A girl in my grade school was repeatedly bullied, but the teachers (Catholic nuns) failed to intervene. Several of the boys formed a mob that picked on her, both in class and on the playground. They mocked her with nicknames. They chanted at her. They made fun of the way she looked, including the thick glasses she wore. They sneered at her, sometimes causing her to look very sad. Other students would sometimes try to intervene but it was at the risk of becoming targets themselves. Several decades later, this bullied girl had grown into a very impressive woman who told me that this bullying contributed to severe depression while she was a young adult.
As I reminisced about this sad chapter of grade school, I thought about how far we haven’t come. On social media (for me, FB and Twitter), I’ve seen similar boorish online behavior by numerous people, including intelligent people who I consider friends and who are offering ideas I consider valuable. The bad behavior is usually directed to people on the “opposing political team,” but that is no excuse. There is no excuse at all. Why do people who are generally decent and thoughtful stoop to the low bar set by the President? Do they think it’s OK to be like Trump?
Why do so many people think it’s OK to engage in name-calling, slurs, ad hominem attacks, guilt by association and numerous other fallacious and malicious forms of argument? These things are the broken windows and graffiti of social media and they are also symptoms of something much deeper. Why do grown educated adults make fun of the way other people look, including ridiculing the President’s obesity, lack of hair and skin color? Trump’s behavior repulses me, but I will keep my criticisms aimed only at his behavior, not his looks. What is the justification for doing otherwise in a civil society?
Many people justify their social media loutishness by pointing to the loutish behavior of members of the other political team, as though this justifies anything. We need to rise about this temptation and with a little discipline we can do it. Others have done it in much more trying circumstances. Ben Fainer, a friend of mine, died a few years ago. He was tortured and terrorized for six years at Buchenwald and other concentration camps during WWII. In his 2012 video, I asked him whether he hated the Nazis for what they did to him and his family. He said, “If I hate, I’m going to hurt myself.” The way that Ben discusses his survival in the camps is an inspiration to me (See minute 38:20). Truly, we can stay above the fray.
As new fault lines are becoming more apparent within the two traditional political teams, I’m seeing even more of this bad behavior online. Why is this OK? We don’t hurl weaponized language at each other in person. Why aren’t we taking special care on social media, given the increased risk of treating each other as floating words rather than as fully human?
Can’t we see that we are engaged in cheapest type of virtue signaling when we use low rent language and bullying tactics? For those of you who claim to be Christian how can you possibly justify this behavior? Is that how any of us were raised? Don’t we want to be good examples for our own children? Wouldn’t it be better for us to take our inspiration from real life great communicators like Martin Luther King rather than by plummeting to the coarse ignorance of Donald Trump?
In tumultuous times like this, when mortality salience is thick in the air, we are being poisoned by the ingroup bias. It binds and blinds far more than we realize. This group bias can make a pit of venomous snakes look like soft puppies and it can make puppies look like venomous snakes. Our deeply ingrained groupish tendencies can cause the confirmation bias run rampant and most of us are completely oblivious. Until we muster the discipline to take the red pill that allows us to see this cluttered world as a complex ecosystem rather than a Manichean battlefield, we will suffer a long succession of missed opportunities. Step one is to recognize the full humanity of each other while online.
If we have the better facts and persuasion, then let us educate and persuade each other. If our ideas are so undeniably correct, why not offer our ideas fairly and, yes, forcefully, after giving our opponents their best foot forward? Let’s make social media a place where we want to be both inspired and challenged. Let’s clean up all of this broken glass and graffiti. When we disagree with others, let us have the courage to work together to find out why we disagree. When we can’t seem to resolve our differences, let’s make sure that we always recognize the humanity in each other in the process. That is the only way we will stop this insanity.
When I respond to someone I disagree with on social media, my first instinct is to lay out why I’m right and they’re wrong. I may type furiously for a while and then I step back and ask myself what am I trying to accomplish? That guides what I end up posting. I want to express my views, but I also want that person to be receptive to my views. The only way to get someone with an opposing opinion to be receptive, is to treat them like a human, be calm, and be respectful of their views. You know, have a discussion. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes I get too edgy. But what will never work is to resort to name calling – which essentially reduces that person to a one-word summary, such as “racist” or “stupid.” No one responds well to that. When you get down to name calling, you have no interest in effecting change or even helping that person better understand where you’re coming from. It just offends or enrages.
I agree that calling Trump the orange monster, obese, diaper-wearing, or whatever, is weak and useless. I don’t care what Trump or any president before or after him looks like. I would have the exact same opinion of Trump if he looked like Barrack Obama. I hate that Trump reduces all opponents to grade school nicknames. It’s appalling and embarrassing. And I hate that we the people do this to each other on social media.
How to argue, by Daniel Coyle:
“We don’t hurl weaponized language at each other in person.” This struck me as ill-informed. We’ve been hurling weaponized language at least since the “basket of deplorables” quote. It has reached the point where, in Seattle, Portland, New York and elsewhere, young white people of privilege are screaming obscenities at peaceful police officers, escalating quickly to rage-fueled violence. I suspect we’ve all seen clips of Rashida Tlaib, member of congress, screaming “Impeach the m***** f*****,” of blatant physical intimidation of Senator Flake and Florida AG Bondi, of the Speaker of the House calling the President a racist Nazi, and US law enforcement Storm Troopers. There have been many examples of weaponized language coming from the White House as well. This has permeated all parts of society since 2010.
I participate in some private internet fora, and the phenomenon predated Trump. When I concurred that the Oregon bakery had broken the law and should be punished, I disapproved of the punishment, the commercial death penalty – bankruptcy. If refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple gets the same punishment as refusal to administer medical aid, we’ve created an enormous moral hazard. I was roundly condemned as a homophobe, which means I’m a xenophobe and a racist and a Trump supporter and … it was a damned cake. An effort to evict me from the forum nearly succeeded. I noted that the GM government-run bankruptcy turned two centuries of bankruptcy law on its head. Creditors are first in line so as to encourage lending, necessary to economic and employment growth. Dealerships were selected for survival not based on their likely financial performance, but on the social-justice-worth of their owners. Dealerships owned by minorities and women were selected for survival, while successful dealerships run by others were closed. The effort to evict me came very close to success as I was a proven white supremacist and a misogynist
I firmly believe this has its roots in intellectual laziness. I view individuals as unique collections of data points on an infinite number of continua. It is far easier to look at someone, see a BLM sign, and spit “Freakin’ Liberal.” That then negates the uniqueness, places the individual into a convenient box, and requires no thought. Separating the world into “Us” and “Not Us” is incredibly tempting. I am most saddened when it is done by people whom I knew as tolerant liberals, who now claim to be progressives intolerant of any thought but their own hive mind. Liberals, Conservatives, Anarcho-Progressives and the alt-right split into three groups only, because the few liberals and conservatives remaining recognize in one another a common bond of decency and tolerance.
Unrelated, I thoroughly enjoyed your article on cell biology. As with you, I prefer that religion and science not be confused. I confuse myself with swings between Deism and Determinism, wondering if I’m even asking the right questions. I hold fast to a statement I first heard perhaps ten years ago: A scientist believes nothing. He either knows or does not know. And, another: A scientist expends far more energy and resources trying to disprove his conclusion than trying to prove it.