I’m incensed by a relationship that has finally broken down. The nature of it speaks well to our current “debate” about gun violence, religious extremism, and income inequality...I promise.
An idea that comes to mind is “the narcissism of minor differences.” You can think of small town rivalries or sports perhaps. There are people who boil over with hatred or break down in tears at neighboring regions for winning a game. They all enjoy the big hits and impressive catches, but they’ll be damned if their symbol is as depraved as their rival’s. These kind of people are removed from the ones who can enjoy a game for its capacity to bring people together or for the athleticism. Maybe they genuinely do feel a sense of comradery because they went to school with someone who got drafted to the big leagues, or can get drunk and boisterous, but the the elevated “life or death” identity investment isn’t there.
This second, more mature and grounded group, is, unfortunately, where I see a problem. These are the people who are given a kind of “otherwise reasonable” distinction in everyday discourse. Sports is where I see the easy way to analogize because it is a contrast between almost childlike emotion and clearly more conducive to rationality sentiments around “it’s a game.” Other realms, like your profession or your political persuasion, the emotion and “logic” sit atop one another, hopelessly intertwined for those who attempt to discuss them intelligently.
I brought up the two different types of sports fan first because I want to make room for a third type of person. It’s the one who wants to enjoy the sports like a child, understands they’re closer to the adults regarding it as a simple and fun game, but is trapped recalling everything they’ve ever read about head-injuries, image exploitation, extravagance and waste, and the psychology of fame or popularity. It’s a person, through no fault of their own, who seeks perspective and genuine understanding about “everything” and, unfortunately, your pet project or interest can be subjected to the same scrutiny.
We’re not getting too complicated in distinguishing these people are we? If so, please stop me, because I want to make a distinction in types of this third person. One is the /r/iamverysmart[1] type who, in actuality, probably isn’t that smart and uses a lot of large terms indiscriminately and inappropriately or brings up quantum mechanics in a way you know they’re currently masterbating to as they type a status. The other type is the one with questions. Questions betray intelligence in that they are an implicit challenge even when someone explicitly says they’re not trying to challenge. “I don’t mean to offend, by why would anyone do something like that?” “Not saying you’re wrong, but did you know this, that, or the other thing?”
I consider myself the person burdened by what I read with a lot of questions. Some people refer to this as “intelligent.” I find myself afraid, probably unreasonably, of calling myself intelligent because I know a vast array of friends who consider themselves intelligent and source my information from people whom I consider vastly more intelligent than I’ll ever be. But it is important to remember that whether me and my crowd are “a little,” or “a lot” (I’m going to simply dismiss the idea that we’re straight up morons), intelligence isn’t the norm.
Survival isn’t synonymous with intelligence. This is a terrifying thing to consider when, now that we’re living the consequences of climate change and waiting for ISIS to get nukes, you really want to believe the people in charge of fixing those things are wildly intelligent.
But there’s several layers to the problem there. First, you’re talking about emotionally charged and fear inducing things. For even the most stoic and reasonable person, you’re bound to make emotional mistakes or let it unduly influence the conversation. Second, you’re contending practically with public perception when it comes to what’s left of our democracy. It’s been shown that oil companies explicitly fed misleading information about climate change, and the consequences birthed all sorts of lobbying “think tanks” and campaigns to infect public opinion. The duped and the moronic get to vote. Third, we talk about intelligence or a capacity to understand as lazily and disingenuously as we talk about most things, so the ones who deserve the credit or the ideas that should be most popular disappear behind faux-humility, faux-compromise, and semantics.
I read a lot. Even accepting that idea that this is true, I still can feel like I don’t read nearly enough and I know it’s vastly more than the majority of people I talk to. If that statement makes you feel threatened, I feel like you’re in the majority. I’m afraid that what I can bring to the table or the questions I may ask will be immediately dismissed because you reactively feel under threat or that it’s a humble-brag to speak to the amount of information I like to pursue. Reading a lot isn’t the same as having all the answers. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear where you’re coming from. It doesn’t even mean the answers I may provide are as correct or complete as they need to be.
What it does do for me though is help me acquire tools for engaging with topics in ways I consider proactive and intelligent in a way that’s starkly contrasted with nearly anything you’ll read in any comment section anywhere. One thing I do is give you examples of how I can come to what I believe to be your “side.”
Let’s take football, and you’ve taken the position it’s “just a sport and I should lighten up and enjoy.” I would say that you should target my insistence on keeping “bigger problems” on my mind as far as keeping perspective about what is happening on the field. If you introduced hundreds of videos of testimony or quotes from players who say things like “I totally don’t care about brain damage” I’ll shuffle my regard for them right out the window. If you point to the “simple” things I like that you think analogize well to football, I’ll be immediately bound to trying to better understand you. Is that ever how it goes? Absolutely not.
Another thing I’ll do is ask if you even believe you can be wrong. I do this because I don’t think people ask it of themselves before they write their incensed dialogue (masquerading as an argument) meant to “school me” on the “reality” of the situation. You’ll save yourself loads of time when the person responds “well I don’t see how this could be wrong” before proceeding into another all-over-the-place digression.
As well, I’ll ask you to clarify or restate questions you have of me. A lot of times even in the pursuit of genuine understanding, we form questions very stupidly. It’s not necessarily malicious or meant to obscure things like a Reza Aslan or Dinesh D’Souza would, it’s just in our confusion we didn’t solidify what was wrong before we started asking about how to fix it.
I have a friend who we consistently seem to go round and round about just how bad the atmosphere for women really is. We seem to agree in general on the problem, but much of the articles and sources she’ll share with me I see as filled with assumptive thinking and emotional appeals from an editorialized feminist-slanted blog. The handful of statistics that may get cited play second fiddle to “but no, ALL OF US are REALLY THIS AFRAID and it’s DEFINITELY ALL THE TIME!” by a range of male behavior that rarely gets empathized with in return.
I’m lucky that our conversations are examples of not having to automatically demonize each other and we can go back and forth until we get to the root of the disagreement. Even still, there’s no guarantee the other side is going to accept what you have to say, but the exercise of unpacking how you want to initially react to a dissenting comment needs to play out.
That exercise can be applied to things that are more concrete. We can count the homeless, for example. We have polls (as I hesitate to look like I’m advocating for them to look more powerful than they’re due) that shed light on religious opinions or knowledge about politics. When you can see people, in the same survey, say confidently they’re voting Republican when every question about their wellbeing lines up with the Democrats, that’s jaw-droppingly informative as to the nature of propaganda. I can know that I have more in my investment account, via practical luck, at 27 than 70% of seniors have tucked away for retirement, and call that a problem. You responding with some catch-phrase about socialism or meme meant to defame Sanders and glorify Trump is not you showing you know how to use numbers.
Employing tools to inform and direct a conversation are literally the only way to have one. Everything else is, hopefully only metaphorical, screaming matches and manipulation. I’m not trying to make you cry if I relay how many kids get shot each year, but I am wondering why it wouldn’t or doesn’t make you pause about your alleged selective reading of the 2nd Amendment. I’m asking you to count the number of home invaders you’ve had to shoot, or anyone else in your neighborhood has had to shoot, before you profess the need to protect your family as a reasonable argument.
As well, digging up the “subconscious root” of where your feelings or questions are coming from is the only way you get to grow and progress. My lost friend has been living under so many layers of denial and delusion for so long, the things I talk about or post she wondered how she didn’t notice the lack of “bullshit” in her feed in a text to my girlfriend after I defriended. It’s like she knows she needs someone to help her speak the truth, but can only go about it in as passive aggressively a manner as she’s adopted into her own life. Call out the bullshit, if it truly is so, when your contacts post it. If you’re forced to remain a coward or are unable to explain why you think so, the problem lies in you.
Who she is and how she behaves is a microcosm of what I worry about being the standard for existence in general. She's the unreasonably emotional sports fan. There's never a "right moment" to introduce doubt or a new idea. She's unquestioningly righteous and correct in how she thinks and in her judgments, and the depth of her emotional appeal must dictate her perception of her relationships. It was out of sympathy and cordiality I’ve remained friendly for so long. Another way to view it is me being explicitly disrespectful and advocating as hatefully against honest questions and genuine relationships as she’s allowed doing so to play out in her life. It’s how I watched my mom’s friends drop out of her life over time. It’s why I feel compelled to drop every “friend” incapable of self-evaluation or reflection. I speculate it’s why the myth of Cassandra even exists. As long as one elects to remain “in the masses,” I want nothing to do with them, but I want those capable to stop protecting them. I keep learning the hard way. Do better than me.
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What happened here is I felt the need to defend my "bullshit" and capacity for understanding why I post it. When me and what I share is denounced by a person who's so "happily" blind to the consequences of lying to herself for years about her relationship or faith, I did a poor and rambling job of explaining her mind space. A place where only and of course can my caring about things and pursuit of honest conversation resonate as bullshit. It's a place so rehearsed in denial or self-justification that it is its own type tantamount to the most emotionally belligerent and exceedingly ignorant society has to offer. If you were lucky enough to think "tl/dr," this was the point.
