Look, I get you. I just think you are making the classic blunder of assuming people are literally born prone to being angry at the new neighbor.
What I am saying is that they are not, it is an enculturated behavior, that is again, rewarded and enforced through your life in this society. All culture, including right-wing culture, is learned and shared behavior, it just seems ‘more natural’ because it is what is rewarded in this society, and most people’s are far more interested in material outcomes than anything else. That is why that person went back to believing in shit, a single day of conversation is not going to change years of learned and reinforced behavior. Otherwise talk therapists would literally be miracle workers. It takes conscious effort for some people in this society to be leftwing. Some people just are like that. Again, facts may be a shield, but they are a weak shield, they may provide solace and comfort, but they do not provide a way to power or effective negotiation with it.
You can have facts, but obsession with facts shouldn’t define you, imo focusing instead on rewarding good social behavior around you, being open to communication and trustworthy is worth more than any single fact you can offer someone. We don’t fight anti-social behavior with facts, we fight it with demonstrating the real rewards, both mentally and emotionally, of pro-social behavior. I don’t know if this is revolutionary behavior, but I do think that, and patience helps a lot.
I don’t know if I believe people are predisposed to tribalism (it seems to occur in animals frequently enough that it wouldn’t surprise me, but I also don’t feel educated enough on the topic to really have a judgement) but honestly I don’t think it matters. I fully agree with you that there’s at the least a learned component to it, and imo the nurtured behaviour is more relevant than the “natural” behaviour, if any. I really believe in what you mentioned, that building a culture promoting better behaviours will result in them - and it seems like a good (and literally necessary) direction for society to evolve in if we want it come out the other end of capitalism as anything other than a wasteland.
What I’m talking about is more immediate than a slow cultural shift can be, though - I’m talking about the people around us now, who haven’t had the benefit of the revolutionary behaviour you mentioned. For most of us alive now, it’s exactly like you said - the tribalist behaviours have been rewarded and enforced through our lives in this society. Everything I’m talking about will hopefully be irrelevant when we can raise a generation with the pro-social behaviours you described; it’s just that to get there, we’ll need enough people on board to reach a cultural tipping point, and that’s why I can’t give up on getting people free of the far-right alternative reality. Well, that’s the selfless portion anyway - the selfish bit is that those ideologies are too fucking annoying to listen to so if it’s someone I care about, the only options are to cut them outta my life or try to deprogram them lmao.
That is why that person went back to believing in shit, a single day of conversation is not going to change years of learned and reinforced behavior.
Hard agree. That being said, I apparently left the end of that story implicit and not at all obvious (it’s late and I’m sleepy, dumb, and adhd, sorry) - when we went back to the topic and got down to confronting that root emotion, they got better at recognizing what was happening and now question the fear-based anger the topic inspires instead of using it as an excuse to dismiss new info. It obviously didn’t make them a paragon of tolerance overnight, but I consider a lack of unjustified hatred for drag queens and a willingness to challenge that unjustified hatred a huge step in the right direction. The most important element was clearly their willingness to have an honest dialogue and put in the work when they recognized they were doing something wrong, but the facts were critically important to dispelling the far right narrative that inspired the hatred in the first place. That’s where I’m coming from when I say we (everybody left of far right) literally cannot abandon the emphasis on provable facts - for the flawed people we collectively are now, betrayed by our society like you described, I just don’t like our odds in my neighbour example. I really believe in what you said, that we can train ourselves and each other to be better, but we can never get there if we disregard the facts to pick a losing fight with fascists on their own terms.
I’m not saying that fact checking everything will wipe out far right ideologies or lead to any notable result really - just that if we stop trying to hold people accountable for the truth of what they say, we won’t have the time we need to figure out and work towards what will.
Look, I get you. I just think you are making the classic blunder of assuming people are literally born prone to being angry at the new neighbor.
What I am saying is that they are not, it is an enculturated behavior, that is again, rewarded and enforced through your life in this society. All culture, including right-wing culture, is learned and shared behavior, it just seems ‘more natural’ because it is what is rewarded in this society, and most people’s are far more interested in material outcomes than anything else. That is why that person went back to believing in shit, a single day of conversation is not going to change years of learned and reinforced behavior. Otherwise talk therapists would literally be miracle workers. It takes conscious effort for some people in this society to be leftwing. Some people just are like that. Again, facts may be a shield, but they are a weak shield, they may provide solace and comfort, but they do not provide a way to power or effective negotiation with it.
You can have facts, but obsession with facts shouldn’t define you, imo focusing instead on rewarding good social behavior around you, being open to communication and trustworthy is worth more than any single fact you can offer someone. We don’t fight anti-social behavior with facts, we fight it with demonstrating the real rewards, both mentally and emotionally, of pro-social behavior. I don’t know if this is revolutionary behavior, but I do think that, and patience helps a lot.
I don’t know if I believe people are predisposed to tribalism (it seems to occur in animals frequently enough that it wouldn’t surprise me, but I also don’t feel educated enough on the topic to really have a judgement) but honestly I don’t think it matters. I fully agree with you that there’s at the least a learned component to it, and imo the nurtured behaviour is more relevant than the “natural” behaviour, if any. I really believe in what you mentioned, that building a culture promoting better behaviours will result in them - and it seems like a good (and literally necessary) direction for society to evolve in if we want it come out the other end of capitalism as anything other than a wasteland.
What I’m talking about is more immediate than a slow cultural shift can be, though - I’m talking about the people around us now, who haven’t had the benefit of the revolutionary behaviour you mentioned. For most of us alive now, it’s exactly like you said - the tribalist behaviours have been rewarded and enforced through our lives in this society. Everything I’m talking about will hopefully be irrelevant when we can raise a generation with the pro-social behaviours you described; it’s just that to get there, we’ll need enough people on board to reach a cultural tipping point, and that’s why I can’t give up on getting people free of the far-right alternative reality. Well, that’s the selfless portion anyway - the selfish bit is that those ideologies are too fucking annoying to listen to so if it’s someone I care about, the only options are to cut them outta my life or try to deprogram them lmao.
Hard agree. That being said, I apparently left the end of that story implicit and not at all obvious (it’s late and I’m sleepy, dumb, and adhd, sorry) - when we went back to the topic and got down to confronting that root emotion, they got better at recognizing what was happening and now question the fear-based anger the topic inspires instead of using it as an excuse to dismiss new info. It obviously didn’t make them a paragon of tolerance overnight, but I consider a lack of unjustified hatred for drag queens and a willingness to challenge that unjustified hatred a huge step in the right direction. The most important element was clearly their willingness to have an honest dialogue and put in the work when they recognized they were doing something wrong, but the facts were critically important to dispelling the far right narrative that inspired the hatred in the first place. That’s where I’m coming from when I say we (everybody left of far right) literally cannot abandon the emphasis on provable facts - for the flawed people we collectively are now, betrayed by our society like you described, I just don’t like our odds in my neighbour example. I really believe in what you said, that we can train ourselves and each other to be better, but we can never get there if we disregard the facts to pick a losing fight with fascists on their own terms.
I’m not saying that fact checking everything will wipe out far right ideologies or lead to any notable result really - just that if we stop trying to hold people accountable for the truth of what they say, we won’t have the time we need to figure out and work towards what will.