In Praise of Listening

“I can put up with being roughly handled by my friends: ‘You’re an idiot! You’re crazy!’ Among gentlemen, I like people to express themselves heartily, their words following wherever their thoughts lead. We ought to toughen and fortify our ears against being seduced by the sound of polite words.”—Michel de Montaigne, “On the Art of Conversation” (1580)

In the last episode of the third season of Black Mirror (S03 E06)—“Hated in the Nation”—a hacker uses automated drone bees to kill off obnoxious people. The first to die is a provocative conservative pundit (think: Margaret Wente) who mocks the disabled in her weekly column. The second is a narcissistic rapper who insists on “keepin’ it real”—even if that means bringing a nine-year-old fan to tears. The third is a drunken prankster who pisses off patriots by doing something akin to flag burning.

It’s called “The Game of Consequences” and pretty soon hundreds of thousands of anonymous citizens are playing. At the end of each day, whoever has the most #DeathTo mentions gets killed by the automated drone bees. Although most of those targeted in the episode seem genuinely obnoxious, I couldn’t help but think of Socrates, the Athenian gadfly, getting sentenced to death, by his own people, for being an annoying guy who asks uncomfortable questions and brings up inconvenient facts. Can’t you hear the crowd chanting: “This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.”

If something like this happened, if we could somehow get rid of all of the mean people, would it lead to a better world? I doubt it, Facebook. I doubt it, Twitter. I doubt it, YouTube. Regardless, this is Black Mirror, so the story doesn’t end here. We soon realize that these obnoxious individuals aren’t the real targets of the hacker’s fury. He’s actually trying to rid the world of all those anonymous citizens who participate in Twitter pile-ons, public-shaming campaigns, and other forms of cyber-bullying (e.g., all of the progressives who participated in the online mobbing of the provocative, politically-incorrect journalist are killed, as well as all of the conservatives who participated in an equally nasty pile-on).

In other words, the hacker is trying to rid the world of people like you (well, some of you). In total, 387,036 people are killed by the automated drone bees. If something like this happened, would it lead to a better world? I doubt it. Would the world be a much better place if you stopped participating in these online mobs, and treated those with whom you disagree with more respect? Absolutely. Be that as it may, some trolls are like viruses, it’s true; but others are like white blood cells. Telling them apart is no easy task.

If Socrates was alive today and on Facebook he’d be that annoying guy that keeps asking uncomfortable questions, bringing up annoying facts. This was, writes John Ralston Saul, his modus operandi: “He spent his life wandering around Athens annoying everyone in the city.” Trolls used to wander around the internet doing the same thing. But they’ve been doing it less and less these days because it’s getting easier and easier to block them. In the Wild West days of the internet, when online communities tended to govern themselves anarchically, troll management was all about extinction. Hence the expression: “Don’t Feed the Troll!”

But these days it’s all about creating “safe spaces” with the likeminded. This is decidedly unwise because the muscles of the mind atrophy in these echo chambers: moral clarity gives way to sanctimony; shared values give way to group-think; ethical reasoning gives way to circular reasoning; sound judgment gives way to a reactionary adherence to dogma; and a clear conception of who your real enemies are gives way to a fanatical demonization of all who disagree. To wit: safe spaces may be comfortable, but they’re anything but safe.

Refusing to engage with a nasty little troll is everyone’s right, but silencing them altogether is rarely a good idea. In Bright-Sided (2010), Barbara Ehrenreich maintains that getting rid of all of the “negative people” in your life is a recipe for disaster: “What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the ‘negative people’ from one’s life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it’s probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoying people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank’s subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company’s over-investment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who ‘brings you down,’ and you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality. The challenge of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the moods of others, accommodating to their insights, and offering comfort when needed.”

Just as ecosystems become less resilient, and more fragile, when you reduce their biodiversity (by eradicating species), epistemic communities become less resilient, and more fragile, when you reduce their intellectual and ideological diversity (by eradicating radical ideas). Numerous studies have demonstrated that the only thing worse than thinking through important political matters alone, is thinking through important political matters with people who share all of your assumptions.

We need to be exposed to challenging unorthodox ideas on a fairly regular basis. But social media (and search engines like Google) are making it easier and easier for us to silence radical voices (by dismissing them as “trolls”), and retreat into homogeneous online echo chambers. This is a worrisome trend. The ease with which we can Facebook “block” trolls ought to give pause to all who value democracy, intelligent debate, and the open society. Why? Because no amount of intelligence or education can replace this kind of diversity. Because smart people with MAs and PhDs are blinded by bias.

Reasoning researcher David Perkins has demonstrated in numerous studies that IQ is a remarkably poor predictor of a person’s capacity for “fair and balanced” reasoning. Most of his studies look something like this: 1) Give the person an IQ test to establish their score. 2) Ask them how they feel about a contentious political issue. 3) Now ask them to come up with reasons and arguments to support the other side. 4) Ask them to come up with reasons and arguments to support their side. As you might imagine, pretty much everyone sucks at finding support for the other side. What’s interesting, though, is that people with high IQs suck just as much as people with low IQs. All of this changes, however, when people are asked to come up with support for their side. There you see a big difference.

Test subjects with high IQs can come up with many more reasons and arguments to support their position than those with low IQs, regardless of which side they happened to be on! What’s more, Perkins found that people with high IQs are exceptionally good at presenting their position in a clear, elegant, and logically-consistent fashion, which, as you might imagine, makes whatever they happen to be saying seem that much more plausible. Alas, you might say that people with low IQs are like terrible lawyers, whilst people with high IQs are like really good lawyers, but neither, Perkins maintains, is particularly fair and balanced: “people invest their IQ in buttressing their own case rather than in exploring the entire issue more fully and evenhandedly.”

In The Righteous Mind (2012), Jonathan Haidt maintains that higher education only makes this problem worse: “high school students who generate a lot of arguments are the ones who are more likely to go on to college, and the college students who generate a lot of arguments are the ones who are more likely to go on to graduate school. Schools don’t teach people to reason thoroughly; they select the applicants with higher IQs, and people with higher IQs are able to generate more reasons.” Haidt concludes that moral rationalists who think that education and an obsessive adherence to argumentative hygiene can save us are sorely mistaken; just as mistaken, in fact, as technocrats who think we should sideline the citizen and put the nerds in charge.

The open society our grandparents fought for desperately needs difficult people, even though they’re often full of shit, even though their motives are frequently somewhat less than noble. The truth or falsity of what difficult people say is to some extent irrelevant, as is their mental health. Fixating on either of these questions invariably leads to a convenient rationalization for silencing them.

Every time we allow a piece of public space to be seized and transformed into someone’s private little safe space, every time we allow touchiness to trump tolerance, we become a little less free. Our thin-skinned age needs to remember that The open society isn’t a safe space; it’s a tolerant space. And tolerance isn’t tolerance unless it hurts. The respectful society isn’t a new and improved version of the open society; it’s a new and improved version of the closed society. Every new generation seems to think they’ve figured out how to have freedom and creativity without the mess, without the vulgarity and vice. Our capacity for historical amnesia never ceases to amaze me. Free societies have always been messy.

Much of what passes for tolerance these days is in fact a kind of glorified indifference. Indifference is a highly effective coping mechanism. I’d be a total stress case if it weren’t for my well-developed capacity for indifference. But indifference isn’t tolerance. So the next time you’re about to self-righteously pat yourself on the back for your tolerance, ask yourself: Was it hard to tolerate this? Did it require effort? Did it cost me anything? If the answer’s NO, if it was more or less effortless, you’re probably trafficking in counterfeit virtue. Because tolerance isn’t tolerance unless it hurts. We tolerate the heat. We tolerate the cold.

It’s easy to be open-minded about things you deem trivial or unimportant. It’s much harder to be open-minded about things you care about. For instance, it’s easy to tolerate your friend’s belief in astrology or prayer when you secretly think it’s all bullshit and you really couldn’t give a shit one way or the other. But when a diehard feminist decides to put up with her sexist little brother, despite all of his MRA bullshit, I know I’m looking at real tolerance. Likewise, when a hardcore fundamentalist decides to accept and love his gay son (and his son’s partner), despite his heartfelt beliefs about homosexuality, I know I’m looking at real tolerance.

Should we tolerate everything? Of course not. Tolerance without reasonable limits is like walking around with a “KICK ME” sign that you put on your own back. Some things are intolerable. Some things shouldn’t be tolerated. And we all have to balance the moral imperative to be tolerant with other equally valid moral imperatives: such as the need to be kind, loving, humble, and just. Ultimately, we choose to tolerate that which we can live with but are not exactly cool with.

Jonathan Haidt has found that when you give conservatives a questionnaire and ask them to answer it like a liberal, they’re able to do so with ease. When you ask them to answer like a libertarian, they’re able to do that too. Libertarians aren’t nearly as adept as conservatives, but they’re still fairly good at imagining how a conservative or a liberal might answer the questionnaire. Alas, the real outliers are the liberals.

In numerous studies, with respectable sample sizes, Haidt has demonstrated that liberals simply don’t have a clue. When you ask them to answer the questionnaire like a conservative, they answer it like a fascist. When you ask them to answer it like a libertarian, they answer it like a sociopath. The liberal conception of what makes the average conservative or libertarian tick is, Haidt concludes, way off.

Are liberals less imaginative than conservatives and libertarians? I highly doubt it. The virtues and vices are, it seems, to be found everywhere to varying degrees. Why, then, do liberals do so terribly on this “ideological Turing test”? And why do conservatives do so well? Haidt maintains that conservatives do well because they base their moral thinking on all six of the moral foundations (Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity, Liberty, Care & Fairness). Liberals do poorly because they base their moral thinking on only two of them (Care & Fairness).

Haidt’s explanation is fascinating. But it’s got way too many moving parts and a fatal flaw: namely, it implicitly presumes that liberals are somehow spectacularly deficient in imagination. I find it hard to believe that any sizable group of human beings could be spectacularly deficient in any virtue (or vice). That’s why I’ve come up with a simpler explanation for Haidt’s robust findings: liberals suck at this test because shutting down certain parts of your imagination has become central to what it means to be liberal.

Liberals haven’t just demonized their political opponents, they’ve demonized the very act of trying to think like their political opponents. Trying to sympathize with, say, a Trump supporter, has come to constitute a kind of thought-crime for many liberals (and almost all progressives). So it’s not that liberals have less imagination than conservatives or libertarians; it’s that they’ve set up mental firewalls that actively prevent them from even going there. Just as Odysseus’s men stopped up their ears with wax so they wouldn’t be tempted by the seductive song of the Sirens, many liberals have, it seems, set up taboo boundaries which more or less ensure that they’ll never have to empathize with a conservative or a libertarian. This is decidedly unwise, as it often leads to group polarization.

Whenever you get a group of people together who share certain basic assumptions, there’s a natural tendency for the group to gravitate toward the most uncompromising positions. Social psychologists call this tendency group polarization. It explains why Trump’s victory came as such as surprise to the kind of people who listen to NPR, watch CNN, and read the New York Times, just as it explains why the Bush Administration invaded Iraq without an exit strategy. At a certain point, the neoconservative ideologues running the show, people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, stopped inviting people who disagreed with their assumptions, people like Colin Powell, to the planning meetings.

Group polarization also explains the breathtaking stupidity of Lindsay Shepherd’s inquisitors at Wilfred Laurier University. These people speak, as someone rightly observed on Twitter, “like people who are used to standing up in front of a class and talking for a long time without being challenged or interrupted.” Surrounding yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear is toxic. Sweet as it sometimes sounds, the siren song of the safe space must be resisted, lest ye be shipwrecked on the rocky coast of the Isle of Impotentia.

There’s no harm in group polarization if you’re just having fun or brainstorming. But if you actually want to change the world, if you actually want to communicate and be relevant, it’s a tendency that must be actively resisted. In The Righteous Mind (2013), psychologist Jonathan Haidt maintains that the best way to resist group polarization is to actively cultivate viewpoint diversity. Talk to people with whom you disagree with on a regular basis. You don’t have to agree with them. But you should at least listen to them. Bite your lip if you have to. Be respectful. Be charitable. And avoid conversation killers like: “You’re a racist!” “You’re a libtard SJW!” “You’re a Randroid!” “You’re a feminazi!” “You’re a regressive leftist!” “You’re a rape apologist!” “You’re antisemitic!” “You’re Islamophobic!” “You’re a de facto defender of white supremacy!” “You’re transphobic!” These things just alienate people.

Just as the violent suppression of the labor movement pushed a lot of good people into the communist camp in the twentieth century, I fear that the outrageous attacks on nonconformists like Jordan Peterson may radicalize a lot of middle-of-the-road moderates in the twenty-first century. As Malcolm Gladwell makes clear in David and Goliath (2014), when you crack down on terrorism by demonizing an entire community, you invariably end up strengthening support for the terrorists; and when you crack down on the civil rights movement in a draconian fashion, you invariably end up strengthening support for the civil rights movement. What’s happening on the left at the moment is striking similar. Demonize everyone who seems to disagree with you and you’ll invariably end up strengthening support for those who actually disagree with you.

Telling people off on Twitter and preaching to the choir on Facebook can be fun. But it’s a dangerous kind of fun. Because you get intellectually lazy. Because you start speaking in a specialized jargon that no one outside of your safe space can understand. Because you develop a contempt for everyone outside of your élite group of cool kids that frequently leads you to dehumanize those who disagree with you. Live in your little bubble long enough, and you’ll become downright delusional, like the emperor in that Hans Christian Andersen tale. This is especially true if you and your little possé of likeminded homies become powerful (e.g., by winning an election, taking over a department, capturing an important institution, etc.). As Aaron Haspel rightly observes in Everything (2015): “The less you are contradicted, the stupider you become. The more powerful you become, the less you are contradicted.”

I grew up under the shadow of a delusional, ill-clad emperor: my father. I know what happens when you surround yourself with sycophants and shun those who tell you things you don’t want to hear. I’m painfully aware of the need for checks and balances, and I know all too well what the emperor’s new clothes look like.

—John Faithful Hamer, Social Media Land (2020)