Only Annoying

By a process of both selection and coincidence most of my contacts on Facebook can be politically described as moderate to progressive. There are also a few radicals and a few conservatives. This is mostly to my liking. Too many conservatives would anger me. Or rather too many vocal conservatives would do so. One thing I have noticed is that they tend to keep things to themselves. I observed this while looking at the online profiles of takers of my Political Objectives Test. The conservatives were more careful in what info they shared. They had more personal data locked away. Those who value stability also like privacy and tend to keep their own counsel. What I do for my personal life they tend to do for anything of significance.

What this means is that I am more regularly annoyed by the radicals (or progressives that talk like radicals) than I am by the conservatives in my life. I have to remember that this is only annoying rather than worrying. I have to imagine what it would be like if I had to endure a lot of bullshit statements coming from conservatives. I am lucky. I do however want to take the time here to vent about the kinds of thinking that annoy me coming from my side.

Online Activists

To say my 'side' is to betray that I too am seduced by some of the simplifications that I resent. The array of online identity-politics movements embrace grand narratives that lack historic context. History is 'culturally constructed' so one can safely dismiss any of it that complicates ones own perspective. The problem with this is that you miss some important things if your focus is on contemporary impressions. For instance you may think that respectful debate is an affectation of the elite (like which cutlery to use during which course) and miss the possibility that it was developed by and for hitherto marginalized groups and has helped change the world for the better.

Some odd contradictions seem to develop. On the one hand online activists (rightly) dismiss the simplification of a gender-binary. On the other hand they accept the simplification of racialist models that serve to mask huge diversity. These models only work in very specific contexts and many of them are US-centric. Indeed (and in contradiction of an older post of mine) I suspect much of the online activist scene is a captive of US cultural imperialism.

Online activists however say some important things. The concept of intersectionality can be both elegant and useful in understanding the complexity of power and prejudice. However once the talk is done the end result is all-too-often just substitution of old prejudices for new. If advantage and disadvantage is context-dependent then you would think that anyone and everyone can both have or lack those in different settings. And yet frequently it is the powerful person in a US context who is deemed to be the hegemonic face of humanity across all of space and time. And yet anyone can be cast as an agent of that hegemon because of a particular definition of privilege that allows anyone to be tarnished with that label and dismissed from having a valid opinion.

One thing that seems to be missing in all this is compassion. Surely if everything that we are is culturally conditioned by the society in which we are immersed then everyone needs to be cut some slack for thinking as they do. And yet such consideration is barely existent. Everyone is instantly expected to have the same political consciousness as the online activist and if they lack it then they are dismissed as stupid or wicked. This is a form of exclusivity and overuse of the term 'privilege' betrays connection to a politically literate group with the power to change the concepts behind words.

I'm aware that language is constantly shifting and changing (indeed it does that in many concurrent directions at once). But there is a difference between changes to the way society uses words and the promotion of group-specific jargon. One frustrating thing with online activists is the tendency to think that the way they use words is the way everyone should use words. This can blunt communication. There is a trend to re-cast the word 'sympathy' as bad in contrast with 'empathy' which is deemed good. But both are distinct and useful terms. To be empathetic necessitates a direct understanding of a unique experience and much of the time this simply cannot be delivered. If however you are prepared to accept that someone cannot understand your exact predicament but offers deliberate care and consideration then you are that bit better off.

I have to stress that all of this is only annoying rather than worrying because the movements described are somewhat self-restricting. In another post I described how some groups use parts of the Internet as workshops. This is particularly so for those who feel marginalized or stigmatized. Abuse can distort how someone perceives the world and limits how well they can engage with it. Some online activists will stay in relatively safe online spaces. Others however will eventually move into wider settings in which vigorous debate is okay. It is only then that annoyance may turn to worry but in most cases these activists will push for reforms I support.

Supposed Secularists

So far my rant may characterize me as a modernist lover of reasoned and empirical debate. To some extent I am but I also wish to distance myself from others who trumpet the same virtues. I refer to compassion and the ability to communicate with a wide audience and I think these are values they overlook. And while I can be annoyed by the trendy jargon of online activists I'm also annoyed by those who use old but pretentious words like 'ergo'.

Supposed 'secularists' forget that a secular society is one that accommodates all beliefs however fanciful they may be. These champions of rationality also tend to be lacking in the kind of human relations nuances that help develop alliances. Frankly a lot of the time they come across as arrogant and belligerent. I touched on this a while back in referring to sceptics who think they are so clever.

You can find some pretty blinkered thinking among those who you would hope are constantly scrutinizing how they themselves think. And while they have a passing interest in history they also have a mindblowingly selective interpretation of it. Pretty much anything ideological can be described as 'religious' if they have a problem with it. Under this prejudice Hitler was openly religious while Stalin was covertly religious. Why? Coz all religion sucks and all sucky things must come from it. And why do they think this way?

Much of the time it is sufficient to assess an argument sans information on the identity of the arguer. But it can also be interesting to take a look at who is saying what. Many of the most vitriolic opponents of religion in the form of militant atheists have a religious background. Family or friends who were religious made life difficult for them. They may even be deemed victims of its restrictive conditioning. They deserve pity for that but it also suggests that the way they respond to all forms of religion is distorted by emotion - ironic for a group who try to remove emotion from discourse. It gives you some inkling into why they respond so vehemently to trivial things like the voluntary labelling of food for religious purposes.

Another tendency is that even if they have removed religion from their lives they will tend to supplant it with something to fill the gap. Certainty still comforts them. Something that can reduce complexity into a tidy pattern is still attractive. All manner of models are latched onto. But just like religions these are still just things invented to help make sense of life and serve as rationalizations rather than rationality.

Once more I’m mostly just annoyed by these secularists rather than concerned by them. They can be obsessively argumentative but a lack of emotional engagement and reflection is once more self-limiting. I can tolerate them and it can even be fun to turn the frustration back at them.

Revolution!

Technically this last group should be discussed in a separate post because they are in my opinion beyond-the-pale. A revolutionary is almost as much of a concern as a fascist. They want violent oppression. However the context in which I have met them effectively neutralizes them and I will tell you why. I once stood in front of a group of adherents of the works of Trotsky and asked them something like this:

"If somehow you managed to have a successful worldwide revolution and were now in control then how would you respond to dissent to your regime?"

I should have shortened my question because the opening part (involving the word somehow) was all they focused on. This is hardly surprising as the accusation that what they want is too much of a long-shot is one they face all the time. They latched onto that and ranted that revolution was more likely that I expected and could come at any time. My worry however is that it could happen and if so then what would they do with dissenters to the power they would hold? Would they return the favour that democratic regimes give them? They never responded to my substantive question and I have zero confidence that they ever will.

On the one hand this is a worry because they deny the danger of what they could become. On the other hand it was reassuring because it showed how lacking in critical self-examination they were. All they would do is all they ever did as they uttered the same litany over-and-over.

And then there is what they do in practice. They never try to capture the post office or the police station as they did in historic times. Rather we see them in the mall asking us to sign a petition to preserve funding for the ABC. Any moderate could do that. In the current kind of society and economy we live in I think they are just another movement lobbying for peaceful reform. In that context they are merely annoying. And if they ever became something different it would be because the context had changed and it would be the fault of conservatives if that were to happen.

Remembering Who The Enemy Is

Enemy may be too harsh a word. It smacks of warfare. Better words may be rival or opponent. In any case I have taken the luxury of criticizing those who are mostly working for the same things I am. I should keep this sort of thing to a limit however and focus on condemning the damaging things many conservatives do to our society, economy and environment. This post then stands for all time as a rant and I can move onto more important matters.

And hopefully my conservative friends will keep their own counsel while I say the things I should be saying. I will argue with you but in all honesty an even better use of my time is in convincing wavering moderates of my politics.