Yesterday I described some of what drives a Blogger; the passion to communicate and convince that Bloggers and commenters evince is their greatest value and their primary defect. No one is likely to Blog on a daily basis unless they are driven for internal reasons. Such reasons include the obvious conscious desire to convince people of a point of view and to engage in a discussion but other, less conscious desires, for recognition, for a sense of community, to reinforce one's moral and ethical virtue, all play a role. There are also other, often more conflicted and/or problematic desires expressed through blogs, exhibitionist impulses, authoritarian impulses, narcissistic impulses (for worshipful acolytes.) All of these kinds of desires plus many others, are undoubtedly part of the mix of rationalities and irrationalities that are summed by our executive apparatus (our Ego, to put it into more Psychoanalytic terms) and expressed as a Blog.
For a Blog reader, many of the same tendencies are at play. If I may be somewhat presumptuous and perhaps a bit arrogant (I did say I can be accused of arrogance at times) I would suggest that on the more sophisticated Blogs, the discussion usually attempts and often succeeds in arguing at an elevated level of discourse; for evidence just check the ongoing discussion at Part I of this series. Contrast this with comments at the Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, where apostates are verbally defenestrated. (I am not aware of such a demand for conformity at conservative Blogs, but I assume it could happen.) However, even at a Blog that attempts to maintain a cordial tone, like ShrinkWrapped, those who venture over and disagree have to be prepared for strong reactions; sometimes they comment in order to elicit emotional reactions; in the event, those who stay around to discuss are worthy of commendation. (And, no, I don't know Charles Stewart, and he didn't put me up to this comment.)
Most Psychoanalysts would suggest that there is no sphere of human behavior which is completely free form internal conflict, and Blogs are no different.
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper (HT: Vanderleun)
Dr. X has commented here and has put up two posts which directly address posts of mine. He does two things which are fairly common and help make the discussion more difficult. In his first effort, Remember to Practice Safe INtellectual INtercourse, he misunderstands one of my comments in ways which render its meaning the opposite of my intention:
Trying to explain the exasperating phenomenon of people who continue to disagree with him on Iraq, despite his eloquent arguments and unassailable mastery of objective facts, Shrinkwrapped writes:
'Those of us who have not been infected with the thought disorder known as post-modernism and believe that there exists an actual reality that we can reasonably and objectively approach; if that is the case, what is it that prevents people from recognizing facts that are right in front of their eyes?'
It sounds to me like the erudite Shrinkwrapped experienced a little thought glitch during the writing of those sentences, but never mind that.
It is quite possible that my writing was too clever for its purpose. MY full comment was:
For those of us who consider ourselves at war with Islamic fascism it is often extremely difficult to understand how our political opponents can fail to see what is so clear to us. At the same time, those who think that our invasion of Iraq was a terrible blunder in no way related to the war on terror are unable to understand why we don't see such obvious "facts" as that Bush lied, and the war is all about oil, and terrorism is essentially a police problem to which a military response is inappropriate at best, and down right dangerous to us (by creating many more enemies than we can possibly kill) at worst. Most of the time, even when these questions are addressed in a common language, people tend to talk past or at each other, rather than to each other. There is almost no real debate and minimal chance of changing anyone's mind. Those of us who have not been infected with the thought disorder known as post-modernism and believe that there exists an actual reality that we can reasonably and objectively approach; if that is the case, what is it that prevents people from recognizing facts that are right in front of their eyes? Actually, it is more accurate to ask, what makes it so hard for people to accept facts that are in conflict with their pre-existing beliefs? If we can understand this, we will have a much better understanding of what makes it so difficult for a person to change their mind.
I wrote this thinking that it was clear that both sides of the equation clearly feel that they are correct and wondering how it is that two such completely incompatible views of the same data can be explained. The most likely explanation is that even those of us who are most certain of their position cannot possibly have a complete grasp of reality or a monopoly on "truth." Because Dr. X misunderstood this (or I did a particularly poor job of explaining what I meant; obviously I think my view is more correct about the Iraq War than the anti-War position and I'm sure that comes through in the post) he made a second Blogger's error. He adopted a tone of dismissive snarkiness which would serve to reinforce the prejudices of his readers who agree with him but would tend to discourage those who agree with me from reading further. He loses the opportunity to raise doubts and questions. If the point of our posts is to "preach to the choir" this is of no consequence but if we want to start or continue a discussion/argument, we need to be cognizant of why we resort to snark because what gets thoroughly lost in the post is how best to address our differences of opinion and viewpoint. For a reader, dismissing a post because the author descends into snark (and snark has a definite appeal at times!) can be unfortunate; it sometimes pays to ignore the insults and see if there are any points to be gleaned. In Dr. X's second post, in which he failed to refrain from insulting my readers, a more egregious insult than insulting me, as far as I'm concerned, he makes some excellent points that are obscured by his gratuitous insults. In Why Neo-cons Don't Change Their Minds About The War, he warns us that political, and other, conversions, risk adopting an overly rigid posture:
From the intellectual beginnings of the neo-con movement to the testimonials of Shrinkwrapped and his fellow neo-con bloggers, the neo-con movement is largely a conversion movement. These new conservatives are also neo-con|verts to a conservative sect with its own political tenets that are distinct from other brands of political conservatism. For example, many conservatives would prefer that the United States eschew foreign entanglements as much as possible, in contrast to neo-cons who support a robust, even dominating, presence on the world stage accompanied by aggressive efforts to influence world affairs. Neo-cons often confuse the foreign interventionist tenets espoused by their neo-con founders with conservatism more broadly. And, in a manner that sometimes comes across a bit like a thought disorder, one often hears neo-cons blathering on about liberal ignorance on economic principles as if citing such ignorance represents vindication for neo-con support for the war by virtue of linguistic proximity to discussion of their position on the war.
Conversion Does Not Change The Mind
What many of us appreciate about the converted, including neo-con|verts, is that their conversions sometimes occur in reaction to a serious narcissistic injury or a series of such injuries. When some event or series of events devastate a defensively constructed belief system that serves to protect the narcissist from any realistic sense of personal vulnerability, the narcissist may undergo a belief renovation that restores the shattered sense of invulnerability and personal supremacy. This is one of the reasons why conversion experiences tend to engender an air of smug confidence among the converted. Rather than indicating character that is hospitable to change, wholesale conversion often represents a defensive cosmetic change in response to a psychological emergency.
Converts tend to be rigid, militant and defensive when it comes to their beliefs. They have trouble dealing with any data that is not easily assimilated into a rigid set of tenets associated with their conversion experience. Among 12-steppers, such rigid adherence to ‘program’ details that have not been deeply tested and integrated into character is sometimes referred to as ‘white-knuckle sobriety.’ This expression refers to a recognition that changes in the reformed alcoholic’s outward behavior with respect to the consumption of alcohol do not necessarily indicate that an underlying characterological change has occurred.
In fact, I would suggest to Dr. X that my political philosophy has not changed as much as what is commonly referred to as "liberalism"; I would suggest that I was and remain a traditional liberal who has been abandoned by modern liberalism. This is not the time or place to go into this in any detail; however, since I remain convinced that our invasion of Iraq was the right decision (though the aftermath has been more difficult than many expected or suggested) I would like to refer back to his post's title and I would turn the question around: If you believed that the war in Iraq was a wise decision as part of our efforts to fight back against Islamic fascism, a movement that has been gathering steam for many years and aims to enslave much of the world in an extremely rigid, extremely illiberal political system, how do you justify changing your mind to opposition to the ongoing effort? This is not addressed to those who opposed the war from the beginning; they have been consistent. It is also not addressed to those who believe we need to change our tactics and strategy in order to make a more thorough victory a reality. But for those who supported the war, at a time when most people, including most assuredly our enemies, believe that abandoning Iraq would be a great victory for them, it seems to me that the weight of the argument must be borne by those who support, in effect, losing the war.
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