Every human being has a set of strategies in their social toolkit designed to protect themselves from the unpleasant rigors of empathy, self-examination, and the dreaded realization of their true place in the universe. There’s nothing wrong with this, provided you take inventory of these tendencies so that they don’t pop up unrecognized, use them only when appropriate and keep them properly calibrated to prevent them from harming another person in their use.
I’ve been carefully updating my own inventory by observing the online comics fan community, where one can see a variety of social strategies deployed in a full range of severity.
For example, just this week on this very blog I encountered a number of people employing a tactic known throughout the activist blogosphere as “Silencing.” Sometimes, when a person speaks an unpleasant truth that other people don’t wish to discuss the other people will gather round and do what they can from stopping the person from talking about it.
There are a number of ways to do this.
There’s the ever-popular shame tactic:
The reactions do not in any way do anything to dissuade outsiders who think Islam is an angry religion. Even the slightest perceived slight seems to be treated as supreme blasphemy.
This one is particularly useful (Despite being utterly illogical. I mean, since when does a strongly-worded comment on a superhero-focused website imply that any one demographic is particularly violent? The standard of discourse in many places was set by Green Lantern fans) because the end goal is to make the person feel as though they are contributing to the very problem they wish to solve.
There’s complete dismissal of the matter:
I’m so glad I am not a person who gets easily offended. I had to re-read the interview 3 times, then the article, and finally all the responses in order to actually figure out what the hell was supposedly so offensive.
The goal here depends on the target. One may try to chip away at the offended party’s self-confidence, and make them think perhaps they are worried about nothing. This one relies on a foundation of social conditioning that’s designed to make the offended party believe that their concerns and feelings are of little import. If the offended party is stronger than this, there may still be enough onlookers who consider the words “politically correct” a form of profanity that they may come to the silencer’s aid with other tactics.
There’s distraction with other grievances:
It gets fixed if it relates to a DC story. Brady cares about DC, not Oni.Anyway. Matt Brady in censoring Marvel news piece. Film at 11.
In this case the grievance is completely absurd but if you find one with enough sympathy you can completely destroy a formerly productive conversation.
And of course, there’s the old standby of making the conversation all about the silencer and his/her personal grievances, which has the added bonus of feeding a starving ego. I trust you can find those attention-seeking examples on your own.
While I can imagine some of these tactics being put to goo and noble use (”So I forgot your birthday! That’s nothing, once Aunt Gina–rest her soul–forgot I was divorced on my anniversary!”) and have the potential to be a valuable tool in the human social toolkit, on the whole I think it’s best we learn to identify and avoid such dishonest debate strategies in the future. As such, we should call attention to them whenever we see them.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Ah, whatever, man, I some of the reactions were FULL OF SWEARING, MISPLACED HATRED [attacking Newsarama for the ham handed comment of one writer] AND KEYBOARD SCREAMING, I got no problem with swearing, but others do but I loathe misplaced hatred and keyboard screaming.
And what Green Lantern fans have to do with this is beyond me, this was about a real person and real hatred heaped upon others for something he said poorly but probably meant in a less nefarious way. But Muslims can’t see past the use of the word jihad, you use that word, you must mean something negative.
I stand by the fact that the way I read his comment he was asking if Cornell was going to have the Muslim character turn out to be a negative - villainous jihadi. It was poorly worded but I don’t think he meant it the way it was taken.
I generally think most people should be ashamed to adhere to a religion other than my own (because often, that’s how they treat me) but that’s me. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to fight ‘em is to join ‘em. I was a polite agnostic and an angry atheist, but they’ve both become obsolete ideals, being polite just doesn’t work, and you now have atheists with their own god (Flying Spaghetti Monster and his prophet Richard Dawkins) yeah, well, I started my own religion based upon what I hold dear, having a good time and trying to get people to give me free money.
Like all religions, it offers a sense of community, collective identity and ‘us vs. them’ mentality, it also offers better ideas and a cut rate for tithing, I only want %5, Christians want %10, and with us you can drink alcohol and look at naked (even half naked women) and have a dog! We (collective for no reason) encourage keeping dogs as pets. After all, ElCoyote* is the Dog Faced God.
Anyway, man, I tire of not having a religion to hide my irrational beliefs behind.
I believe in a dog headed guy who likes to crack jokes, get drunk at concerts, howl at the moon and pull pranks.
My God is infinitely cooler than your God.
Stick it, heathens!
*ElCoyote takes no responsibility for his wild namesakes, they are animals named after him, ElCoyotism is steadfastly against the eating of children.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
“The goal here depends on the target. One may try to chip away at the offended party’s self-confidence, and make them think perhaps they are worried about nothing. This one relies on a foundation of social conditioning that’s designed to make the offended party believe that their concerns and feelings are of little import. If the offended party is stronger than this, there may still be enough onlookers who consider the words “politically correct” a form of profanity that they may come to the silencer’s aid with other tactics.”
Wow….it’s like Grievance Jujitzu!
May 19th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I see the same thing in the discussions around issues outside of comic books (homeschooling, science, religion) that I’m involved with.
People prefer rhetoric over rigor. Rather than defending a point of view or respectfully challenging another they descend into silencing tactics and think that somehow wins them the argument.