cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/22757703, but revised to try to find less individual focused ideas/responses.
In thinking on the classic Sartre quote concerning the folly of arguing with anti-Semites as if they’re arguing in good faith, as well as the Swift quote regarding reasoning being unable to correct an ill opinion one didn’t reason themselves into…
It’s made me wonder if there might be some ways to play off of these approaches to spread beneficial information more than the harmful info they’ve otherwise enabled to abound. What might be some ways to pass along helpful or generally benign info without getting as caught in the weeds explaining things, continuing to allow more harmful info to flourish?
For those unfamiliar, here are the quotes in question:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre
And: “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.” ― Jonathan Swift.
(This second one takes on various forms.):::
Tbh I’m not a big fan of quotes, but those two captured what I wanted to prod at that I felt them useful. Also yours is pretty much exactly why I’m asking this. It’s a waste to argue, so what might be alternatives to change people’s minds and spread good info?
Perhaps free food and beer and some good babble?
I tend to think the only way of changing minds is by building community. Most anti-Semites didn’t get that way by knowing a bunch of Jewish people and developing a keen understanding of their culture and customs. They got that way by being alienated and being told by someone with an agenda that their problems were all caused by “the Jews”.
It may not always be easy or correct, but if you want to change someone’s mind, they need to feel like they would benefit from changing their mind, which means they need to feel the social pressures that come with a genuine sense of belonging to a community.
What I’ve been doing lately is using conspiritorial logic to push my narrative. Who knows if it’s actually working but when you start to think about it you start noticing patterns and things…