The left hates the right, and vice versa. Men hate women and women hate men. Dogs hate cats, and cats hate dogs. What I detect here is this trend towards tribalism that I just don't think can lead to anything good. And I don't know what it will take to put an end to it? Everything is hyperbole and opinion, we're all screaming into elevators. You're either on one side or the other and there's a chasm where the middle ground used to be. Why are we doing this to each other? To ourselves? Who gains anything? Why has everything become "I win, you lose"?
I've taken to dramatically reducing my time on social media these days. It brings out the worst in me. It certainly seems to bring out the worst in other's. I see posts from people I like that seems to suggest something close to hate towards opposing sides. All Tory voters are twats, all Labour devotees are social justice warriors? What on earth are we hoping to get from this? I mention all this because there are times when I've made the same miscalculation. Especially when I was extricating myself from the Christian faith over a decade ago. I let anger dictate my path, I chose ridicule over reason. I expect I persuaded precisely nobody in the process and just reinforced my own biases along the way. Sure, I can entertain other atheists my criticising faith and mocking the devout. It's fairly low hanging fruit after all. Yet I think I've concluded that nobody wins a race to the bottom. We just further alienate when we preach only to the choir. One quality I do see in myself is that I do go out of my way to take aboard the views of people with whom I disagree. I want to, at the bare minimum, at least understand alternative perspectives even if I might not subscribe to them. When I view social media these days I see straw-man arguments and casual contempt writ large. Are we even aware that we are doing it? And I see it from otherwise decent people. I wonder whether we all need to take a backward step here and perhaps consider the possibility that disagreement doesn't have to equal discord. We don't have to have animus towards the other side. It's a corrosive and ineffective tool.
And then there's this culture of offence that we seem to be cultivating. A place where a word misspoken, an incorrect intonation, or some other minor transgression can and has led to people losing jobs or getting banned from various media channels. When did we become so easily offended and terrified? Who let that fucking cat out of the bag? It's deranged in so many ways. Every day we hear some celebrity apologising for something, or some company mealy mouthing an admission of guilt over something so trivial that it hardly bares a mention. It's idiotic. We've allowed ourselves to become fragile. And in so doing we self immolate and make it harder and harder to speak what's on our mind. So what if we have an incorrect opinion? Let other's come forth and correct it. Let's talk, let's lock horns, let's disagree and make some effort to understand why other's might think as they do. But no, we're all tribes now. And there's a set narrative. And nothing good can come of it. We're all rough around the edges and we'd do well to just face that fact. But we're all so busy taking offence and I'm concerned that we might be becoming less outward looking than we've ever been. To this end the internet has both helped and hindered. It's created these little bubbles where like minded people cluster, which would be fine if they also took time to tip their toe into other ponds. Apparently this is too much for some. Better to surround ourselves with people who sing your tune, who can recite your mantra, who can confirm all your biases. Heaven forbid that we should expose ourselves to alternate ways of thinking. Perish the thought that we might be open to correction. It's just bizarre. And it's damaging in the extreme. We've got to be outward looking in order to evolve, haven't we? So here's my own solution to the problem; I'm not joining a tribe. You can all quite literally go fuck yourselves. I'm going to be an intellectual prostitute and take the ideas from the left, the right or centre, depending on whether they make sense to me. I will not be defined by some demographic. I won't necessarily support you just because I've done so before. I'm going to seek out ways of thinking but yet never allow myself to become enslaved by them. I need to breathe deeply, to be able to stare into all the caverns and all the fissures and all the recesses. I can't stay in one place. I have to poke around and see what's out there. So don't try to annex me to your cause, or assume that I'm on your side. I'm not. I don't want to be. I need to be freer than that.
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