A Look into the Toxic: Thirteen Ways
Political and Social Debate is Done Wrong (Part One)
Oh boy.
Since
posting my Ten Strategies in Engaging in Political and Social Topics, I’ve
tried to use them both in person and online. What I’ve seen consistently is how
messy so many these conversations, debates, and arguments are when it comes to
politics and other social issues. In order to make any progress with at least
some people, it hasn’t been enough to just offer ideas in a way that’s
effective and ethical, but to also be able to recognize what mistakes others
people are making, to be able to work with or around those mistakes.
And the list
I’m making is of mistakes. At least for America (I won’t make a blanket comment
about the world), we’re not taught how to negotiate with people well. There is
not a “Getting Along with Others” class after Kindergarten, we take it for
granted. I took debate my senior year of high school, and learned nothing
helpful. To be fair, I did the minimum, just trying to win brownie points for
college applications, but I do remember that debating between two groups,
having a hopefully impartial judge give numbers through different criteria
isn’t how life works. The knowledge I gained that did teach me how to engage
better with others was mostly from the U.S. Peace Corps and taking specific
electives for my Masters Degree, I had to go out of my way to learn even basic
negotiating principles.
I really
want to emphasize that most people’s toxic debate strategies are not done with
malicious intent. We’ll be covering some of that (in Part Three), but the
majority of what I’ve seen out there is well-intentioned people frustrated
because they’re trying to reach across the table, to understand better, but
come up short. At least for the strategies in this first part, doing any of the
following doesn’t mean you or I are bad people. It means we’re bringing the
wrong tools to the task at hand.
Trying to Win
Summary
This is
probably the most common toxic strategy I’ve seen. It’s pretty much what it
says, that entering a political or social conversation with the intent to
“win”, to score more imaginary points, to bring people to our side whatever the
side may be.
Similar to
trying to win, is also just trying to make the other person lose. The difference
is that someone trying to win is attempting to do so on their arguments while
someone just trying to make the other one lose does not offer their own
insights, only tries to point out the flaws in others’.
The
Temptation
This is how
we’re taught about debates. As I mentioned, I did a brief stint doing debate
club in high school, and we were given a numerical score across several
categories and told who won. Even in Presidential Debates, we like to talk
about who won or who lost as if it were a competition.
And we like
to win. Winning’s fun. Winning means more people agree with us about political
matters, making it just a little more likely that our country will reflect our
own values. Why wouldn’t we want to try to win?
The
Problem
There are no
scores in life to who debated better. The person who made the most coherent,
evidence-based arguments does not necessarily get what they want. Most people
don’t abandon long-held political and social views over one conversation, or
even over half-a-dozen. In reality, we are fighting over inches, not miles. It’s
easy to ask another person to change, but it’s not so simple when the situation
is flipped.
And it’s
easy to feel we won because we liked our own arguments while another person
feels they won because they used the talking points that they felt were more
relevant. It leads to nowhere.
Solutions
Seek to
learn and to teach instead. That is what discussions are about, they are
sharing ideas. It is about putting evidence, perspective, and context to the
world, informing people, and they in turn doing the same for us.
When dealing
with someone trying to win, who is clearly trying to score points, to feel that
they’ve made the better ideas, just bring it up. “Hey, I know we both feel
passionately about this and neither of us will change our minds. Let’s just try
to understand each other’s perspectives a little bit better”. Change the rules
from a competition to a dialogue. One other way to help bridge the gap is
recognize their valid points. “Hey, you make a good point here, and I agree
with that part. Here’s where I still feel a bit differently.” If someone wants
to win, let them win a little bit to keep them engaged.
When dealing
with someone trying to make us lose, then just try to learn. We can use people like that to find flaws or
weaknesses in our own arguments. They’re not going to try to learn in return,
which is their loss, but that doesn’t mean that some good can’t come from it.
Misinterpretation
Summary
Not so much
as a strategy per se, but an issue that constantly rises up when dealing with
heavy political matters is misinterpretation. Language is imperfect, we all see
the world and interact with it in different ways. Although there is certainly a
range of what “freedom” means, there will be inevitable variations depending on
our values and experiences along with other concepts and ideas.
Though not
always, we usually treat ourselves as the protagonist of our own stories. So if
another person is talking about how a political matter relates to them, it’s
easy to misinterpret it and think they’re talking about how a political matter
relates to us.
Example: A
person living on the main street in a town may say a new bridge will help reduce
traffic. The person living by where the bridge would be built can’t understand
because for them it’ll create more traffic.
The
Temptation
I’ll
emphasize it again that we are the protagonist in our own story. To a degree,
we won’t understand one another, no matter how hard we try. Different people
are different. Even more universal values like love and family and prioritized
and interpreted differently. This disconnect we have is frustrating to try to
overcome, to open our minds to.
Cross-cultural
communication and engagement is rewarding, but it’s also tiring. It’s easier to
just focus on what we know and understand.
The
Problem
I think this
one’s pretty self-explanatory. If we don’t understand each other, it makes
building bridges, learning, teaching a lot more difficult. Some
misinterpretations are going to happen, but when they are not resolved, when we
don’t strive to get a better understanding, the discussion is stagnant. We can
still vote, can still lobby, but our ability to come to any sort of consent or
consensus becomes lost.
Solutions
Empathy is a
wonderful tool, sharing people’s feelings. Stepping away from our own feelings
and trying to realize another person’s can accomplish a lot. When we get
confused, rather than try to ask ourselves, “How do I understand this?” instead
try, “How does this other person, with their different values and experiences,
understand this?”
Failing
that, simply ask. “Let me clarify,” “This is how I’m interpreting what you just
said, am I right?” “What did you mean by so and so?” Questions are a powerful
tool to overcome misunderstandings.
Oversimplification
Summary
We have to
simplify political and social issues. An expert can devote their entire career
to one aspect of one major issue, dealing with new information, changes in
public opinion, legislation, and so on and so forth. And there are a lot of
complex and contentious issues in our society today, with limited time in our
daily lives to dedicate to them.
Oversimplification
comes in two forms. One is leaving out crucial information. It can be leaving
out any piece of information that could significantly change the perspective on
a certain issue, and often it’s highlighting only the positives or only the negatives.
The other form of oversimplification is not only simplifying an issue, but
truly believing the issue is simple when it’s not.
The
Temptation
The balance
between simplifying social issues for public consumption, and oversimplifying
them to the point of causing toxicity isn’t clear, and there is likely no
perfect solution for all of us. When we are given the choice of how much time
to talk to people about contentious issues, it’s easy to shorten that time.
When deciding which main points to cover, it’s easy to focus only on the ones
that support our position, or those dissenting views we feel we can easily
counter.
And we want
things to be simple. It’s comforting to feel we have a grasp on the world,
realizing that there’s a lot we don’t know can be annoying. Spending hours and
dollars on a semester-long college course, only to find that we only just
scratched the surface of whatever it is we learned isn’t all that fun. It’s so
much easier to stop and pat ourselves on the back, and feel we’ve conquered
it.
The
Problem
When we
focus only on one side of the argument, we fail to prepare ourselves for
engaging with people we disagree with. Without being able to say, “I agree with
this movement, though admit that it has a weakness with “X” and falls short on
“Y”, we make our positions fragile. We set ourselves up to have to confess to
them later, or to try to hide them. When people find out that crucial
information was left out, it takes away a level of trust that’s hard to win
back.
Believing
that issues themselves are simple kills nuanced conversation. We start throwing
out terms like “common sense” or comments like “Well I don’t know much, but
what I do know is that [I’m correct when it comes to this complex,
ever-changing issue that I think is simple]”. When we not only simplify an
issue, but believe it to be simple, then we don’t feel a reason to sit down and
talk about it.
Solutions
Accept that
issues are complex that rarely any one person has all the knowledge, and thus
it takes a community or more to fill in the gaps. Be skeptical when someone only
thinks there are positives or negatives to any given issue, and try not to fall
into that habit yourself.
Inform
yourself.
When coming
across someone who’s trying to dumb things down, or truly believes something is
simple, bring up the scope of an issue. If we’re talking about tens or even
hundreds-of-millions of people, surely we’ll all be affected a little
differently. By bringing up those who may not benefit, or even be hurt, by a
given position it can lead to a more nuanced discussion about how taxation,
regulation, conflict, and more can be tweaked and changed to mitigate those
problems. Those conversations can lead to a better dialogue.
Poor Metaphors and Comparisons
Summary
Related to
simplification, metaphors and other comparisons are means to help us describe
and illustrate our points. However, metaphors and comparisons aren’t inherently
accurate or useful, it does take thought and effort to make them relevant.
Definition
of metaphor
: a figure in speech in which a word
of phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of
another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
In essence,
it’s comparing two or more things that are not literally the same. There is a
limit to what metaphors can convey, great in small dosages, not so much when we
rely on them exclusively. The same applies to all comparisons, most of the time
comparisons can be made in general terms, but not with specific details and
nuances. “Poor” metaphors and comparisons either fail to understand these
limits, or fail in even the most basic functions.
The Temptation
Metaphors
are one of those literary terms I learned, and I believe many of us learn,
quite young. It’s ingrained into our minds early, and sticks with us. Metaphors
can offer a visualization to whatever we’re discussing, or can put things in
terms that we understand better. Do we know about geopolitics? Likely not. Do
we know fast food chains? Sure. Let’s make a metaphor.
We naturally
compare and contrast our world, it’s how our brains work. We categorize things.
It would be an even more difficult world to communicate in without comparisons.
However, sometimes those comparisons come spur of the moment before we have the
time to think them through. Given the imperfect nature of comparisons, it’s
easy to not worry about where they aren’t true. It’s only a comparison after
all, right?
The
Problem
Black Lives
Matters, the Alt Right, militia groups, Antifa, and other political groups are
not liberal or conservative counterparts to one another. Each has their own
agenda, their own methods, their own membership, their own history, and more.
The problems that Democrats face are different than the ones that Republicans
face both internally and externally. This isn’t even getting into other
countries. Comparing groups like these almost always generalizes and misses the
point to one if not both groups.
Metaphors
done wrong can compare human beings to inanimate objects, a dangerous narrative
to have for those people described (more on this in Part Three). They can also
be wildly inaccurate, the most famous one recently being Donald Trump Jr.
comparing Syrian refugees to skittles, if we would eat a bowl if we knew some
of them were poisoned. This would suggest that a single bowl’s (around 20-30)
worth of refuges would have 3-4 as terrorists, which even the highest
estimations get nowhere close to.
These
mischaracterizations lead to misinformation, of us believing things that are
inaccurate. We can’t build an understanding with one another when we ourselves
are wrong about the facts.
Solutions
Don’t rely
on comparisons and metaphors. Use them sparingly to complement your arguments,
not define them. When we come across those who do try to make false or tenuous
comparisons, push the conversation away from it. “I see where you’re going with
this, but I don’t feel comfortable trying to compare this serious issue with
something like fast food chains/ice cream flavors/whatever it is” or “You know,
these two political groups really have nothing in common. I’m good with talking
about both of them, but maybe not at the same time.”
By putting
the actual situation, the actual people involved as the focus on the
conversation, it’ll be easier to avoid troublesome metaphors and comparisons
that mislead or misinform.
***
ACTION!
With the
four toxic strategies in Part One, as well those I’ll be discussin in Parts Two
and Three, identify which ones you’re prone to use. Once again, it doesn’t make
you a bad person, but consider how you can avoid them, or do it less in the
future. Of the first four, I admit comparisons and metaphors are my Achilles heel,
and I have to always be mindful of it.
***
What’s Next?
Parts Two
and Three. Part Two will cover the remaining strategies that though not
ill-intended, are still toxic to creating understanding and building bridges.
Part Three will cover those strategies that do cross over that line between genuine
and malicious more times than not.
