Why is it that online, people are willing to regularly interact with those that if they happened to meet in the flesh they would in all likelihood despise?
Up until recently, I used to frequent various web forums in which many of the debates were lively and far ranging in subject: from religion to politics to Iraq to Israel to culture and, erm, back to Israel again. In short, topics which would appear on a British blog on any given morning. Like commentors on blogs, opinions tended to be polarised, simplistic: things were either Good or Bad. Thatcherism was either evil or not. The USA is either evil or not. Fox hunting is either evil or not. You know the stuff.
For a few years I used to enjoy the debates, putting a view forward, digging up links to back it up, relishing in crushing an opponent having first led him into a cunning trap; not so much seeing your argument brutally torn apart and leaving you feeling naked, realising that you really should have fought on firmer ground.
It is a pretty obvious fact that online, people often mix with their ideological opponents as much as they mix with those whose views they share – and to a far greater extent than they would do in the real world. I have little idea why this is, other than that the internet is a better medium for arguing than say, across the floor of a pub, where things could end up outside on the street. It can hardly be deemed unhealthy to mix with people of vastly different opinions, and having ones views challenged on a regular basis not only keeps the mind sharp but serves to identify those ideas which are held dear from those on which you can be turned; knowing exactly what you believe in is probably difficult for those who have never had to present their point of view and receive criticism in return.
However, where I have found myself increasingly put off from contributing to online debates is those in which I find myself arguing with people not just with different opinions from my own, but with people with vastly different values. Having a difference of opinion and sharing the same values makes for a decent and lively debate where the rules of the contest are known and need not be stated. Having an argument with someone who shares neither your opinion or values is neither fun nor of any benefit whatsoever (except perhaps to make you grateful that you turned out like you are). This might seem like I’m stating the obvious here, but for a long time I used to spend time in the virtual company of people whose values were completely different from mine, and it never occurred to me that the reason I stopped enjoying it was because their values – not their opinions – were vastly different from mine. Looking back, I can see clearly now that those who I enjoyed debating with the most were those that shared my values – in exactly the same way that all the people who inhabit my offline world share my values.
Rather unsurprisingly, in the real world my friends do not state openly and without shame that the 9/11 attacks were fully justified. They do not excuse the murder of innocent civilians by ‘militant’ or ‘resistance’ groups. They do not shrug off the deaths of millions of people as being an acceptable cost of advancing an idea, nor do they try to convince me that shooting a 13 year old boy in cold blood and throwing his body down a mineshaft was an act necessary to right previous wrongs. I rarely, if ever, find myself breathing the same air as somebody who thinks Bush is the same as Hitler and that Che Guevara’s life is to be celebrated. And not one of my friends or acquaintances with whom I’ve had a drink has espoused a wish for Thatcher to develop cancer whilst mourning the passing of Yasser Arafat.
All of the above, so thankfully absent from my offline world, were an almost daily occurence in my online one. So why did I choose to keep such company for so long, when in the real world I would have looked on them with only scorn and contempt? I have no idea. But I have found I enjoy surfing the internet far more since I decided that I will not communicate with those who do not share my values, whatever their opinions.
I think I know where you are coming from.
Debates? It’s hardly a debate when one side cannot conceive how any other reasonable person can hold different opinions and can only argue by inceasing the invective.
I think a part of the problem is that people’s values are inherently far more personal than their opinions.
However one comes by, or develops, ones values, they form the very core of who we are. Challenging something which is the core of a person’s being is incredibly threatening – hence the often defensive reactions, lashing out at others, and a plain stubbon refusal to accept that other values might be equally of worth.
Opinions, on the other hand, are usually based on some kind of logic – logic that stems from a person’s values, to be sure, but logic nonetheless. They are secondary to a person’s values – a subset of them, if you like, and as such, criticism of a person’s opinion is far less of a threat. Persuasive argument can far more easily affect someone’s opinions than their values.
Hmmm, very interesting. Hardly xenophobic at all. Only kidding – living in Dubai I have to interact with tons of people whose value systems are completely at variance with my own – especially on the Sheikh Zayed Road!
I wondered why you buggered off. 🙂
“and a plain stubbon refusal to accept that other values might be equally of worth.”
Any of us who are critical of some aspects of fundamentalist Islam and/or Islamism in general and some of its more tenatious adherents in particular would be guilty of this particular crime.
I plainly and stubbornly refuse to accept that a value system that allows the treatment of women and non-Muslims under sharia is as worthy as the post-Enlightment model of equality regardless of race, creed or sex. The problem is that one usually appeals to logic to show that there is an OBJECTIVE difference – that our value system is superior.
This is because our “western” liberal democratic VALUE system is based on reason and logic, where Islamism is not. Any clash between these two systems cannot therefore be resolved by reason and logic, since the other is not amenable to logic in the first place.
In summary therefore, I disagree with Tim’s distinction between “Values” and “opinions”: the distinction is between those who recognise the supremacy of logic and reason and those who do not.
There is no point arguing with those who do not. They are not amenable to persuasion.
Merry Christmas!
PG