A Tiny U-Turn From The Left
I support women's rights (I mean, it would be stupid to be up against myself), gay rights, the rights of minorities, better public infrastructure. I believe in global warming, am alarmed at the rate at which we are generating and accumulating waste. I am agnostic and do believe in democratic socialism. It seems that on the Internet, I am a 'good' person.
Unfortunately, I can be, for lack of a better word, an asshole sometimes, and today, I want to talk about how that is.
Let's start with an example. Recently, I had some confusing thoughts about elections. I was brought up under a school of thought which says that it's important to vote. Our voices matter, and the act of voting is not just our right but also a responsibility. To a great extent, I agree with that. However, I don't understand why people equate ignorance with not bothering to vote, because if you believe voting is a step in the path to the well-being and progress of all, wouldn't votes cast by the ignorant derail us from that path? In a nutshell, why do we encourage people to vote without taking into consideration that they might vote for the side that we are fundamentally opposed to? My confusion grew deeper when I noticed that those encouraging voting were mostly in the same camp of reasonably well-to-do, educated, liberal (perhaps even progressive) and well-intentioned people that I myself am a part of.
When I thought about it deeply, I realized where my mistake lay. When encouraging others to vote, I was making the assumption that they were on my side, because how the hell could someone not be? In this particular case, I was, quite ironically, fundamentally opposing my own views of how every voice matters because I had counterintuitively invalidated some voices. As human beings, we have a tendency to think of those who act in ways that we would not as the outliers and weirdos, but is such a thinking, even on behalf of liberals and progressives, in any way productive? Also, is it, in fact, hurting our own cause?
Now that I have stated my case on this matter, I would like to venture into the slightly more controversial territory, and I hope you will give this a fair hearing. Recently, I have read a lot of articles being shared on the Internet about how people who are not transgender should label themselves cisgender and how we can't say 'Latina' or 'Latino' anymore and should say 'latinex' instead. To be fair, I didn't think there was anything wrong with these discussions per se, but I did think there was something disproportionate about how much traction these discussions were getting and how these discussions were being put forth by the people starting them. The issue is that these are issues that can be argued about endlessly, but in the life of a common person, there might be very little time or opportunity to give them serious thought, and it might make this common man think that liberals are people who are constantly debating issues that have little relevance to them and don't have direct impact on their lives, so what's the point of showing support to their? There might even be some women who are tired and overworked and desperately balancing jobs and families, who just need longer paid maternity leave, and when their issue isn't covered the same way as the politics of semantics and wordplay, they might get frustrated and start to believe in the established order of power more because the group looking to challenge that power dynamic seems to have very little time for her.
Another example of leaning too far left was the case of Aziz Ansari, where he was accused of sexual misconduct for what turned out to be a bad date. When that case was reported, my first thought was, "Man, now a lot of men who were on my side will become victim to fear that something similar could happen to them." This was just another example of how the liberals took too many liberties and suddenly things were out control. A similar case I have seen is of men from metropolises ridiculing the patterns observed by men in smaller towns or less economically well-off groups when it comes to approaching women, calling those men 'despos' and 'creeps' without giving due consideration to te fact that these men unfortunately function in a different social setting than us, where direct communication between men and women is more difficult and therefore indirect actions (that is, the actions which are ridiculed) are thought of as the only way to start any kind of a relationship.
I think, on some level, we have a tendency to think of those that don't agree with us as people that are stupid and uneducated, and on an average, we don't give any consideration to their thoughts or feelings. As Indians, we often use words like unpadh and gavaar against them, and make fun of them, and act surprised when they don't sympathise with us. But when have we ever sympathised with them? We trolled them and invalidated them. I think a big example of that is how many liberals and progressives are now trolling those who voted for a right-wing government (both in the United States and in India), and we accuse them of being hateful, gullible citizens who can't tell the difference between right and wrong, and maybe a significant proportion of the voters were like that, but it is also possible that many people were just frustrated with the establishment for not having come through on their promises, disillusioned by governments that self-claimed to be the good ones without ever receiving direct benefits, and they thought that if I vote for someone different this time, maybe I'll get something out of it.
Lastly, there is significant research concluding that conservatism is often driven by fear, and fear cannot be recognized in ourselves that easily. If someone feels that their position is being threatened, it might be their natural instinct to fight back. At the end of the day, everybody reacts to attacks, and attacks often cause people to hold on more dearly to their beliefs than if they were educated with due consideration.
My dear fellow liberals, let's fight the good fight but let's not do things that cause us to lose our soldiers along the way. If our intentions are true and good, they must go hand in hand with trying to convince others into seeing our point of view instead of completely invalidating theirs, because then, we're just turning into the deplorables that we claim to be fighting against.
Unfortunately, I can be, for lack of a better word, an asshole sometimes, and today, I want to talk about how that is.
Let's start with an example. Recently, I had some confusing thoughts about elections. I was brought up under a school of thought which says that it's important to vote. Our voices matter, and the act of voting is not just our right but also a responsibility. To a great extent, I agree with that. However, I don't understand why people equate ignorance with not bothering to vote, because if you believe voting is a step in the path to the well-being and progress of all, wouldn't votes cast by the ignorant derail us from that path? In a nutshell, why do we encourage people to vote without taking into consideration that they might vote for the side that we are fundamentally opposed to? My confusion grew deeper when I noticed that those encouraging voting were mostly in the same camp of reasonably well-to-do, educated, liberal (perhaps even progressive) and well-intentioned people that I myself am a part of.
When I thought about it deeply, I realized where my mistake lay. When encouraging others to vote, I was making the assumption that they were on my side, because how the hell could someone not be? In this particular case, I was, quite ironically, fundamentally opposing my own views of how every voice matters because I had counterintuitively invalidated some voices. As human beings, we have a tendency to think of those who act in ways that we would not as the outliers and weirdos, but is such a thinking, even on behalf of liberals and progressives, in any way productive? Also, is it, in fact, hurting our own cause?
Now that I have stated my case on this matter, I would like to venture into the slightly more controversial territory, and I hope you will give this a fair hearing. Recently, I have read a lot of articles being shared on the Internet about how people who are not transgender should label themselves cisgender and how we can't say 'Latina' or 'Latino' anymore and should say 'latinex' instead. To be fair, I didn't think there was anything wrong with these discussions per se, but I did think there was something disproportionate about how much traction these discussions were getting and how these discussions were being put forth by the people starting them. The issue is that these are issues that can be argued about endlessly, but in the life of a common person, there might be very little time or opportunity to give them serious thought, and it might make this common man think that liberals are people who are constantly debating issues that have little relevance to them and don't have direct impact on their lives, so what's the point of showing support to their? There might even be some women who are tired and overworked and desperately balancing jobs and families, who just need longer paid maternity leave, and when their issue isn't covered the same way as the politics of semantics and wordplay, they might get frustrated and start to believe in the established order of power more because the group looking to challenge that power dynamic seems to have very little time for her.
Another example of leaning too far left was the case of Aziz Ansari, where he was accused of sexual misconduct for what turned out to be a bad date. When that case was reported, my first thought was, "Man, now a lot of men who were on my side will become victim to fear that something similar could happen to them." This was just another example of how the liberals took too many liberties and suddenly things were out control. A similar case I have seen is of men from metropolises ridiculing the patterns observed by men in smaller towns or less economically well-off groups when it comes to approaching women, calling those men 'despos' and 'creeps' without giving due consideration to te fact that these men unfortunately function in a different social setting than us, where direct communication between men and women is more difficult and therefore indirect actions (that is, the actions which are ridiculed) are thought of as the only way to start any kind of a relationship.
I think, on some level, we have a tendency to think of those that don't agree with us as people that are stupid and uneducated, and on an average, we don't give any consideration to their thoughts or feelings. As Indians, we often use words like unpadh and gavaar against them, and make fun of them, and act surprised when they don't sympathise with us. But when have we ever sympathised with them? We trolled them and invalidated them. I think a big example of that is how many liberals and progressives are now trolling those who voted for a right-wing government (both in the United States and in India), and we accuse them of being hateful, gullible citizens who can't tell the difference between right and wrong, and maybe a significant proportion of the voters were like that, but it is also possible that many people were just frustrated with the establishment for not having come through on their promises, disillusioned by governments that self-claimed to be the good ones without ever receiving direct benefits, and they thought that if I vote for someone different this time, maybe I'll get something out of it.
Lastly, there is significant research concluding that conservatism is often driven by fear, and fear cannot be recognized in ourselves that easily. If someone feels that their position is being threatened, it might be their natural instinct to fight back. At the end of the day, everybody reacts to attacks, and attacks often cause people to hold on more dearly to their beliefs than if they were educated with due consideration.
My dear fellow liberals, let's fight the good fight but let's not do things that cause us to lose our soldiers along the way. If our intentions are true and good, they must go hand in hand with trying to convince others into seeing our point of view instead of completely invalidating theirs, because then, we're just turning into the deplorables that we claim to be fighting against.
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