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luna_manarNew pet peeve:
Those who like to use the term "culture" or "ism" to rob people of their sense of individuality by associating their opinions with GroupThink without proof that such an association exists.
Some examples of GroupThink:
Rape Culture
Socialism
Drug Culture
Radical Islamist
Say a person enjoyed a particular song whose music video featured the singer laying around surrounded by practically nude women who he repeatedly called "hos" and "bitches." By simply saying "I like that song," this person opens themselves up to accusations of being "absorbed in rape culture," and from that moment on, no matter what the person says about why they like the song, their opinions about it are completely void because they have been labeled as part of a group that ostensibly thinks about women in a certain way. And if you enjoy one of that group's products, you must be part of that GroupThink.
Let me be clear: GroupThink exists. But it applies to groups, not individuals. To heap the sins of an entire culture of people onto the shoulders of a single individual is fallacy.
But oh, is it a useful fallacy to use in the debate circle. It's an instant win--as good as name-calling, as good as calling someone a "babykiller" for thinking that abortions are sometimes justifiable. Following the previous example, the label "rape culture" stips the musical product of any valid worth it might have on its own, and robs the individual who likes it of credibility so that they can't explain their personal thought processes. No matter why he or she likes it, they're "part of the problem."
If I eat chicken, and like it, and don't plan on changing my habits, I could be called "misguided" to someone who thinks that eating meat is wrong. And no matter how much I try to explain that my reasoning for not feeling bad about it is based on a very carefully thought-out, personal sense of morals, the person objecting to those morals continues to insist that I'm victim of a GroupThink ("death culture") which, if only I could escape it, I would see the error of my ways and I would stop doing that.
If I say that I would very much like the government to tax very wealthy people just as much as they tax me, I could be called a "socialist," and from that point on, no explanation I can give for my opinion is valid because I must think that the government is All-good and I am erroneously trusting them to take care of me like a pet bunny.
There is almost nothing I hate more than being accused of herd-mentality. Most of these opinions I have, I've had since long before I realized other people might disagree with them. Most of my feelings about subjects like rights and freedoms and death and money are deeply personal feelings that I have put a great deal of thought and skepticism into. I have changed my mind about certain things, in the past, against public opinion. I was raised Christian, and was surrounded primarily by very spiritual people of one breed or another. I decided on my own, quietly at first, that I do not believe in a deity. That was my own personal thought process, made in absence of any support from GroupThink around me. I didn't read any books that convinced me of it; I didn't have access to them. I just decided that the idea of God simply did not make any sense, and I had no divine feeling of a God to convince me to believe in absence of proof. That was all. I wasn't following anyone then, and I'm not following anyone now, just because I happen to have found friends that agree with me. I have friends that don't, too.
Just because I think it is okay for women to prostitute themselves if they want to doesn't make me part of the rape-culture problem. Just because I think certain taxes are okay doesn't make me a socialist. Just because I think eating chicken is not morally reprehensible does not mean I think it's okay to coop animals up in small cages that disfigure their limbs and feed them hormones to make them fatter. Just because I drive a car does not mean I think oil is a good source of energy.
Opinions and individual choices are not a direct indicator of a person's feelings, ideals, and convictions, nor are they necessarily a result of monkey-see-monkey-do. I am getting very aggravated at the increasing tendency to force-associate people who do certain things or hold certain opinions with a (usually negative and destructive) GroupThink they may not actually have anything to do with. It's happening a lot on the Internet recently, and seems to be the new conversation-stopper/argument-prolonger of the day; once someone is accused of GroupThink, their individual reasoning is completely disregarded, and they can spend hours defending their reasoning only to be told, "your reasoning is invalid because it was influenced by [groupThink]. You couldn't have arrived at your conclusion without being influenced by [GroupThink]. You're a sheep."
God, how fucking obnoxious. It's an instant "I WIN" for anyone who has a strong opinion about anything: shove any dissenters into a GroupThink corner and accuse them of being bumbling robots with no thoughts of their own.
Some people don't know the meaning of civil discourse, anymore.
Those who like to use the term "culture" or "ism" to rob people of their sense of individuality by associating their opinions with GroupThink without proof that such an association exists.
Some examples of GroupThink:
Rape Culture
Socialism
Drug Culture
Radical Islamist
Say a person enjoyed a particular song whose music video featured the singer laying around surrounded by practically nude women who he repeatedly called "hos" and "bitches." By simply saying "I like that song," this person opens themselves up to accusations of being "absorbed in rape culture," and from that moment on, no matter what the person says about why they like the song, their opinions about it are completely void because they have been labeled as part of a group that ostensibly thinks about women in a certain way. And if you enjoy one of that group's products, you must be part of that GroupThink.
Let me be clear: GroupThink exists. But it applies to groups, not individuals. To heap the sins of an entire culture of people onto the shoulders of a single individual is fallacy.
But oh, is it a useful fallacy to use in the debate circle. It's an instant win--as good as name-calling, as good as calling someone a "babykiller" for thinking that abortions are sometimes justifiable. Following the previous example, the label "rape culture" stips the musical product of any valid worth it might have on its own, and robs the individual who likes it of credibility so that they can't explain their personal thought processes. No matter why he or she likes it, they're "part of the problem."
If I eat chicken, and like it, and don't plan on changing my habits, I could be called "misguided" to someone who thinks that eating meat is wrong. And no matter how much I try to explain that my reasoning for not feeling bad about it is based on a very carefully thought-out, personal sense of morals, the person objecting to those morals continues to insist that I'm victim of a GroupThink ("death culture") which, if only I could escape it, I would see the error of my ways and I would stop doing that.
If I say that I would very much like the government to tax very wealthy people just as much as they tax me, I could be called a "socialist," and from that point on, no explanation I can give for my opinion is valid because I must think that the government is All-good and I am erroneously trusting them to take care of me like a pet bunny.
There is almost nothing I hate more than being accused of herd-mentality. Most of these opinions I have, I've had since long before I realized other people might disagree with them. Most of my feelings about subjects like rights and freedoms and death and money are deeply personal feelings that I have put a great deal of thought and skepticism into. I have changed my mind about certain things, in the past, against public opinion. I was raised Christian, and was surrounded primarily by very spiritual people of one breed or another. I decided on my own, quietly at first, that I do not believe in a deity. That was my own personal thought process, made in absence of any support from GroupThink around me. I didn't read any books that convinced me of it; I didn't have access to them. I just decided that the idea of God simply did not make any sense, and I had no divine feeling of a God to convince me to believe in absence of proof. That was all. I wasn't following anyone then, and I'm not following anyone now, just because I happen to have found friends that agree with me. I have friends that don't, too.
Just because I think it is okay for women to prostitute themselves if they want to doesn't make me part of the rape-culture problem. Just because I think certain taxes are okay doesn't make me a socialist. Just because I think eating chicken is not morally reprehensible does not mean I think it's okay to coop animals up in small cages that disfigure their limbs and feed them hormones to make them fatter. Just because I drive a car does not mean I think oil is a good source of energy.
Opinions and individual choices are not a direct indicator of a person's feelings, ideals, and convictions, nor are they necessarily a result of monkey-see-monkey-do. I am getting very aggravated at the increasing tendency to force-associate people who do certain things or hold certain opinions with a (usually negative and destructive) GroupThink they may not actually have anything to do with. It's happening a lot on the Internet recently, and seems to be the new conversation-stopper/argument-prolonger of the day; once someone is accused of GroupThink, their individual reasoning is completely disregarded, and they can spend hours defending their reasoning only to be told, "your reasoning is invalid because it was influenced by [groupThink]. You couldn't have arrived at your conclusion without being influenced by [GroupThink]. You're a sheep."
God, how fucking obnoxious. It's an instant "I WIN" for anyone who has a strong opinion about anything: shove any dissenters into a GroupThink corner and accuse them of being bumbling robots with no thoughts of their own.
Some people don't know the meaning of civil discourse, anymore.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-20 02:17 am (UTC)I believe that there is no justification for raping someone. I believe that a lot of media and socialisation encourages men to see rape as part of being macho and normative. I don't like the way that things like "she asked for it" are still a part of our social discourse and that that myth hasn't been lost to time already.
But the "rape culture" line as a way of cutting off an argument has always bothered me, and I haven't been able to put a good finger on why until now. I may want to link to this, in future.
I think it's that... often, I have opinions that have followed a three-step process. There are opinions born in ignorance. There are opinions born out of ignorance, from people examining their ignorance and going, "whoa, what was I thinking?" and fighting against it. And then, once you've done that, there are times when your initial backlash against everything you originally believed, itself, needs to be examined and backlashed against, because the new model isn't entirely right, either.
As such, because people usually only acknowledge a two-step, not a three-step, process of examining one's beliefs - you have ignorant beliefs, and then you grow out of them, or return to them after growing out of them, rather than having discarded both models in favour of a middle way - I sometimes ending holding some opinions that people have characterised as belonging to the ignorant set. And it's very hard, and very frustrating, getting people to see that, no, I have thought about this. I'm not speaking from a "not yet enlightened" perspective. I've been ignorant, I've considered the perspective you're calling enlightened, and I still have questions. I still have corner cases. I want to take the discourse up another level and ask about things that neither of these perspectives have made room for. And I'm treated as if I'm arguing from the playpen floor.
And that's why I don't like these terms, at least not when employed in argument against people's opinions (I am willing to believe that there is, collectively, a rape culture, in terms of media tendency towards glamourising rape. Many people, undoubtedly, have internalised some aspects of that culture; but you can't know why a given impulse has arisen, and it may genuinely have nothing to do with that, and pre-judging it is bad). Because it's hard enough for people to see that there can ever be a process of self-examination which starts in ignorance, goes on to what's currently considered a progressive way of looking at things, and then turns and continues to examine that progressive outlook itself and challenge the issues with it, without us having developed this ability to cut off any discussions that sounds like it's coming from those places, without taking a look at where it really is coming from.
There's a lot of sentiment going around in certain circles these days that "we've heard all the arguments from a given side, and we don't need to listen to you any more. We know what you're about." But if a) you're pre-judging people as being on a given side without hearing whether they are, and b) you are in general not prepared to listen and discuss two-sidedly... then it's you in the right, informing the other person in the wrong, one-sidedly. It's not a debate or a discussion, it's "you are unenlightened and need to be taught".
And there are some cases where that's true. Maybe a lot of cases. But if you don't give anyone a chance to explain their viewpoint, how will you ever know when it's true or not?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-20 06:30 am (UTC)...No, actually, I do have more to say. I don't want to have to slavishly watch what I post to avoid offending others, and that's the position I feel put in after reading this. You don't watch yourself with me, but I have to with you. I'm particularly angry that you lump me in, ironically in a post about lumping-in, with ideas and positions that I do not endorse in the slightest. The phrase 'euthanasia culture' was used in the article to illustrate a point, and that point wasn't 'only sheeple euthanize their pets'. I thought it was an extremely nuanced piece and an extended meditation on who our society finds disposable. It wasn't meant to give ultimate answers or sum everything up in a neat aphorism. When I post something that I have clearly marked as valuable to me, I don't want to open up my friends page and find a haughty counter-rant that puts it down as unintelligent, thought-terminating zealotry. And when you add to that further digs on a long-ago word choice of mine, you further twist the knife. Do you honestly expect me not to be hurt?
If I could go back to that thread, rather than "misguided" I would have simply said you were wrong. It was not a conscious decision to belittle you. I was fuming at the time and not likely to make the best word choices. You don't go into the journal of an abolitionist vegan, say out of nowhere that abolitionist vegans make you angry, and expect a perfect response. At worst, it comes off as a passive-aggressive demand for their silence, if not their outright approval.
Everyone has overlap and non-overlap with groupthink, and a great deal of each. I have no business being high and mighty about groupthink, and I share a lot of your distrust of categorical dismissal. But if you're going to call me condescending based on you having provoked me... well, tough shit.
You make some good points about fallacies, but I'm honestly too anger-blind to sort them out from how I feel. Too often you make communication an exercise in detente. I'm sick of it. I did that too often on LJ to go through it all again here.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-20 07:46 am (UTC)