“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
– Sun Tzu
You sit in your car and slowly drift in traffic on a crowded highway. There’s construction up ahead (of course) and the lane you are currently using will eventually merge into the lane to your right. You can see that it’s working well, drivers in the right lane are yielding with politeness, and taking turns allowing the car to their left in one at a time. It’s your turn. The car to your right already holding the lane refuses to allow you in, and instead speeds up in order to get ahead, forcing you to relinquish your turn.
At that moment, you become a completely different person. You absolutely lose your mind, cursing and swearing and calling the other driver every phrase you can think of except a child of God. In fact, you are so irate, you have a mind to get out of your car, bang on his window, and let him know what you think of him. But you don’t, and instead, begin to honk your horn like an insane person, flip him the bird (hoping he can see it) and continue to invent expletives that you’re damn sure you’ve never used or even heard before. The disturbing part of this is that you’re so engulfed in your fury, that you would’ve probably behaved this way regardless of who was in the car with you, adult or child.
Why do you do this? Why react with such vitriol about what at its worst can be described as a minor dick move. Sure, the driver did a stupid thing, but does it truly merit you becoming a psychopath? Worse yet, you find that more often than not, you react this way even when other drivers on the road commit minor discretions that they most likely did by accident and without malicious intent. I myself have seen otherwise docile, pleasant pacifists become absolute maniacs while driving, much to my surprise and horror. And then I realized, shit, I do it too.
I too am guilty of constantly allowing my emotions to get the better of me in a trivial driving event. In the heat of the incident, I’ve suddenly and in an instant made hundreds of assumptions about the person who committed the perceived traffic crime against me. I make conclusions about what a terrible person they are, their sense of self-entitlement, their obvious lack of intelligence, their social status or even what their political allegiances are. “That welfare case is probably a Trump supporter.” Worse yet, that inner racist and misogynist stereotype also manifests doesn’t it? Next, you purposely overtake the person who did you wrong, as it becomes your mission in life to get a look at who’s driving so that you can start assessing what kind of an asshole they really are. But all you get is a visual. No verbal exchange (unless it’s a couple of F bombs), no background information, no life history, no ideological breakdown. Instead, you see an Asian person, or an old lady, or a Muslim family, and you mutter to yourself, “Of course.” Don’t lie. You do it.
And I asked why we do this. But I think we all know it’s a rhetorical question. We do this because we’re in a bubble. The interior of the car becomes a safe space, where there are no repercussions for reacting in a way that would never be acceptable in a social setting. No price to pay. No one to keep your rage in check, allowing it to fester and explode like it never could or would in public. Reason and serenity are all but thrown out the window, and basic unevolved instinctual behavior takes over, with no sense of shame, even after the most insignificant of slights. This my friends, is also what happens on social media.
Sitting alone in your living room on your laptop or phone and suddenly coming across a post on Facebook or Twitter that you completely disagree with can distort your otherwise tempered rationale and provoke you immediately to leap into action. So often, nothing is taken into regard, context and nuance is not even considered when surging blindly into the battle field, or in this case, the comments section. The person who perpetrated the offensive post has been automatically placed into a convenient political ideology, and your tribally configured mindset takes over. Non sequiturs and misconceptions rule the day, ousting any chance at civil discourse or intellectual debate, essentially turning the person’s comments section into a shit show of responses, and killing their battery with a flurry of notifications.
Nothing is accomplished however, no one really wins the debate, instead it usually degrades into ad hominem attacks between left and right, and the original subject of the post is lost in the exchange. Liberals become social justice warriors, crying foul and literally projecting non-existent offensive slander onto the other person in order to portray themselves as some sort of saviour of the downtrodden. Conservatives become cranky old declinists in a rocking chair, always angry at everything, and not accepting the current course of modernity and instead, spend their time whining about others whining. But it’s not the beliefs or ideology of these groups that are the problem. Whether coming from the left or right, all politics should be welcome in a public forum, regardless of its capacity to offend or enrage.
The real problem derives from two aspects of the social media culture. Emotional enclosure and confirmation bias.
Emotional enclosure doesn’t permit any humanization of one’s would be opponent. Tribalism rears its ugly head, and the automatic assumption is that the person at the other end of the wifi link is either team red or team blue, friend or foe. Those that may sometimes gravitate toward unconventional views that lay outside of their political convictions are still thrown into whichever sect the offended chooses. If you’re a leftist who makes a statement against Barack Obama, well then you’re instantly a Trump supporter. If you’re a Trump supporter who backs a women’s right to choose, well then you’re in Hillary’s camp. There seems to be no in between. Anti-tribalists and independent thinkers are constantly having to explain every facet of their ideological background in order to set a premise for counteracting the accusation of belonging to one party or the other. And again, the original idea is lost.
But that’s not the worst of the two. Confirmation bias is hands down the most powerful force for the degradation of public interaction there is. Both sides of the spectrum are thoroughly guilty of posting fake news or headlines from fringe websites. False claims with lack of evidence flow freely, and are always carried out by those who are so entrenched in their system of belief, they will not accept any information that could disprove their otherwise convenient truths. If links to Snopes or Fact-check.org are provided by a skeptic that debunks whatever ridiculous meme or headline was posted by someone on a mission of bullshit, the initial rebuttal is usually the disrepute of those websites with statements like, “they’re part of the leftist or conservative machine and can’t be trusted.” Sort of the way Flat-Earthers have completely disregarded NASA as a trustworthy source for space exploration. Siting erroneous information that proves suitable to one’s agenda is the ultimate form of gullibility, which only destroys a person’s credibility, rendering their argument moot.
Contrary to what disheartened, unimaginitive people who refuse to go online think, social media is a tool, not an abomination. It’s a useful tool that brings people together if only they can manage to find common ground and civility when sharing a point of view in an ever evolving world. It’s a haven for free speech, and a platform for those who at any other time in our past, would’ve had no way of reaching out. Think of the teenage girl in Pakistan who wants to educate herself without having battery acid thrown in her face, or the gay Ukranian who knows that there’s a place where he or she can express themselves without persecution, or even the homeless person here at home who if even momentarily gains access to a phone, can find a place to sleep. Think about loved ones who have passed away, but whose profile page has remained online, giving us a virtual photo album of their life, allowing for a different type of memorial where we can grieve, remember and honour them. But unlike a photo album, it can never be lost or burned in a fire, and instead has unexpectedly served as a showcase for their life story, capturing experiences and images digitally, of which will exist for all time.
So use it properly, argue like a 21st century human instead of a rabid animal. Shake off any preconceptions you may have about your debate partner, and hit them with the facts. Not just copied links of websites you follow, but actually read up and type up the knowledge you’ve gained first hand. Attempt to argue with an even keeled demeanor and never resort to personal insults. If all is hopeless and you realize that your barbaric foe has no sense of courtesy or respect, well then swallow your pride and leave the conversation. Or…do what I do – hit him or her with a polite dose of sarcasm and a sprinkle of condescension. They love that.
Sun Tzu also said, “If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him.”
Our advanced primate brains have given us the greatest form of communication and global interaction the planet has ever known, let us not squander this opportunity by regressing into a time where the only tool it could conjure up is a wooden club and an insatiable hostility towards people who cut you off in traffic.
