If This Offends You, Too Bad

I have completely had it with snark. 

 

A prime example of what I mean by snark is saying that so-and-so (someone with whom you disagree) “drank the Kool-Aid.” This is supposed to be clever, but what are you really saying? 

 

Just this (my translation): “You are so gullible! You’d fall for anything! How can anyone be so stupid?” In other words, it is neither a counter-argument nor a rebuttal. It’s nothing but an insult. 

 

And before you or I go any further on this road, let me say that I’ve heard it from opposing sides of almost every current argument in our country, and I detest the expression and its message regardless of any position taken by the speaker. Masks, medicine, religion, patriotism, politics, science – in all these arenas and more, snark rears its ugly smarter-than-thou head. What does a speaker hope to accomplish with snark? Hope to change someone’s mind? Not gonna happen. Just want to vent your feelings? Yeah, you’re doing that, I guess, but aren’t you still stuck with those same feelings after you’ve put someone else down? Desire to show you’ve “taken a stand”? You could take a stand and still express it -- if not with empathy for those who disagree – in an open, welcoming manner. 

 

Just my thoughts. If being snarky makes you feel smarter, you’ll keep doing it. Just know that if you’re already on my side of an argument, I’m embarrassed by having you next to me, and if you’re part of my opposition -- on any topic -- you’re not winning my heart.

Instead of Victory, Defeat, or Compromise, or, Beyond Robert's Rules

 

My first two years in graduate school, one of my best friends was a woman from one of Africa’s oldest countries. She and I were roughly the same age (that is, older than most of our fellow students), and both of us were mothers, but in many other ways our lives, including our undergraduate educations, had been different. She had read philosophers I had not yet encountered, and vice versa. Consequently, we had wonderful long talks on every conceivable subject.

 

Once on a long road trip (we were traveling to a philosophy conference), I realized that our philosophical arguments took a form somewhat unusual for those in our discipline, even students. We would start on opposite sides of an issue, taking polar positions, but it was rare (if it ever happened at all) that one of us would triumph over the other. Listening closely and questioning just as closely, repeatedly one of us would concede a point to the other until, resolved on agreement, we had come to a third position neither of us had held or even initially considered.

 

Why don’t I call this compromise? 

 

Because neither of us gave up anything we cherished. What each gave up along the way were some of our original, contingently held beliefs that had come to be recognized, in the course of mutual exploration, as inferior -- or at least inadequate -- to support a respective initial position. There was no “Oh, all right then!” about it. No giving up in defeat. Both of us were more than satisfied with what we achieved by our newly constructed final position. And this happened over and over. 

 

Another feature I should mention is that our initially opposed positions were much simpler than the final position we constructed in agreement. Over and over, we realized that the question was “more complicated” than either of us had realized before we explored it together. 

 

I keep thinking about these arguments -- or explorations, or discussions, or conversations, or whatever you want to call them -- as those graduate school experiences may relate to hotly contended political issues, local and national. We human beings, it seems, want so badly for questions to have simple answers: yes or no, right or wrong, win or lose, this or that. What if the best outcome isn’t majority rule (one side winning and the other losing) or compromise (both sides getting some of what they want and giving up other parts) but a whole new position or solution or plan?

 

One local Northport issue is that of short-term rentals: Allow or disallow? I like what one Northporter has suggested: “‘Perhaps this is an opportunity to craft ‘a more perfect union,’ a Northport Neighbors type paradigm.”

 

Another issue is the RV park/campground: For or against? Personally, I like the idea but am concerned about the size. Here again, another Northporter suggested a third choice: smaller overall development, with fewer RV sites, more tent sites, a few rental cabins insulated and heated so they would work in winter as well as summer, cross-country trails – in short, fewer people and a lower environmental impact. Sounded good to me.

 

Rarely does one size fit all, and local control means each community working out what best fits their wants and needs.

Clarification For My Unhappy Liberal Friend

Recently when I posted a few sentences on Facebook voicing disappointment and discouragement at seeing so much public name-calling there, particularly coming from liberal friends (I mean that I find it particularly disappointing and discouraging from these people, not that they are doing more of it than the opposition), those people whose general politics are in line with my own, one friend commented that he didn’t understand me at all. Was he advocating that we only talk sweetness and light? How can we voice opposition, make political points and arguments, and state strong positions without being all namby-pamby and fake-“nice”? In particular, how can he express his opposition without name-calling?

Let me say first, that yes, we have freedom of speech and are absolutely free to rage and whine, complain and blame, and to call our political opponents vile names. Examples of that kind of speech are before us daily, coming from the highest office in the land. But that very kind of talk is one thing (although minor compared with far more damaging executive assaults on environmental and worker and consumer protections) my friends and I strongly detest in the current national administration, so why would we let ourselves fall into similar inarticulate rants? 

If someone claims to despise incivility and then engages in it, what am I supposed to make of the claim? It’s bad if someone I don’t like does it, okay if I do it? 

Sorry, but that’s another attitude coming out of Washington that we have no ground to gain by imitating! If, in criticizing certain kinds of behavior and speech, I use the same kinds of behavior and speech myself, I destroy the very basis of my position. There are other ways to make objections. That is my point.

So how can I criticize without name-calling? 

(1) Name the behavior. Instead of calling a job applicant a “filthy liar,” say “He misrepresented his experience. His resume listed positions he never held.” 

Okay, you’re thinking, but this is just plain boring! Where is the outlet for my cleverness? For my astonishing rapier wit? 

(2) The argument called reductio ad absurdum was famously used by Jonathan Swift in his satiric essay titled “A Modest Proposal,” and if you’ve never read the essay, do that now, and learn that, contrary to current practice, truly effective (3) satire is much more than just saying mean things about someone. 

And really, the most biting satire these days often consists of not much more than (4) reportage. I wish I could find again one cartoon I saw. Six panels quoted Republican defenses, in chronological order, coming out of the impeachment hearings and Senate trial. That was the whole thing — nothing added. Cartoons are great, aren’t they? 

(5) Quote what you want to criticize! The stock phrase for a State of the Union address is a president’s statement that “The state of our union is strong.” We heard it again last week, and I’m afraid I can’t find a way to criticize the statement in any way that would make it amusing, but I do have to ask — "Union? Strong? Have the meanings of those words been turned on their heads since I last looked? I don't think this country was as divided during the Vietnam era as it is today." There, no name-calling.

I do not oppose strong criticism! See this post for evidence. Again, though, I repeat, (1) — the behavior, not the person.

Does this help?

The Trouble With Too Many Facts

Imagine the following:

Imagine someone describing conditions of a town under siege and looking to allay the fears of those within the town. Let’s call him the Prophet, because the example will be easier if we have a name for him. The Prophet loves facts and has enough numbers and lists of numbers and statistics to fill thousands of written pages. “The situation is challenging, without a doubt,” he says to the people, “ but we are educated and intelligent and have all history and technology on our side to help us overcome our enemy.”

Tons of grain in warehouses, fresh water in wells and cisterns, herds of livestock and flocks of poultry, stores of preserved fruits and vegetables and spices and sugar – all this and more has been meticulously catalogued by the Prophet’s clerks, along with records of past sieges and their outcomes. Additionally, the Prophet cites what he calls the “Home Ground Advantage.” Those outside the walls, he reminds his fellow townsfolk, are sleeping on hard ground, far from their families, not in comfortable beds at home.  They will not want to continue forever in thankless discomfort.

But the Prophet’s chief message lies in his facts and numbers. Whenever a dubious voice is raised, the Prophet rains down a flood of facts upon the questioner’s head. He does not simply say, “Look at all we have!” but enumerates tirelessly until the questioner is overwhelmed by the sheer force of the wall of facts. The questioner feels stupid and falls silent.

What’s wrong with this picture? Are facts not important? Should we want not to be “confused with facts”? Should we instead make up our minds about what to believe and what to do without reference to reality?

I do not intend my example as opposition to facts or reality. What I see too often, however, is a blizzard or tsunami of facts thrown up as a smokescreen -- because when facts come in a blizzard or in a tsunami, they can be overwhelming and leave a crowd speechless with amazement. Historians are often guilty of this technique, but so are writers on economics, politics, and just about any other topic under the sun. Any “expert” with infinite facts at his fingertips can silence an audience – and, worse, can paralyze thought, which is my main concern.

“I'm only saying it because it’s true.” Have you ever heard anyone say that? What did it mean to you? Did it shut you up?

Here's something else that's true: The number of true sentences that any of us can utter at any given moment is infinite. We do not, therefore, make any statement simply because it’s true: we make it for some purpose. To make a statement is to begin to stake out a position, and to make thousands of statements is to stake out a huge area of ground.

As listeners, as readers, what do we need in addition to statements of fact?

If someone lays out a book-length position, complete with chapters and footnotes, bristling with dozens of facts on every page, I want to know: What is the basic line of argument? What am I being asked to conclude, and where, in the jungle of facts, are the lines of the argument? Sometimes the author has not constructed an explicit argument, and I as a reader have to infer it from hints. Other times an argument is explicit but rests on unstated or unexamined premises. Is there a hidden premise that, if brought forward, because false, defeats the conclusion?

Facts are important, but so are arguments. So too are values that lurk behind arguments.

Imagine another situation: One hundred people survive the siege, and the barbarians at the gate have all gone home. One survivor has a net worth of $1 million. The 99 others have nothing. The per capita wealth of the survivors is $10,000. This group of people is in pretty good shape, wouldn’t you say?

I hear someone saying yes, they’re in good shape, because the millionaire will need the labor of the ninety-nine and will have to pay them for their labor if their civilization is to enjoy a renaissance. Ah, but does survival necessarily entail a renaissance? And what if the millionaire can get work done – planting, harvesting, sewing his new clothes – simply by providing enough food to keep the workers’ bodies and souls together?

The number of survivors is a fact. The per capita income is a fact. Interpreting facts, predicting outcomes and making decisions based on available facts – that is something else again. That will depend on what you are trying to prove and what you want to see happen.

It is not enough to question facts. One must question the beliefs and purposes and values of people presenting facts. If no argument is given, an important question to ask might be, “What’s your point?”

Stop the tsunami in its tracks, freeze the blizzard in midair. Why are you giving me all these facts? You are trying to convince me of something. What is it?

[Just realized this is my 100th post on "Without a Clear Focus."]

“Honey, We’re Shrinking Our Brains!”

A New Device

A telephone company representative – a very helpful, pleasant young man, and I’m not blaming him one bit – convinced me recently to go for a new plan on my business phone line. Under the new plan, I would receive for ninety-nine cents a “tablet” that would let me do do everything but make phone calls. Hell, why not?

The tablet came, and it was cute. The rep thought it would arrive charged up so I could use it immediately, but such was not the case. The dark screen remained dark that first afternoon. I plugged it in and turned back to my bound and printed books, leaving the device to take on energy enough to be useful.

I won’t go into all the reasons for my disenchantment, because only one is pertinent to my point today: There is no keyboard. Oh, there is a tiny representation of a keyboard, but one cannot type on it. Not the way I learned to type, using all my fingers and whaling away at 120 words a minute. Impossible. Not enough room for hands. One is limited to poking at letters with a forefinger and hitting the wrong “key” as often as the one aimed at.

“This device,” I announced, “is not going to be my new best friend!” At this stage of the game, in fact, I don’t see myself using it at all.

Portability vs. Literacy

“But it’s so portable!” a friend urged in its defense, and I know that people love their small devices. The tablet, smaller than a pad and larger than a phone, fits nicely into a little leather zippered notebook carrier that can also hold all manner of cards and papers. It’s lightweight. Cute. Small.

But it is no use whatsoever for the things I do routinely on my Macbook, such as writing this blog post.

The tiny representation of a keyboard, limiting the user to forefinger poking or the two-thumbs method I see many people employing, discourages complex development of thought or imagery. It is ideally matched with the character limitation of certain kinds of social media, granted -- and we are told those limitations can produce a new kind of “poetic” expression. But how often, really, are word-limited blasts carefully composed and rewritten and distilled into anything memorable? There is more to a haiku, after all, than the prescribed limit of its syllables.

Real writing is real work. James Joyce’s “stream of consciousness” writing was not the author spewing out whatever passed through his own mind. It was his careful, line-by-line, imaginative construction of a created character’s thought process. Huge difference, kids.

The more difficult the mechanical composition process, the shorter the productions. The more instantaneous the forms produced, the greater the temptation to spew. To bypass reflection. To throw a rose or give the finger and move on, eschewing reason.

The debate over attention span continues: Is our attention span shrinking the more we read online, jumping from one screen to another like cats on a series of hot tin roofs? I submit that not only our reading habits but also our writing habits should be examined. Thinking, like sleep, can be shallow or deep. Lightweight devices, I’m thinking, encourage lightweight thought.

And no, not every communication needs to be a philosophical treatise. Of course not! But we don’t want to eliminate deep thought, do we? Make it obsolete?

A Shrinking Population?

When I began writing my first blog, Books in Northport, back in 2007, not everyone in the world was uploading photos and exchanging links on social media twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; instead, most of us who wrote blogs and followed those of other people dedicated a certain portion of each day to these pursuits. We composed our posts thoughtfully, and comments sections encouraged substantive exchange.

It’s different now. People around the world live every waking moment in the virtual world but “don’t have time” to read blogs (especially, I’m guessing, the wordy ones like this). It’s like asking people to leave a cocktail party for a public affairs lecture. Ugh! Where’s the fun?

The online audience in general is not shrinking, but what about the audience for serious discourse? Cat videos are ever popular. Super Bowl commercials are viewed over and over. T-shirt and bumper sticking sayings, ready-made, fly around Facebook. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s fun! Best part is, there’s no take-away, nothing to pack out and carry home.

This probably sounds like hectoring. I sound like a scold, saying other people should be more like me. I know how it sounds, but what I’m really saying is that it’s getting lonely on my virtual island. The cruise ships pass by, and tourists along the rail wave hankies and call out greetings, and that’s all very nice, but I am starving for deeper engagement. I am ready to listen to you, to read your words and reflect on them, and if you are willing to listen to me in turn, read my words, reflect on them, and respond in kind, you are a godsend! “We few, we happy few!” I want to shout on the rare occasion this occurs.

But I exaggerate. After all, I am blessed with a life partner whose active, nimble mind continues to engage with mine and with the world, and we have dear friends of whom the same can be said, whether or not they can navigate my blogging platform easily enough to leave comments. And anyway, I am what I am and have no real desire to become essentially different.

And so I go on, writing these long posts and corking them up in metaphorical bottles to be thrown out onto Lake Michigan. There’s nothing inherently wrong with cocktail parties. Some of us are just better in quieter contexts.

One Step Back

Let frustration get the upper hand, and you could soon be up to your eyebrows in regret.

It could have been much worse for me this week, however, which goes to show once more that many decisions are better for having been postponed. My last post here on this blog was an expression of frustration – frustration widely shared, apparently, because more than one person suggested, even requested, that I edit that piece down for publication in our county’s weekly newspaper or the daily paper in Traverse City. One request was especially fervent. What to do?

I was reluctant. I’d said what I had to say and was not looking for a wider audience. Would anything be gained?

“At least think about it! And would you call me back and let me know what you’ve decided?”

I spent the remainder of the evening paring down an original thousand words plus to a manageable three hundred. (I recommend this exercise, by the way. For a real wake-up call, edit yourself ruthlessly to a word limit. Can you say it in 800 words? 600? 400? Whole paragraphs reveal themselves as self-indulgent, unnecessary and/or redundant, while sentences purged of clutter emerge taut and clear.)

Finally more or less satisfied with the result, I pulled up an old letter I’d had published in a Traverse City weekly last year for comparison. The subject of the earlier letter was affordable housing, and I’d expressed myself to my satisfaction in 300 words.

But I was struck by the glaring contrast between the two pieces.

My older letter, a response to a previously published opinion article, focused on one particular issue and analyzed problems with the opinion writer’s statements. Our differences had to do with a situation and how to deal with it, and while he was clearly conservative and I obviously liberal on this issue, the disagreement was pragmatic rather than blindly partisan. The tone of my letter was – and not by accident -- reasoned, calm, and dispassionate.

The newer 300 words were entirely different. They contained no analysis and no new facts. The whole thing was nothing but finger-pointing.

Important question: What is the point of writing a letter to an editor or, if you’re the editor, writing an editorial? What is the point of writing an opinion piece? Why wade into those shark-infested waters at all unless you hope to open a few eyes and minds to a new way of seeing shared terrain?

Partisan finger-pointing, even absent name-calling (which I always try to avoid), will never change anyone’s mind. It is not reasoned argument and not presentation of new facts. Those who already agree with you will nod and cheer, while those on the other side turn away in self-righteous anger. Everything, unless made worse, remains as it was.

Many people in our country today do see politics as a war. True believers raise their voices ever louder in a kind of locker room hysteria – finger-jabbing, shouting, name-calling, metaphorically shoving and trampling their opponents. But to join in that fray, on that level, if this is what we oppose, is to become the enemy, to give up principles, to hand over victory.

I’m not saying I don’t still believe what I wrote about party politics at the county, state, and national level. What I’m saying is that saying it did no one any good. Putting my words “out there” temporarily relieved my unhappiness and gave a few others a brief sensation of solidarity. I expressed my frustration. But really, who cares? I gave in to basically useless self-expression. That’s all. Everything remains as it was. Not a single mind was changed or opened to change.

Instead of becoming more and more partisan, what we have to do in our county is to focus calmly on issues. Where facts are distorted, those distortions must be cleared away in a workmanlike manner. Where facts are absent, they must be brought forth. And as much as we talk, we all need to listen, especially where we disagree, because no one’s mind will be opened by being hectored or lectured or treated like an ignorant, willful child. Wouldn’t your blood pressure shoot through the roof if someone treated you like that?

So now, in the aftermath of my online outburst, I want to say that I think all the more highly of those in politics who can remain undistracted by frustration, who do not give in to it but keep their focus instead on the work at hand. You know who you are. Thank you for the work you do!

There is no way toward a civil discourse other than by adhering to civility. The next ten months will be a trying time, but that can be a good thing. Rising to challenges can be good for us all. I know all this. But how easily what we know can be forgotten in the heat of the moment!

Postscript: I was tempted to take down the previous post but am leaving it up, my moment of weakness exposed, as an example to others and reminder to myself of what is not worth doing.