I don't know what it means to accept something unless it's being put to work.
I'm not above getting into an internet pissing match. Most often, it's going to be about a TV show, or who is a literally-defined fascist with a stranger. In the past, I've lost "friends" arguing about religion, trans stuff, sexual assault, or pretty much any topic where there's a cultural wave of bullied undue confidence that the conversation is settled and "everyone knows" how you should or shouldn't respond. If I were emotionally invested, I know the 3 "friends" right now who would be happy to never speak to me again if I brought my concerns related to Israel/Hamas to their memes and shares.
I believe in conversation and argumentation. I believe in debate. I believe in freely exchanging ideas in a way that doesn't see you silenced, ignored, or shunned. I believe it so much that I've functionally alienated everyone who might, but only in theory, profess to believe in the same things, until it gets real. They don't want to work to defend their position or get more articulate. They want to feel correct. They want their definitions of words to hold without scrutiny. They want to be validated by the tribe who can't be bothered to think any deeper about the topic than they care to, and not suffer the fate that I've chosen.
The breakdown happens the same way regardless of what you're talking about. I've been going on several 3 or more hours-long drives over the last few days consuming over a dozen Peter Boghossian interviews and street epistemologies. His experience appears to be precisely mine, whether he's discussing abortion, trans, academia, cultural statistics, or anything that we've been insisted upon to stay quiet about because of the "harm" that's allegedly caused by even talking. The concept of "woke" gets put through its paces to see how it manifests and the real consequences of following the logic through, once you've actually defined and boxed in what you even mean by "woke."
We can make it easier, maybe, by thinking about a TV show, like Star Trek, which kicked off my desire to write. A few weeks ago I responded to someone criticizing Discovery for "not being Star Trek" and I asked them what they meant. I ask them, and probably a dozen other people because "this isn't Star Trek" is the most ubiquitous "criticism" I see when I read posts unhappy with any given Star Trek series. He responded, and then I responded, point by point raised.
It took only 3 responses for the breakdown to happen. No longer was he entertaining my answer or evidence as a response to something he specifically said. If I tried to refute that updated camera work "wasn't Star Trek," well now he introduces a point about the way the Klingons look. That's not what we were talking about, but it feels like it to him. Something changed about a look he didn't like, so it's fair game to bring up whenever it feels appropriate. He instinctively doesn't want to acknowledge or simply disagree that unless you shoot modern shows the same way you shot shows in the past, you're missing part of the heartbeat of Star Trek.
It doesn't have to be "serious" or a "hard" point. But the same move is made. It's pretending there is no potential for a shared truth, definition, or understanding and insisting in iterative ways that your feelings can cohere more than you're willing to work to reasonably justify or translate.
He argued Star Trek doesn't have "a main character." I told him Picard exists as its own series. He told me he hasn't seen and won't even watch Picard. He doesn't need to for the point I'm making, right? Some characters are certainly more "main" than others, and you can perhaps arrive at what constitutes that main-ness. But that's not his goal. His goal is to vibe on hate for Michael in Discovery. When she's featured, too prominently for his tastes, therefore "Star Trek doesn't have a main character."
The thing you need to accept is that you, not only can be wrong, but are infinitely wrong about everything. You're missing details and subtlety. You're missing an appreciation for the stress and work of incorporating difficult and conflicting pieces into your worldview. In developing my land/space, it started more idyllic and hopeful. Until you spend the day digging up saplings, dealing with heat exhaustion, and improvising tools you can't afford yet, a desire to move "off-grid" doesn't really translate. What I had to accept about my ideas was that they were going to take a whole hell of a lot more time, work, and help than I had, nor ever have, in any given moment. But then I get to work anyway.
If you're going to be understood or taken seriously, the same rules are going to apply. There's someone with the power and resources who is making an incoherent point that feels right. You're not going to logic them into submission. You're going to have to build your own resolve and asymmetric approach. You're going to have to work in ways you didn't realize were going to take so long or so much effort and sacrifice.
My Star Trek guy doesn't speak my language, and my "goal" is not to persuade him. My goal was to try and understand if there was serious concern/criticism about what constitutes "Star Trek" altogether. As with most things, again, the answer is "no" to "not even fucking close." We start with radical, in their selfish minutia, opinions. We recoil and lash out when they can be shown as paper thin.
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