Thinking about thinking

When I was in grad school, I had to take a theory class. Theory, if you haven't been in college in the past thirty years, is now required for undergraduate humanities majors, but it was barely even a thing when I was in college, so I had no idea. I had studied literary criticism, but for that we just read the great critics from Aristotle to the present. And yes, they were mostly white men. (But sometimes they were brilliant.)

So "theory" was new to me, in the sense the word is used now. I'm not nearly pretentious enough or confident enough in my academic skills to explain to you exactly what it means, but I can tell you what I learned from it, and that is to critique my assumptions, and the assumptions of the culture I live in. You methodically learn to question everything you know about economics, war, history, gender, race, politics, and so on.

It's difficult and mind-bending at first, but as you get the hang of it, it becomes fascinating, and even exhilarating. You realize that our reality has no universal inherent meaning, rightness, it's just the way we've been raised to think about things. The sentient multi-gendered sea slugs of the Alpha Centauri system would not understand human homophobia. Our version of culture, the way things are, is a human construction, something we've created by living it.

Theory is also the reason that conservatives have become so disgusted with higher education. For the past couple of decades, conservative parents have proudly sent their kids off to college, only to have them come home full of bizarre ideas that don't make any sense to someone who has never questioned their culture, the world they live and breathe and move in. Their kids are like fish who have suddenly become aware of the water, while the parents are still steadily, and sometimes with great difficulty and perseverance, swimming onward, unaware that water exists.

But for better or for worse, those of us who have made the Theory Leap can't go back. But sometimes we fail to realize two things (maybe more, but I've only got two of them). One is the solid gift of living in a functioning society, where generally speaking things work. Elections happen (yes, sometimes voting rights are compromised), water runs out of taps (yes, sometimes tainted water in economically disadvantaged communities), if you call 911, ambulances or police cars arrive (yes, faster if you live in a wealthier community). Kids get educated, houses are bought and sold, groceries are shipped to grocery stores. Those things aren't true everywhere. Those mystified parents are sometimes right when they react with their own outrage: you don't know how good you've got it.

But also the theory converts have failed to take the next step and realize that the new way we have learned to think is its own human construction. Just as the old, increasingly obsolete, ways of thinking about things are nothing more than the way we've always taught/trained/brainwashed to think, so the new ways are nothing more than the way we've come to think, that will eventually become obsolete again. Rather than realizing that you can always take a meta-stance, you can always widen your scope and broaden your point of view, we've fallen into the trap of thinking that the new ways are the ways to think, the right ways to think. And like the conservatives who are viscerally offended by challenges to their cherished "way of life," we become deeply emotionally attached to our new ways of thinking.

It's so damn hard to avoid this. I've had my own personal realization about this over the past couple of days. I saw a post on Instagram that deeply, strongly disagreed with one of my own deeply, strongly held opinions. (for the record, it was someone considerably farther left than me talking about one of my more moderate--yet still strongly held-- opinions). She was passionate, and heartfelt, and also --in my opinion-- exaggerating.

Exaggerating is one of the principal tools of both of the extreme sides. You spin the story, choose the details you want to see, maybe ignore or skim over the details that might not quite jibe with what you want to see here, and then BLARE YOUR OUTRAGE. It's a standard tactic of a persuasive argument. It's the way legal cases are built, it's the way vacuum cleaners are sold, it's the way people get elected to public office or shunned for life. I'm sure I've done it myself, probably right here in this blog. It's so much a part of the way humans interact that we're probably not even aware of when we've done it.

But even though I know that, I found myself with a ridiculously physical reaction. I was a little shaky, a little sweaty, a little nauseated. Because part of me sees her point-- she is, after all, a liberal, as I am-- I felt a little ashamed that I hadn't fallen into line with her MORAL OUTRAGE, that I hadn't felt that OUTRAGE myself at the situation, before she stated her opinion.

But you know what? I didn't. She can spin the story the way she did, and she can pick apart the situation we were both thinking about, and she can make it work. Because the situation is complicated, and complicated situations lend themselves to that. But she also has to ignore a few details, skim over some broader concerns, and unload an entire mountain of historical and cultural guilt on a situation where one person was acting in the way that he thought he was supposed to act. And she gets to walk away from that BLARE OF OUTRAGE feeling self-righteously pleased with herself, but a few of us are thinking...... wait a minute. And when those few of us include me, I sadly don't usually say anything, because the online climate right now is not about reasonable discussion, it's about EXPRESSING OUR OUTRAGE.

So, I wrote this last week, and I'm still thinking about it. Posting it anyway. Moderates unite.