Stemming the Tide of Fanaticism

Since wingers are parties to a hidden truth, it’s critical that their most widely-held beliefs be forcefully rejected by their opponents, otherwise the “truth” would no longer be accessible only to in-group members. When a liberal is mad about climate denial, Obama’s Kenyan roots or the HCR bunkum, it just reinforces their out-group status. Couple that with stenographic media constantly on the hunt for both sides to a story, and we have our current political disaster. (Balloon Juice)

It is a political disaster, but it's also a human disaster. And it's not going to get better any time soon, but I think that it's important to do what we can to stem the tide.

In my conversations with right wingers, the challenge is to establish some common ground, but you can never establish it on the facts. It's pointless to argue about facts. They don't matter, but values do, and it's on a values level that you can frequently find some common ground to begin a conversation.

It's important to find ways to reassure such a person that you are not the stereotypical liberal of their imaginations because very few of us are that. And then the best you can do is to make a case for an alternative explanation of events than the one bouncing around the echo chamber at FOX. There is no winning the argument; that's a pointless objective. There is only planting the seed of doubt in such a person's mind in the hope that  it will grow into something that will allow for a more complex understanding about what's going on.

People aren't stupid, and they aren't simple. There's something in all of us that wants to avoid complexity, that wants the comfort of living in a zone in which everything is clear and simple. People long for an impossible simplicity and purity, and any body who thinks he or she has it is fooling himself. And so the goal is to plant the seed of a system-crashing contradiction that everyone who has not become an incorrigible fanatic is vulnerable to. Ultimately the goal is not to win a political argument, but to help people to embrace the complexity of their own humanity.  Once anyone embraces that, fanaticism is an impossibility for him. But if you can't embrace the complexity within yourself, you can't embrace it in the world around you.

It is pointless to enter into a conversation with a fanatic. The fanatics are not the target audience; we need to focus on the people who in their confusion and discomfort gravitate to fanatics because they are attracted by their passion and conviction. The goal is not to create a culture of confused people incapable of taking a stand, but a culture dominated by grown-ups who are capable of embracing complexity and who understand that taking a stand does not require the mentality of the fanatic.

Comments

[spark]

My gloomy feeling these days is that we're headed for one of those historical disasters, like the Civil War, the Great Depression, or WW2, that sort American politics for generations. In the next decade or two, a massive sea-level rise, a war, something.

[John Ortbal]

Jack: Your comment led me to Eric Hoffer's The Ordeal of Change, published in 1963.
He says,"When a population undergoing drastic change is without abundant opportunities for individual action and self-advancement [decline of the middle class?] it develops a hunger for faith, pride and unity...In other words, drastic change, under certain conditions , creates a proclivity for fanatical attitudes, united action, and spectacular manifestations of flouting and defiance."

That seems to be true from the steps of the capitol in Washington DC to Tahrir square in Cairo.

Hoffer goes on to observe: "Power, whether exercised over matter or man,is partial to simplification. It wants simple problems, simple solutions. It sees in complication a product of weakness---the tortuous path that compromise must follow..."

"Societies are likely to function tolerably well under a total dictatorship, which need not take human nature into account, or when least interfered with by government. Both absolute government and nominal government are ways of avoiding the necessity of having to deal with human nature."

The test of our 21st century democracy will be in how we manage to deal with the complex human nature of our fellow citizens. There is real danger in fanaticism and its appeal to a disenfranchised middle class. I think it can only be countered with an equal passion for paradox, complexity and mystery...all in seeming short supply these days.