The “Strawman” on Social Media
Why conversations don’t happen online
The ultimate goal of political thinking on social media, and so largely the ultimate goal of liberal thinking, is progress. The means for this to happen, especially when confronting huge issues such as systemic racism, sexism, economic disparities, and so much more, is surprisingly simple: talk about it; have discussions. At least for the first step…
But does this actually happen? I mean, sure you’ve seen people posting one-liner quotes that really just embody how stupid the other side is, but do you really talk? Do you really even want to talk, which is to ask do you really want to take that first step?
I worked at a camp in Tahoe last summer, and as one can imagine working with 5–12 year olds, disagreements of course emerge.
I heard two boys yelling one day, so I went over to break it up and see what the issue was. After getting them to stop talking over each other, one says that he wanted to go in the lake. The other then came in screaming saying that he absolutely did not want to do crafts.
Now if you’re like me, it took a while before I figured out what the problem was, because you can clearly see how easy it is to both go in a lake and not do crafts. It isn’t a one or the other type of thing, both can happen so easily together.
To help them figure out their issue (or lack thereof), I asked them if each knew what the other person wanted. This apparently wasn’t enough because as they went to explain what the other wanted, the other would interrupt them, “that’s not true, that’s not true!” So then I said that they needed to explain what the other wanted to that other person’s satisfaction.
In other word’s they needed to explain what the other wanted without the other interrupting them to correct the explanation.
Precisely the missing skill in today’s desire for a growing discussion, is the skill of explaining what the other person means to their satisfaction. If you want to make progress in a conversation, you need to start at the same point. You cannot tell people what they believe, even if they subscribe to certain ideologies, that does not mean you know what ideology means to that person, or what strain of it, or that they agree with everything you perceive that ideology to mean.
If you live in the world, you do this. Not necessarily the extreme case of completely assuming what someone’s life is based on his or her appearance, but it is simply how our brains work. I’m no psychologist, neurologist, or anything of the sort, but there are processes known as assimilation and accommodation with respect to schema. I know, fun words. This is usually used when talking about how babies learn and process new things.
For example, there is a stage in development where most babies will look at a four legged creature and, no matter what it actually is, will call it a horse. This is their schema of a horse, that is, any creature with four legs. Whenever he or she comes across another horse the baby assimilates that horse into the schema. If the baby sees a zebra it would likely first call it a horse, however, when the baby’s parents correct him or her, the baby then accommodates the existing schema of a horse.
Now that’s all quite confusing, but the point is that humans learn by creating patterns, or schema, and using them as a way to interpret the world. It’s not that some people are being judgmental by categorizing, it is simply the way that every single person thinks.
But there was a time when people taught us to think critically about other people’s beliefs. That means actually trying to understand why they believe what they do. That might even mean taking time to try to process things the way that they do for a while. We used to be taught that when disagreements arrive, we ought to first consider what we believe, then figure out what the other person believes. Not what we think or assume they believe.
How do you know if you are assuming or subconsciously guessing? Have real discussions! The type of discussion where your only goal is to understand someone that you don’t agree with, where there are no ulterior motives. Where you genuinely care about the other person enough to hear them out; where you give every single person the respect that maybe they have thought through their beliefs, maybe they have seen the same statistics as you. Life is not that simple!
Yes, I am talking about that person who you can’t believe would vote for Trump. I am talking about that person who riots to be heard.
This is not about what you think is right, it’s about understanding why they think they are. If you really want conversations to start, if you really want to make a change, stop posting one-line quips that don’t even accurately represent the side you are trying to “bash”. It literally does less than nothing. Stop demonizing groups of people you think you don’t agree with, or people that you are absolutely sure you don’t agree with. It makes them angry and unwilling to listen to you (for good reason).
Not every conservative is blind to the problems of underrepresented peoples. Not every liberal is lazy and wants to be carried through life by the government.
This problem is what I’m calling the “Strawman” on Social Media. We build up strawmen for another person’s supposed argument and pride ourselves in beating it down; but their actual argument, the one you didn’t just fabricate, remains entirely untouched. We talk ourselves to death and convince ourselves that it is productive, that it’s really changing something.
It doesn’t matter in the slightest if you think you know what someone else believes. It only matters if they agree that you know what they believe.
