Just overhearing the latest talking head on CNN (ugh) discussing conspiracy theories and their attraction to many people. One thing this person notes is that to engaged and try to change the minds of conspiracy-minded folk, you cannot attack them and call them stupid etc. if you want to change any minds. Rather, try to ease into it to seek common ground and so on, find out what their fears are. I think this is good advice but I'm also going to temper that with what I admit is a bit of folk wisdom. I don't think that conspiratorial beliefs are about fear. Instead, I think they are about a kind of power and sense of privilege. They allow people who have not worked very hard to study anything, or keep up to date with current affairs, to feel a kind of sense of authority in having access to what they perceive is a special kind of truth. It is knowledge that they came to first, or early on. It's like the same sense of pride some people have when they 'discovered' a popular artist early in their careers. This feeling gives people a sense of power, either over others who are more knowledgeable than they are, or over the affairs of the world. It can be a sense of comfort providing some relief over fears, but those fears I don't think are necessarily driven by important things like economic existence and survival. It's a license for laziness to substitute for learning.
So, if you're trying to engage with people deeply soaked in conspiratorial thinking, it is indeed important to find common ground with them. However, you need to also be aware that in discussing their motivating fears, these might also be motivated arguments meant to deflect from deeper personal anxieties about self. These will likely be feelings of inadequacy that they are masking that you will not easily uncover in the course of a single conversation...
0 Comments
|
Martin d brazeauPalaeontologist, fieldworker, sometimes phylogenetic programmer. Transplanted Canadian in UK. All views are my own. How to pronounce my name? Rhymes with "bureau" or "chateau". He/him/his. Archives
December 2022
Categories
All
|