It's like that sometimes - easy enough to be nice to people you know, but beyond that it gets a little complicated.
I think it's less that it's "easy" and more that literally everyone is nuanced and complicated, and the only time we can't conveniently forget this is when we know them.
Perhaps there are other such ways, but whatever they are or whether or not they're worthwhile alternatives remain to be seen.
Well, you've spent the last few posts describing how awful it is, so I think we can start with the premise that the bar on those alternatives should be pretty low.
Of course I recall all that, which I think stems from the fact that you and I are saying such radically different things that are liable to be interpreted and accommodated differently.
If you're implying there's some fundamental difference between the two, I don't see it. At least not in the context I'm describing: I was similarly "outnumbered" and found it similarly exhausting, but didn't think humanity was
doomed because people stubbornly refused to agree with me. I didn't think the rules were unfair or flawed or that everyone was awful just because I wasn't constantly and immediately winning.
This feels like a larger version of the same thing we all go through as young people, where we have that "why don't we just do X?" posture in response to the problems of the world. And then we realize logistics are a thing, or we Google "moral hazard" one day and hopefully we come out the other side more tolerant, realizing that the problems are problems because this stuff isn't obvious, actually, and lots of smart, well-meaning people think differently. Unless, of course, we refuse to learn that lesson and double down, and insist the system must be broken if the world isn't reshaped the way we think it should be.
Incidentally, if you think I was describing you just then, note how well it describes some Trump supporters, too. And that's the point: if your argument mostly boils down to "but they're awful!" you have to grapple with the fact that they sometimes think you're awful, too. That's why these conventions exist in the first place: they're not tools of oppression or the status quo. They allow people to co-exist amidst irreconcilable differences. They're protecting you as much as you think they're protecting all the awful people over
there.
Is there that much of a difference between the two concepts?
I think so. I think one means you're not going to agree, but the other implies you can't even fathom how anyone could.
Besides, they get fought continually if the fight breaks out continually.
Fights break out continually when they are provoked continually. Raising these issues in public is obviously not a neutral act.
Anyway, if your policy is essentially to argue with pretty much anyone who pushes back on the latest progressive causes, yeah, you're gonna find it exhausting. You'd find it similarly exhausting if you decided you had some kind of moral duty to argue with every movie rating you didn't agree with. Nothing remarkable about that. What's remarkable is deciding you need to do this in the first place.
Almost, but not quite. I was thinking of it in terms of how one personally relates to the feelings and perspective of another beyond merely "understanding" why they think and feel the way they do.
I don't think that's real empathy, then. I'm not sure it's possible to genuinely empathize without being able to at least sorta find your way to the belief in question, intellectually.
Anyway, at minimum you'd need a general understanding of conservative thought that isn't just something patronizing about how people emotionally react to change, or whatever. And, to be perfectly blunt, I'm not convinced you really get the intellectual moorings of most conservative ideas.
I don't know what to tell them, especially if they start off defensive. Even when I think I'm explaining something as calmly and rationally as I can I still get people taking it as a personal insult and escalating the matter.
If what you're "explaining" is why something they believe is actually bigoted, then I think the "calmly and rationally" part is probably not a relevant factor in how it's received.
Apparently not, are you going to explain it?
If your posture is "zero sum," IE: there is no neutrality, and that any silence or agree-to-disagree is actually a form of aggression because it favors the status quo, then you've erased the difference between the people who disagree amicably and those that are disagree aggressively. So there's not much reason to be in the former rather than the latter if (when) you feel attacked.
I think there's probably no way to proceed with this discussion unless we actually get into the views themselves, because I think it's really just going to boil down to "but I just find these views horrible." I don't think they're actually unprecedented or unique or special in some way that leaves you no choice but to suspend normal rules of civility and debate. So we'd have to talk about your own views, and whether they're as reasonable as you think. Spoiler alert: I don't think they are. I'd even say some are straight-up logically invalid, and even self-contradictory. Though notice I've not felt the need to force you to defend them each time the issue has come up.
Anyway, I'm up for all that, and I think that's kinda the only thing left to be done or said. Anything else is going to leave us at an impasse where I talk about not hating people for believing different things and you think I'm asking you to shake a Nazi's hand, or something.
Closed Thread
