Quick half-formed (but hopefully not half-baked) thoughts.
The last post I put up on this site was a photo of a wonderful letter Noam Chomsky wrote to me in 1995, in reply to a “how do you keep your hope alive?” plea. It got a lot of traction on Twitter, with lots of likes and retweets. And a very small number of Chomsky-haters. As an experiment I engaged with one of the four, and asked for a citation to support the. usual smears. I was sent links to hit-pieces by unhinged sites, and nothing primary: not the smoking guns the person clearly thought they were. That’s what motivated reasoning will do, it will blind you to the shakiness and the shonkiness of the evidence you’re putting forward, because you want (even need) it to be true, and it feels true.
Entertainingly, as I kept pointing out that the evidence was not there, my “interlocutor” started to fling OTHER (and even more outlandish) mud, hoping – I guess – to distract and demoralise. Never play chess with a pigeon and all that. Mute buttons are a wonderful thing.
Next. A couple of smart people I follow on Twitter have pointed out that the death of Michael Mosley on a Greek island was part of the general picture of increasing extreme heat and how deadly it can be, and very very quickly. Their feeds quickly filled up with all the vile ad homimens, climate denial, missing the point pearl-clutching etc etc.
Third. One of the authors who pulled out of the Hay festival over the sponsorship deal with Baillie Gifford tried to explain that he doesn’t control whether or not Amazon/Waterstone’s sells his books. The level of vitriol and hate was extreme in response, and sarcasm and accusations of hypocrisy abounded.
What’s going on? Well, partly anonymity gives you permission to be a douche. I get that, as a recovering (?) douche who has been douche-y without anonymity.
But I think there is something deeper. And I think what is going on is not just a mix of jealousy and inferiority (when it comes to someone like Chomsky).
I think there are a lot of people who know that we, as a species/societies are in very very deep shit. They can’t admit it out loud, because they’ve painted themselves into a corner, and would lose status in their own tribes if they said, in effect “the dirty hippies I’ve been deriding were right.” They backed the “wrong horse” and it kills them, makes them feel like idiots, because they believe they are smart people and to be forced to confront their self-image in that way would threaten disintegration.
Some of them also know the problems are immensely complex, that there is no easy place to start to cope with them (you rarely if ever solve complex problems). And they fear/hate/resent people who are willing to try – by naming the problems, or even by starting to act somewhere, anywhere. These people and their actions remind them that they are NOT naming the problems, that they are NOT starting to act, but instead are using everyone’s complicity to avoid lifting a finger. The actions of others make them feel bad about themselves, so they lash out really really hard (2).
These are people who would sneer at Rosa Parks, or the Freedom Riders – “why are you concentrating on transport, when there are bigger issues.” These are people who would smear those trying to desegregate schools, or enrol voters. They hate their cowardice, their feelings of inadequacy. They can’t process these feelings, and so rage against anyone who is acting, however ineffectually, however “hypocritically.” They shout at others to drown out the nagging quiet but persistent voice in them that speaks of their own bad faith…
That rage is, unless you expect it and can understand some of where it is coming from, quite confronting and intimidating. It “works” to send people back into their boxes, and maintain social silences, “civil obedience”….
See also the Hypocrite Zealot Trap.
Footnotes
(1) fun fact, I met him to say hello to a month ago – that was the extent of my interaction though.
(2) Also though, some people are just assholes.
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