click to de-friend opposition opinion, they lose antibodies. Like a too-clean floor (no longer recommended for toddlers), they lack exposure to true disagreement. And consequently, they go after moderates.
{Good Essay by Elizabeth Bernstein in WSJ}
I've been increasingly posting only moderate, borderline inane, positions on my own Facebook page. "Nuance is Underrated" or "Piling on is Over-Practiced". And people I still am positively acquainted with - including Trump Voters I disagree with frequently - are saying thanks to me and offering appreciation. And liberal friends who de-friended those Trump Voters a year earlier are now criticising ME, for "giving them comfort".
A left leaning relative literally accused me of "throwing a hand grenade and walking away rather than taking a position" for my post that "Piling on is Over-Practiced". There was nothing political in my statement, it could have applied to either a conservative or a liberal position. But he took it to mean that I was criticizing his wife (who has a Wanted poster at the PO for piling on, I suspect).
Late last night, another acquaintance admonished me for "my habit" of posting this kind of "the left is making rhetorical mistakes, and if they'd only talk correctly then maybe we'd get somewhere stuff."
So praise of nuance is a hand grenade, a "rhetorical" attack on the left. And I realized that perhaps these two friends now have so few right-leaning "followed" relationships, that they see moderation as an attack on their view.
Obama warned against "cancel culture" in a very, very apt talk on this subject, and I guess is failed to sync in with some of the "Bernie Brothers".
My thesis is that society is improving, more slowly than we would like... but improving nonetheless. When I look over the 5 decades I've observed this improvement, I witness a lot of centrist Lyndon B. Johnson maneuvers which moved the ball forward, but in hindsight might be depicted as less than radical. But I observe the "hockey stick" of polling after progress is made.
In poll after poll you see 50% of "conservatives" opposing X. Interracial Marriage, for example. Then the courts rule (unanimously) on Loving Vs. Virginia (1970) that states cannot make laws banning interracial marriage, based on the 13th Amendment... Then, the "hockey stick"...
A few short years after the progressive ruling, the same poll asks about whether laws should ban interracial marriage. And now 85% of respondents are on the Progressive Team, only 15% oppose X.
Very kind and good people are responding to fear. That applies to both the left and the right. And Steve Pinker (Harvard Psychology Brain-Mapping Guru) for one can explain how fear works on the brain. And Ph.D Robert Cialdini boils it down further to "Persuasion".
"Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile." This does not describe a "bad person".
There are good things and bad things about social media (Facebook is the lighting rod). We are simultaneously able to expose ourselves to contrary ideas, and to silo ourselves into confirmation bias affirming cliches. The key, for me, is our ability to manage statistics, relevance, and get things accomplished.
Photography has made such tremendous technical progress over the past two decades that any example, no matter how rare, can be seen by everyone. Planet Earth series by BBC, or "Our Planet" on Netflix, or JoySafariBay on Instagram, offer stunning close ups of the rarest animals. Populations of wildlife that have been reduced 80-90%, through habitat loss and poaching and bushmeat consumption, are more "visible" today than Jacques Cousteau or Diane Fosse could have imagined.
As something becomes rarer and rarer, it becomes more visible. Racism is the same... If I observe it to be declining, and am attacked for ignoring "systemic" and historical racism, that probably means the person criticizing me wants to demonstrate their "wokeness" but has no other social friends to react to, having pruned their conservative branches to such an extent that Robin I becomes the conservative lightning rod.
Sure, Malcom X and hard liners like Fred Hampton were collateral damage, and deserve statues. I remember as a kid how frightened by white relatives were of the "Black Panthers", who were explained to me a violent terrorists... who excused Fred Hampton's assassination in his own bed as "law and order" restoration. Those people in my family were wrong. They were loving and kind people, and had Fred Hampton been a neighbor invited over for barbeque, I'm sure everyone would have liked him. But Steve Pinker was right about what they believed, and Robert Cialdini is right about how they would eventually be persuaded, in hindsight, that the civil rights movement was NOT a threat to them.
People are "getting cancelled", and they are retreating into their silos. It's spooky. I can simultaneously accept that the progress of the past 50 years does not in ANY sense excuse the home assasination of Breona Taylor in her own home, and accept that a police officer is 18.5% more likely to be killed by a black man than vice versa.
I'd never post the latter on Facebook, because it would be twisted immediately by my friends on the right as an excuse for Breona Taylor's victimization, and twisted by my friends on the left as "apologism" for racism. And my "silent majority" of friends who are, like me, able to hold two ideas at once in three dimensions plus time elapsed, recognizing progress and disappointed by its pace.
The left and right are angry at speed bumps. But speed bumps exist to reduce collateral damage.
I grew up spending summers in a very white and isolated Ozark/Appalachia, and school years in places far more racially integrated than Boston. I then made a career trading with Africa, Asia, and Latin America, following a brief stint as cross-culture trainer for USA Peace Corps. My wife wants me to stop commenting on Facebook. She has retreated completely, no longer posts or reads posts. That's collateral damage.
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