How to be Willfully Ignorant and DESTROY Your Opponents

This post started out about evolution but, due to natural selection, morphed into a post about evolution, politics, and how in-group thinking hijacks our free will and makes us robots who think just like everyone around us, but we feel really individual about it. I expect it to do very poorly in terms of shares as people have routinely shown me they are disinterested in these types of posts. Let’s jump to it.

The lesson to take away from this article is, “Hey man, let’s give people the respect of trying to understand their claim before we argue with them.” If you can internalize that you don’t really need to read the rest of it.

Wait, come back.

Understanding someone’s claim before arguing with them is a good way to go about debates, but it’s not as fun as just oversimplifying their views and then calling those views stupid.

Oversimplifying someone’s views in order to make them seem ridiculous is a great way to take the pressure off of us having to examine our own belief systems. It also gains us easy points with our in-group. What does NOT gain us easy points is nuanced thinking.

There’s really no good reason to be nuanced in your thinking other than intellectual honesty. As we all know, intellectual honesty gets almost no social media traction. It’s also very time-consuming. It’s much easier just to oversimplify the views we don’t want to agree with and move on with our day.

Here’s how a lot of conversations go when a complicated topic bumps up against our belief system. This one’s about evolution and it happens to be between me and my dad…

Maddening. But, insightful.

The Us/Them Evolution In-Group

So my dad, like many other conservative Christians, is real leery of the idea of evolution. Evolution isn’t just this theory that exists in a vacuum. The problem with believing in evolution is it’s another arrow being shot at the armor that protects his belief in Christianity. Evolution being true by itself isn’t enough to kill off Christianity, but it’s at least a flesh-wound to the whole creation story.

If the Bible might not be accurate about how everything got to be the way it is then what else might it be not so accurate about? Because conservative Christians have a lot riding on the idea that the Bible accurately portrays how we all got here it makes sense that they’d be not super into the idea of evolution.

Nobody wants to feel like their belief system might be wrong. So when the topic of evolution—or anything you personally disagree with or don’t believe—comes up, the best thing to do is to make fun of it as this totally unrealistic thing only a lunatic could possibly believe in.

The quickest way to go about doing THAT is by building a strawman and attacking it instead.

Strawman Argument: A strawman argument happens when someone takes a dumbed-down, simplified version of an argument and acts as though that is what their opposition is arguing for. 

Strawmans can be dangerous because if you don't pick up on your opponent's trickery you can find yourself defending a weak 'strawlike' version of your initial argument.

An example of this with God would be: Oh, you believe in God? So you believe in an old white man with a beard who watches you from the clouds?! Wowwww.

An example of this with evolution would be: Oh, you believe in evolution? So you believe things just happened randomly and there’s no rhyme or reason?! Wowwww.

We are all my dad

Now that I’ve picked on my dad—as a placeholder for how a standard conservative Christian protects themselves from the idea of evolution—let’s mentally zoom out so I can pick on everyone with an internet connection all at once.

Side Note: The reason I chose my dad as an example is because I know he has a sense of humor. Not everyone would find the humor in me using their sacred views as my example in a blog post where stick figures play a leading role. So, this is actually a real compliment to my dad when you think of it that way.

The above cartoon is overly simplistic and it’s easy to laugh at/be aggravated with my dad for being purposefully infuriating when it comes to the whole evolution thing. But the truth is we all are guilty of doing this when it comes to certain things we don’t want to believe. Blatantly misrepresenting our opposition’s side is an American pastime.

It’s much easier to attack a dumbed-down version of something you disagree with than to attack the actual thing. Complex issues are very rarely black and white. They’re almost always shades of gray. But, it’s a lot less time consuming to just pretend the issue isn’t that complex and it’s actually just another black and white situation. Black and white situations are nice because it’s easy to see where you’re correct and your opponent is an incompetent moron.

Let’s stop trying to see everything as black and white.

What if we all made an effort to actually see things as shades of gray? To do this we need to mentally jump out of our in-group circle of influence. Instead of being Team Jesus or Team Pro-Choice or Team Gun Reform or Team Evolution, we need to be on Team Truth.

If we’re right about what we believe, Team Jesus—or whatever team we identify with—and Team Truth will actually be the same thing. The key is we have to be adamant that we remain on Team Truth while being able to take or leave our allegiance to Team Jesus. When someone comes along who believes the opposite from us we shouldn’t view them as someone from the opposite team; someone who we need to defeat by any means necessary.

Instead, we should view the whole situation as a chance to expand our understanding of the world. Every little bit we can expand our understanding gets us that much closer to hitting the bullseye of Team Truth. 

It’s easy to visualize how we’re all on the same team when we pursue the bullseye of Team Truth. That is until someone who sees things differently than us decides to be annoying and wrong. Then our egos make us are pretty sure WE’RE already on Team Truth while THEY sit there with their teeth in their mouth being unreasonable. THEY can suck eggs over on Team Wrong.

Since this is how humans are, let’s discuss how we can move people away from Team Wrong and towards Team Truth.

If you’re anything like everyone else around you, you’re pretty sure you’re already on Team Truth. So, it’s really important to get whoever you’re disagreeing with to let go of their egotistical beliefs and join you. In that case, like a good American, you’ll want to argue with them. The key to arguing with any validity is first understanding what everyone over on Team Wrong is claiming. You need to know their claims before you have any realistic hope of getting them to abandon ship.

I know it’s tempting to just inform your opponent that they’re wrong, but you’ll gain more traction if you approach the conversation as a mutual search for truth, rather than a lecture you’re freely handing out. Inconveniently, they think THEY’RE on Team Truth and it’s actually YOU who is on Team Wrong.

If you don’t understand what your opposition is claiming and you still try to argue with them then you’re just being shitty. This doesn’t stop people from doing it. But that doesn’t make it okay. Being louder or misrepresenting what the other side actually thinks does not make you the winner.

Building Steel Men

When you start talking about politics, religion, or any other divisive topic, you’ll see people attacking a lot of straw men—attacking a dumbed-down version of their opponent’s view. Back before people knew what the stars were made of they probably had a bunch of conversations like this…

This is just how humans are wired. We aren’t fully rational beings who can take in information objectively. I’m not objective and neither are conservative Christians and neither are you.

Instead of building strawmen out of our opponents’ beliefs we need to build steel men. Building a steelman looks the exact opposite of building a strawman. It happens when you build the best possible case for why someone should adopt the way of thinking that you’re currently disagreeing with.

If you can argue for your opponent’s position as well or better than they can AND THEN go on to defeat that position then you’ve really accomplished something. Whether it changes their mind or not is irrelevant. What it will do is give you the assurance that you tried your best to get to the real truth of things.

This takes a lot of effort and, more annoyingly, might leave us not so sure that our position is even the best position to hold.

Finding out you might be wrong is a real problem if that belief is a huge part of your identity.

Nobody in your in-group is going to give you praise if you spend a bunch of time thinking about how they all might be wrong about something you mutually hold dear. So, it’s kind of a lonely path. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

If part of your tribe’s identity was the belief that stars were just holes in the blanket that covers the Earth at night, it might be really dangerous to suggest otherwise.

If the group felt those holes were an integral part of their story they might even kick you out of the group for suggesting maybe the holes-in-the-blanket story doesn’t actually make any sense.

Today we probably won’t die for disagreeing with our in-group. We might lose a few Facebook friends, but we won’t lose access to food and shelter. It still seems like a very big deal to go against in-group thinking.

It’s hard to disappoint our in-group friends, but that’s not the hardest part about putting our most sacred beliefs under the microscope. The hardest part is the possibility of losing the belief itself.

Also, the people we disagree with are just stupid and annoying. So, that doesn’t help things either.

If we forget teams we’ll find we actually agree more than we disagree.

Humans have evolved to constantly bunch themselves into us/them groups as a survival mechanism. Nobody wants to be left out in the cold so we’re evolutionarily programmed to pick a side and stick to it even when that side starts drifting further away from the Team Truth bullseye. It’s better to be wrong and warm than cold and right.

To go against our group’s beliefs is not an okay thing to do. Trying to find common ground between two groups doesn’t get you praise for being a nuanced thinker, it gets rocks thrown at you. So, even though most of us would admit we personally really don’t know nearly enough on most subjects to have a strongly held opinion, we can find ourselves fighting tooth and nail with the other side because we asked our neighbor—whose life looks nearly identical to ours— and we both agree that those other guys are lunatics.

Heads or Tails?

Some people are actual lunatics and their beliefs have no logical rhyme or reason to them. But, a lot of people aren’t actual lunatics. They’re just liberals or conservatives, Christians or atheists.

They have certain views on things and if you just look at their views you might think they’re being silly. When you follow the thread to find out WHY they believe what they believe their thought process makes sense. You might be able to trace their line of thinking all the way back to a coin-flip decision where they kind of arbitrarily picked heads and you kind of arbitrarily picked tails. Had you picked heads way back then, you’d have arrived at the same conclusion they’re currently at.

More often than not it wasn’t even a situation where you yourself picked tails, but rather someone you greatly respect was a tails kind of person so you decided to be a tails kind of person too. The person you’re currently disagreeing with also had someone they really looked up to, but that person was a heads person.

Knowing this, you might not end up agreeing with them, but at least you’ll see how they came to their conclusion. And, if you just ignore what your in-group believes, you might find yourself actually changing your mind.

Into the Gray World

So let’s shake it up, people. Let’s get nuanced about our opinions. Let’s actively search for truth instead of trying to just get high-fives from people in our tribe.

One of you decide to be Team Republican but also believe in climate change. One of you can be Team Gun Reform but also drive an old truck. Someone can vote for the democratic candidate but admit they’re weirded out by all the pictures of Joe Biden looking like he spends most of his day smelling everyone.

Let’s have some fun seeing the world in shades of gray instead of black and white!

If you enjoyed this article please share it with your friends and enemies

Here are a few articles that pick a side and aren’t all that nuanced:

PSA: Don’t Stop for Pedestrians in the Middle of the Goddamn Highway

Having Kids is the F*cking Worst

Santa Claus- How to Make Poor Kids Feel Like Shit