There used to be a thing in this country called an argument. Two people, often disagreeing strongly, would sit in a room or stand in a parking lot or write back and forth in letters, and they would try to make a case. Each person had a position. Each person was willing to defend it. And — this is the part we’ve lost — each person was open, at least in principle, to being persuaded.
An argument is a conversation with a chance of changing your mind. That’s the definition. If neither side can be moved by anything the other says, you are not arguing. You are performing.
We perform a lot now. We do not argue much.
The transformation happened slowly, then all at once. Cable news figured out that fights drew viewers better than discussions did. Talk radio figured out that the angrier the host, the longer the audience stayed. Then social media arrived and turned the performance into a participation sport. Now everyone is a host. Everyone has an audience. Everyone is rewarded — in attention, in likes, in shares — for the loudest version of their view, not the most accurate one.
The economic structure of public conversation has changed. Disagreement that might lead somewhere productive — the kind that requires patience, listening, and the possibility of being wrong — is not what gets shared. What gets shared is the dunk, the takedown, the savaging of the worst version of the other side.
And so we get the public conversation we have. Not arguments. Performances of anger, aimed at our own side, about the worst examples of the other side, designed to make our side feel righteous and the other side feel hated.
Outrage is not a neutral emotion. It does specific things to the people experiencing it.
It narrows attention. Outraged people focus on the offense and lose track of context, history, complexity. The thing you are mad about expands to fill your whole field of view.
It rewards confirmation. Outraged people seek information that justifies the outrage. They do not seek information that complicates it. Algorithms know this and feed them accordingly.
It substitutes feeling for thinking. Outrage is exhausting. It uses up mental energy that could have been spent on analysis, judgment, or repair. By the end of a day spent being outraged at twelve different things, you are too tired to think carefully about any of them.
It makes persuasion impossible. Nobody is moved by being yelled at. The strongest case in the world, delivered with contempt, will be rejected by the very person it might otherwise have reached.
The country survived for two centuries with citizens who disagreed bitterly about almost everything — slavery, the franchise, war, religion, taxation, regulation — and still managed to hold itself together. They held it together because, most of the time, they argued.
They wrote letters that took weeks to arrive. They gave speeches that lasted hours. They held debates that did not end with one side declared the winner by an applause meter. They made cases. They listened. They were sometimes persuaded. They sometimes persuaded.
What they did not do, mostly, was conclude that the other side was evil. They concluded the other side was wrong, which is a different thing. Wrong is correctable. Evil is not. A country whose citizens think the other side is wrong can hold itself together. A country whose citizens think the other side is evil cannot.
We have spent twenty years training ourselves to think the other side is evil.
It is not impossible. It is harder than performing anger, but it is not impossible.
State the strongest version of the other side’s view before you respond to it. If you cannot state it accurately, you don’t understand it yet, and you have not earned the right to argue against it.
Tell the truth about your own side. When your side does the thing you criticize on the other side, name it. Out loud. Without softening it. People who can do this earn the right to be heard.
Stop calling people names. Even when it would feel satisfying. Especially when it would feel satisfying.
Distinguish between policy and person. You can disagree fundamentally with someone’s view of how the world should work and still treat them like a citizen who has reasons for thinking what they think.
Be willing to be persuaded. This is the one that almost nobody is willing to do anymore, and it is the one that makes argument possible. If you walk into a conversation already certain you will leave with the same view, you are not arguing. You are reciting.
To argue again, we would have to give up the daily fix of righteousness that outrage provides. We would have to admit that the people on the other side, mostly, are not monsters. We would have to grant that they have reasons, even bad ones, that come from somewhere.
We would have to take responsibility for the worst things our own side does, which is harder than criticizing the other side’s worst.
We would have to be quieter. Outrage is loud. Argument is often quiet. We would have to spend less time talking and more time listening.
None of that is fun. None of it gets you followers. It is exactly the opposite of what the public conversation now rewards.
But it is the only way the country has ever held itself together — through citizens who disagreed and still spoke to each other like citizens. Without that, what we have is not a country. It is two armies on the same continent, waiting their turn to win.
You can decide, today, to stop performing and start arguing. It will not change the country. But it might change one conversation. And that is where the country starts.
Be the first to comment