Happy exploring until next year

Well, it's been a year! Sometimes, it's been a bit difficult to keep writing or to even justify writing as things go nuts all around the world. 

But for me, exploring words is always an exploration of the world (and vice versa). When things are strange or scary, that exploration can provide a moment of respite, a moment of clarity (hopefully), and a moment of amazement at the incredible phenomenon that is communicating and making meaning with words. 

I'm taking a break for the next month, but until then happy exploring! 

Post-truth (part 2) - we need a metaphor for truth that fits

In part 1 of Post-truth, I explored the dominant metaphor for truth: humanity on a long journey to a destination.

We use metaphors all the time to talk and think about the world.¹ A familiar metaphor is conventional ideas as 'inside the box' and new ideas as 'thinking outside the box'. There is no actual box, but the metaphoric box conveys complex concepts about creativity and originality. 

A good metaphor helps us think about the world. A bad metaphor can be misleading. 

A 'journey' is not a very good metaphor for truth. It doesn't fit well. In fact, I think it is misleading and, among other things, it blinds humanity to the early signs of emerging dictators and power-mongers. 

In this post, I introduce a new metaphor and a new way of thinking about truth. My goal is to incorporate the numerous contests of ideas about truth, e.g. objective versus relative, humanity's need to know truth, the boundaries to 'knowing', and the place of 'untruth' in all its guises.

This post introduces and explains the 'fit' of my new metaphor. In subsequent posts, I will explain how I see it can accommodate these conflicting ideas about truth.² 

I'm exploring old ideas but trying to think outside the box. 

Armed only with a new metaphor.

TATKOP 129

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who prefer convenience and those who prefer privacy.

See more in the TATKOP series.

Post-truth (part 1) - revealing a false metaphor for truth

Truth is a word that captures the human mind and then blows that mind into little bits. 

Despite thousands of years of writing by philosophers, religious thinkers and scientists we really don't have firm grounding for the concept of truth. What do we mean by the word truth? How do we know what we know? Can we really know anything? What is reality; what is an hallucination? What is a fact; what is evidence? Who decides what is true? When it is okay to lie or should we never? All big questions. 

History, psychology and politics are full of argument about what we know - is what we think we know true, is it a selective and shared delusion, is it even a lie? Most of us have had conversations where agreement on the truth was impossible. 

We all hold a sense that what we know is true, until someone asks us how we can be so sure. It's a pretty difficult concept.

Despite this, most of us¹ seem to almost casually accept that truth exists… 

But maybe not for much longer. According to some, we are now in a post-truth era.  

Does this mean that we live in a time after truth? Has truth finished (and where are all those answers?) Or has it been discredited as a big joke? Do we each get to have our own truth now?  

More interestingly to me, how can we understand the word post-truth if we have such a shaky grasp on what the word truth means? 

From Thom Gunn

Wordly Inspiration from Thomas Gunn, from an autobiographical essay, a sentiment shared by most of us who write:

"I must count my writing as an essential part of the way in which I deal with life."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

A prelude to post-truth

Well, this post has been harder than usual to wrangle into shape.

The word I am currently exploring is post-truth and what it tells us about how we think about the word and concept truth. 

By 'we' I mean you and I (not so much philosophers or religious writers or scientists who write a lot about it!) So, I'm making some assumptions about how you think about truth. It may be wrong, but I have to.

As a prelude to the series, perhaps you could ponder how you think about this difficult concept. Then you will be ready to check and challenge my assumptions. 

Do you think of truth as a set of objective facts, a principle, a collection of slippery contestable ideas, one interpretation among many? Who decides what the truth is? Why do you think humanity needs to know the truth? How have you felt when what you had believed to be true is shown to actually be false? How do you think about some of the strange and discredited ideas that people believed to be true in the past?  Despite the recent flurry around relativism and the current palaver about post-truth, do you nevertheless continue to think - or feel - that truth exists? 

What does the word truth mean to you? And given that, how does the word post-truth relate to that idea. If you had to think of an image or picture for humanity's relationship to truth, what might that image be? 

So many questions.

That's what I've been exploring and drawing, among too many other things to get this finished. I've changed direction several times, as the concept of truth seems to resist close scrutiny.  

Essentially, I have no answers to the many questions, but I have got a nice picture. And a new, improved, and more useful metaphor for truth.

Hopefully I can share it soon, if the world will permit.

TATKOP 128

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who see the world as 'us and them' and those with their eyes open.

  

See more in the TATKOP series.

Enough - when it means anything but

In part 1, I explored the reasons the word enough is spelled so weirdly, and traced over 1000 years of the history of the English language to do so. 

Source

In recent times, numerous attempts have been made to make English spelling more regular, less chaotic, but all have failed. Yes, there really was a group called the Speling Reform Asoshiasun. 

So enough continues to be spelled as enough. 

Spelling is one of the areas of language; it changes over time through popular use, but history shows it rarely does so through dictate and rule making. 

However, it's in popular use that the word enough gets totally weird. Enough might occasionally be spelled enuf, and we get it; but sometimes its meaning changes within a single sentence. And we get that too. That's why 'Enuf is enuf' makes sense.

The way we use words beyond their literal meaning can tell us so much about ourselves. 

What can we learn by exploring the word enough? 

From Nandini Pandey

Wordly Inspiration from Nandini Pandey, pondering the value, quandary and therapeutic benefit of writing during a pandemic. 

Nandini writes about the classics and this is a reflection on Ovid's poems Tristia (sad poems) and Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea):

"But when the universe is collapsing in flames, there is a certain solace in building new little worlds on the page. In ordering words, wrestling thoughts into sense, giving fixable form to chaos when we can put right so little else. In reaching out from our own isolation to fellow humans in theirs, by a means that’s no substitute for human contact, but that’s managed on occasion to survive “Jupiter’s anger, fire and sword, the gnawing tooth of time.”

That’s what Ovid’s exile poems teach us: the consolation not of philosophy, but of poetry, in its original, almost magical sense of making."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

Enough - when enuf is not enauph

A group of protestors paced outside the annual local spelling bee. 

Ruly protestors Source

But they weren't protesting about the spelling bee. Their protest was against spelling itself.

'Simplify English spelling!', they demanded. Their posters read, 'Spelling shuud bee lojical' and 'enuf is enuf!'.

The spelling bee continued unaffected inside, as young students spelled nemesis, apartheid and campanile. Enough wasn't on the list though! 

The protestors eventually went home, having pointed out what we all know: English spelling seems chaotic and inconsistent. 

Why can't it be simpler? Why isn't enough spelled as enuf? And even though it isn't, why does 'Enuf is enuf' make sense anyway? 

TATKOP 127

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who seek heros for inspiration and those who prefer villains. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

 

The market - a solution to what? Part 2

In part 1, I explored the nature of 'the market'. The word is ubiquitous but often quite vague.

So far, I have clarified 'the market' is a process for allocating resources for humans. The economy is very complex, so some simplifying ideas are essential: 'the market' simplifies ideas about the world into 'things', 'ownership' and 'utility (use value)'. 

When an old meme is perfect. Source

Knowing that, I want to explore the idea of a 'market-based solution'. To the problem of ensuring enough apples and turnips to meet the food needs of people, it seems reasonable. But for the problem of ensuring clean air for people to breathe, I can't see that as a matter of 'things', 'ownership' and 'utility'. 

So how does the market provide a solution? To answer this, I need to delve into how 'the market' process functions and how it measures success and failure.

Now, a warning: this exploration involves some nerdy, abstract, and perplexingly vague economic words. My focus, however, is not economics jargon, but the ideas about the world that economics relies on to explain the way 'the market' works. 

Economics¹ can make you feel confused and lost, but my suspicion has always been that it is deliberately opaque. So, stay with me!

In fact, as you're about to read, it is downright strange and scary.

From Mark Twain

Wordly Inspiration from the immortal Mark Twain (well, a bit dated with his use of 'man') for those days when you feel your writing is derivative:

"The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men — but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

The market - a solution to what?

I've been thinking about the market lately. Not the local market where I buy fruit and vegetables, chat with the growers about conditions on the farm, see a few people I know, and maybe watch a busker.

See you there Mr Bean! Source

It's this market I hear endlessly about: the energy market needs major revamp; the chief executive has reassured the market; there is no true market for overland flow licences; an Australia-wide view of the aged care market; reform our broken housing market; the labor market added around 242,000 jobs for the month.

So many people seem enamoured with this amazing thing called the market and 'fixing the market' or 'finding a market solution' when we discuss numerous diverse aspects of our society - electricity supply, airline viability, water, aged-care, housing, finding a job. 

But just what is the market? It seems big and ubiquitous, but strangely vague. It's obviously not a place, like my local market. So, what kind of thing is it?

And what makes the market the solution to all sort of pressing social and environmental issues?

TATKOP 126

If you're a new follower, welcome to my monthly exploration of dichotomies: the TATKOP series.

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who 'want it fixed right now!' and those who know there is no 'fix' to many problems. (I've worked for some of the former.)

 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Wordly Explorations manifesto

Welcome to Wordly Explorations, a blog exploring how humans use, misuse and sometimes abuse everyday words. There's so much to explore!

For a text version of the Wordly Explorations manifesto, read the first post Introducing Wordly Explorations.

From Mary Pipher

 Wordly Inspiration from Mary Pipher, the author of Writing to Change the World:

"A writer's job is to tell stories that connect readers to all the people on earth, to show these people as the complicated human beings they really are, with histories, families, emotions, and legitimate needs. We can replace one-dimensional stereotypes with multidimensional individuals with whom our readers can identify."

See more Wordly Inspiration. 

TATKOP 125

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who blame others and those who blame themselves.  

Is there a third: those who don't use blame as a way of understanding other people and the world?

See more in the TATKOP series.

Coronavirus - a story of semantic boundaries

We know a lot more now about pandemics than we used to.

Sure, we'd heard of The Plague - the big one in terms of numbers of deaths and social impact back in the 1300s. We know surprisingly little about The Spanish flu despite its global devastation one hundred years ago. Maybe we saw reports on Ebola, HIV, MERS and SARS; but they happened somewhere else to other people. They were managed and stayed outside our immediate sphere of concern. 

See full infographic at Visual Capitalist

But we've been educated recently. 

This snippet of an infographic from Visual Capitalist with disturbing fluffy things as the number of deaths reminds us we have had pandemics and plagues for at least as long as we've recorded human history. (It's seriouly worth a look at the full infographic.)

Personally and socially, pandemics and plagues are devastating, politically they are exploitable crises, environmentally they are warning bells about humanity's disregard for other life forms, and existentially they refuse our preference to ignore our mortality. 

But semantically they are all over the place. 

The naming of pandemics, including the coronavirus, is an intriguing story.

It's a story of semantic boundaries (try singing it to the Brady Bunch theme).

From Jorge Luis Borges

Wordly Inspiration from the brilliant and irreverent Jorge Luis Borges:

"It is often forgotten that [dictionaries] are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature."

 

See more Wordly Inspiration.

Quiet - lauding the disengaged

Dismissing those who complain seems to be an Australian pastime. 

We sure have a lot of words for it: whinging poms, elitist ingrates, dole-bludgers, anti-jobs activists, professional troublemakers, idiot protestors who block the streets and make life difficult for everyone else. 

In contrast, the fabled Australian character is stoic, no-nonsense, easy going, just get it done, uncomplaining. Don't make a fuss, don't whinge, and don't - whatever you do - get involved in protests.

This fabled character recently resurfaced in Australian politics. In May 2019, Scott Morrison attributed his unexpected election victory to 'the Quiet Australians who have won a great victory tonight'. 

I wondered who these quiet Australians were and if I knew any of them; they're the majority judging by the political outcome.

If we go by the dictionary, a quiet Australian would be:

♦️ marked by little or no motion or activity, gentle, easy going

♦️  free from noise or uproar, unobtrusive, conservative taste.   

So, are the Quiet Australians minimally active, gentle, easy-going, quiet, calm, unobtrusive people with conservative taste in clothing and food? Don't they even occasionally yell at their children?

Well no, the word quiet means something much more insidious in politics. 

TATKOP 124

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who illuminate reality and those who obscure it.

See more in the TATKOP series.

 

Diversity 2 - comfort, power and counting

In part 1, I explored the word diverse which means 'various or assorted' and what sits behind the misuse of diverse to mean 'different from me'.

Learning to value diversity in humanity involves positive interactions with a variety of people.

 

However, some individuals never have this experience. With their limited interactions, they can grow up to think people 'like me' (according to sex, race, economic status, ability, etc.) are 'us', and anyone 'different from me' is 'them' or 'the other'. 

 

The two mind maps in part 1 illustrated how these individuals see their 'self' as the 'default human' and the 'other' as a lesser human.

The idea that any person could claim to be the 'default human' is patently ludicrous but it operates subconsciously, deep below our awareness (except for white supremacists and others who overtly promote this idea).

It is far from clear-headed and it spawns unfairness and injustice in the forms of racism, sexism, ableism etc.

 

How can some people never experience a real challenge to such a distorted view of the world that they are the 'default human'?

 

From Isaac Asimov

Wordly Inspiration from Isaac Asimov, who has long inspired me to write:

"Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

Diversity - defeated by the default

Diversity (likewise inclusion) is a word I hear frequently. Diversity appears in technology, education, the arts, music, and science, sometimes accompanied by 'diversity' targets. We hear about the diversity of culture and opinion in Australia. Many companies have Diversity and Inclusion Divisions with KPIs for their annual reports.

 

The driver for diversity is fairness. It entails welcoming all people, ensuring decision-making groups are representative of the broader society, and more people can participate in a greater range of life's opportunities. 

But I think diversity and its adjective diverse are most often just buzz words: they make a 'buzz', but they communicate little (likewise inclusion and inclusive).

 

The word diversity should convey an important idea: diversity is a positive characteristic of societies and groups. But the word has been emptied of this idea in many uses. This has happened through a subtle linguistic 'shift' to use diverse to describe individual people, usually meaning a person from a minority group.

 

Is this just a normal change in meaning? Is it just the all too common loss of a useful word? (I've written previously about accepting that words can change meaning over time, even really useful words, see Alternate - a small grief.)

 

Or is there something else going on here? Has this subtle linguistic 'shift' been engineered? It seems to me that this way of using the word diverse actually serves to keep people out.

TATKOP 123

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who know democracy is messy and those who want their leaders to keep things clean and tidy. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Uncertain 2 - our costly false comforts

In the first part of this post, Uncertain - about these uncertain times, I explored a contradiction at the centre of our humanity: wanting to be certain in an uncertain world.

Humans do whatever we can to avoid acknowledging the inherent uncertainty in our lives: cocooning ourselves in safe enclosures, limiting our lives, or planning obsessively to control the future.

We equate 'uncertain' with 'unsafe', to which our primal reaction is to run or make things safe again.

Our response when we perceive danger is emotional and compelling. Only rarely are our actions driven by an objective or factual assessment of information. We can even feel fear of imagined dangers, when there is no imminent threat. Being told there really is no monster under the bed does not necessarily soothe our fear, and we continue to seek reassurance. We need to feel safe.

We do the same with the inherent uncertainty of life. The driver of our actions is emotion: we want a FEELING of certainty and safety. We want to FEEL reassured that things are certain and safe.

This means we are extremely vulnerable to any information that stirs our feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, regardless of actual threats, or to people who promise us certainty and safety in the face of real, imagined and even concocted threats.

Perversely, the emotional comfort of 'false' certainty is often more compelling than any facts of certainty and safety.

Every successful politician, marketing executive, con artist and cult leader knows this. And they exploit us with this knowledge.

Part 2 looks at the implications of our need to feel things are certain, and therefore 'safe', and what false promises we will happily accept in order not to feel the fear of uncertainty.

Why bother?

Wordly Inspiration: it may be a wound, it may be a hunger, it may be a question, but writing is always worth the bother (from the socials, source unknown).

See more Wordly Inspiration.

Uncertain - about these uncertain times

We are living in uncertain times.

Many of us feel very unsettled, even in the relative safety of Australia. When we are not searching out the latest pandemic news, we are flooding social media with our struggle to find focus or positivity, or we are comforting ourselves with nostalgia on travel, books and music, getting into gardening and busy work.

I sure feel a greater sense of uncertainty than I did this time last year.

The words: 'these uncertain times' are everywhere - news stories, ministerial announcements, articles on physical and mental health, reports, and advertisements for everything from cleaning products to insurance to dating apps. Some go so far as to call our times 'an era of uncertainty'. (Here's an Australian example from 2018.) An American report published in 2004, told us to expect that 2020 would be characterised by a 'pervasive sense of insecurity' related to concerns over job security, fears around migration, terrorism and internal conflicts, and military conflicts .

No prediction of a global pandemic though, the latest source of the ubiquitous statement that we are 'living in uncertain times'.

But are 'these times' truly more uncertain than other times? 

In his book, The Antidote - Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking, Oliver Burkeman says that every era describes itself as characterised by unprecedented uncertainties and lack of stability. 

Just a few of his examples:

♦️  In 1951, Alan Watt highlighted a contemporary 'feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity'… referring to the impact of the breakdown of long-established family, social, economic and belief traditions.

♦️ Writing about the Roman Republic and Empire over three centuries is replete with political instability and social unrest and the impact on people who felt their future was disturbingly uncertain.

The idea that earlier times were more certain and stable than our own experience of life is really just nostalgia, based on an imagined and idealised past.

In fact, when you're fully engrossed in living your own life, you face uncertainty all the time.

Because life is irrevocably, constantly and most certainly uncertain. 

The global pandemic reveals a fundamental truth: we humans are deeply deluded that we are fully in control of ourselves, our future, our world. We desperately want to believe we can make our lives certain, set and fixed. 

TATKOP 122

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who can cope with uncertainty and those with the correct myth. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Creative - of course you are!

A pandemic is a lesson in living with reality. It will be a hard lesson, there will be grief and heartache.

For many across the world, the Covid-19 pandemic means financial and health insecurity. Fear of disease and death is compounded by loss of income or housing, and accompanied by unease about governments seeking only to seize more power.

For many of us in Australia right now, though, we are simply stuck at home. After the initial anxiety spike, the panic buying and the grief of ruined plans, we find ourselves facing a new reality of being in the one place, all the time, without our usual activities and distractions.

Those of us away from the 'front line' of Covid-19 have a sudden excess of time. It feels strange.

This strange feeling is largely the lack of opportunity to consume.

From Oliver Sacks

Wordly Inspiration from Oliver Sacks, who not only wrote prolifically, he regularly reflected on the process of his own writing.

"The act of writing is itself enough; it serves to clarify my thoughts and feelings. The act of writing is an integral part of my mental life; ideas emerge, are shaped, in the act of writing...a special, indispensable form of talking to myself."

See more Wordly Inspiration. 

Wild and zany - whose adjective is it anyway?

In these days of ubiquitous social media, online dating and 'tell us how good you are' job interviews, we frequently need to describe ourselves.

To do this, we use adjectives like friendly, fun, down-to-earth, positive, thoughtful, creative, caring, trustworthy, dedicated, motivated, effective. You can even find helpful lists online if you need more impressive adjectives for your profile.

When I was young, we were schooled in modesty: to assume effort, character and ability would speak for themselves. Self promotion was frowned upon. So, the contemporary need to self-describe and self-promote has been uncomfortable for me.

But I'm used to it now. I no longer panic in interviews when asked to describe myself in three words, and I follow the job seeker's guideline: 'Don't be too modest'. 

But sometimes the way people talk about themselves, well, it just doesn't feel right to me.

Source: Public Domain

Here are a few examples that feel off beam:

• We're soooo crazy! - group of performers in an interview after a concert
• We're wild; we're out of control; look out world! - group of 30-something football fans
• My parties are always great because I'm so zany! - woman at public function she organised
• We're all really cool; you'll like working here - new work colleague.

When a person says these sorts of things, it's not that I disagree with them. What feels strange and a bit off is that they use these adjectives to describe themselves.

I find myself wondering, is it actually their adjective to use?

TATKOP 121

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who look for the answer 'out there' and those who look 'in here'. 

See more in the TATKOP series.

Fear and writing

Wordly Inspiration for these weeks when I'm not able to get my thoughts clear. Fear from the pandemic is wreaking havoc with our bodies and minds, so no new posts at the moment. I hope soon to be able to focus.

Unfortunately, I am unable to find the source, but says everything I want to tell myself.



See more Wordly Inspiration.

From Georgia O'Keeffe

Wordly Inspiration from Georgia O'Keeffe's letter to Sherwood Anderson, in response to the doubts he expressed about his own writing:

"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you..."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

From Toni Morrison

Introducing Wordly Inspiration, an occasional series of words and writing.

Our first Wordly Inspiration comes from Toni Morrison from her Nobel prize acceptance speech in 1993:

"Word-work is sublime … because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

TATKOP 120

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who know everything and those who know they know very little.

See more in the TATKOP series.

Argument 2 - offence as defence

In Part 1, I explored my perplexing fear reaction about arguing with someone on social media.

Well, I was not really arguing, I was just trying to engage. I asked people questions about their ideas. I was trying to step out of my own bubble.

But I failed completely. Several times. I wasn't really expecting a reasoned argument, but I was expecting some sort of answers to simple questions about their views. However, asking questions was seen as attack; my questions were met with outrage and offence.

I'm sure you've seen it too.

Fun? For some... Source

What gets called an 'argument' these days is actually a fight to hold 'territory', to defend firmly held opinions, and to damage the other person as much as possible. No-one ever, ever, ever modifies their idea or changes their mind. People fling words at each other like a food fight. They hurl soggy information (simplistic memes), rotten comments (outrage and offence) and stale explanations ('that's what my grandparents did'). Simply pour over some vinaigrette of arrogance: 'Well, you have no idea', and a garnish of insults: 'Only an idiot could think that' and you have a mess no one wants to clean up.

When and why did my much-loved calm and respectful argument about differing ideas deteriorate into a word fight to defend territory?

Admin message - changes are afoot

The break provided the opportunity to have a good, long, hard look at the writing so far to see if it was something to continue, and to decide what to keep doing and what to change.

The good news is that the blog is a 'going thing'. The focus will expand, but it will still be all about words. It will just be more obviously about what humans do with words, since that is where the writing has migrated anyway.

Changes are afoot

(What a strange word 'afoot' is. It would be nice to see it more often though.)

In other news, there will be changes to the design, the format, and the frequency of posts.

The blog aims and motivations are updated in the blog manifesto.

Here's cheers to the clarity that a year of writing has allowed.

Stay tuned for more news!

Argument 1 - asking as attack

I love a good argument. I don't mean an angry disagreement. I mean the curious and respectful exploration of opposing ideas to find the source of difference, see if there is some 'middle ground', and something new to learn.

But genuine arguments so rarely happen these days.

The so-called 'argument' these days is more like a vehement battle of opposing ideas. A battle to the death with tongues as weapons: 'I believe 'this' and I'm right.' 'Well no, you're wrong; I believe 'that'.' 'No way, how could you think 'that'? You are so brainwashed and stupid.'

Source: memegenerator.net 

The aim of the contemporary 'argument' seems to be to beat your opponent's idea, and really, to conquer your opponent personally. 

Nowhere is this more evident than on social media - platforms geared to witty and pithy comments which reward those who generate outrage (going viral).

Social media platforms were born in a part of youth culture where verbal one-upmanship and scathing put-downs were a 'performance art' that replaced genuine conversation. Fun for some. Entertaining for some topics. But now, serious topics of discussion on social media get the same treatment.

Arguing on social media is so well known to be pointless, it has generated its own memes.

A new 'golden rule' for our times is never argue with someone online. 

Recently, I broke that golden rule. Long story, short: it did not go well.

Long story, not short at all: the contemporary 'argument' remains pretty woeful. World harmony and understanding was not advanced. No agreement was reached. But I learnt a lot. Mainly about myself. And I learnt to pay attention to some red flags that can lurk in an argument.

In fact, I would go so far as to recommend it to you, if you're brave!

A plan to engage with people I disagree with

Prior to my venture into online argument, I had read about the benefits of engaging with people you disagree with. It is promoted as a starting point to resolving some of the bigger issues facing humanity: 'Get out of your own bubble!' In our increasingly polarised society, it made sense. So I thought I would try it.

I was not going to criticise anyone's claims. I would be respectful. And remain calm. And maybe I might learn something and understand other people's views better.

(I haven't included any actual content of the various 'arguments' in this blog, as I want to focus on the process. For context, I responded to various posts I disagreed with about what caused the disastrous bushfires in Australia over summer of 2020, religious education in primary schools, and aboriginal land management prior to white colonisation; all easy topics - not!)

I had no intention of arguing or trying to persuade anyone to change their point of view. Instead, all I wanted was to open discussion: I planned to ask people about what they thought in more detail and the reasons they held that view.

Snipped from social media 

The opportunity soon presented itself. A post accused 'greenies' of causing the bushfires, and implied they were enjoying see the fires ravage the country. And several others like this, with or without personal insults. I snipped one implying how dumb people must be to be 'ignoring' the arsonists, for an example.

Okay, ready… how to start? I sat at the keyboard pondering options: 'That's an interesting idea, S. Why do you think that…'

But I couldn't type. My body was not on the same page at all. My heart was pounding, my legs shaking violently, my chest felt tight. I had to walk away from the keyboard.

In the only way that it could, my body was sending me a clear message.

My body was communicating dread and fear.

But what on earth was I afraid of? What peril was my body anticipating in the safety of my office?

A simple definition of fear: 

♦️ An anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience.

Regardless of what we fear, the body send essentially the same set of signals: through your body, like leg shakes or rapid breathing; through your own actions you don't quite understand, like not 'getting around to' applying for a job that you think you want; and through feelings like fear, anger or sadness.

The purpose of fear is survival.

If it's a physical threat, like a dangerous animal, those signals trigger us to avoid the danger or to defend ourselves. If it's a social threat, they signal the need to change our actions to avoid social rejection. Fight or flight; engage or retreat from personal conflict.

So, I thought about the likely 'suspects' for my fear.

Was it a fear of conflict? Many of us fear and avoid angry conflict. Sometimes we avoid it as a way of taking care of others' feelings: we don't want to upset others. Women, in particular, are socialised into this in their roles as caretakers. Other times, we are just making sure the other person still likes us. We might not reveal our contrary opinion to avoid disapproval, as the fear of rejection is a deep one for all of us.

A common fear is a fear of being exposed as wrong or a failure.

Fear of being a wrong, inadequate or a failure can be the reason we avoid things like singing or speaking in public, fully completing creative projects, putting a view forward in a discussion. Oh…

At its pathological extreme, the fear of being wrong or a failure is known as kakorrhaphiophobia. It's from Greek kakorrhaphia, meaning 'a contrivance of ill, mischievousness' (with kakós, meaning 'bad' plus -rrhaphía, meaning 'I sew') with the ending -phóbos, meaning 'fear.' So, the literal meaning is 'a fear of creating something bad'. (I could also apply this to my fear of messing up my sewing, so that's handy to know!)

I recall experiencing kakorrhaphiophobia in my childhood at school. I have a strong still gut-turning memory of the minute I realised I would be exposed as not only wrong but also lying about being wrong, feeling nauseous and dizzy, and needing to rush to the toilet. Fear and shame can not only make us feel physically sick, our skin crawl or flush, our guts fill with stabbing pain, we often also want to crawl into a hole and hide. The standard fear signals.

Was it fear of being thought of as bad or dumb? We may avoid declaring our views to allow others to continue to think we are who they imagine us to be. In the social group I shared with S, I had the image of being clever, as I had done well when we studied together. It would definitely annoy me if someone insulted my opinion as stupid or implied that I was bad or dumb - the ubiquitous insult in disagreements. But fear?

Finally, it could even be a fear of engaging in what I suspected may well be futile. The fear of futility, the fear of dedicating oneself to useless activities, is strong in all of us. In the extreme, it's a paralysing perfectionism. For most of us, it drives us to creative and engaging activities and to meaningful occupation and work.

We humans are afraid of so many different things; we are a scaredy bunch.

None of these 'social threats' seemed to explain the intensity of my body's messages of fear; this person is an acquaintance only; she doesn't matter to me, and if she doesn't like me and we never speak again, well, meh. I didn't think it would really matter to me if she thought I was dumb. I wouldn't like it, but I didn't think I needed constant validation for my self-concept as clever, friendly, curious. I was not planning to push my own views, so I wouldn't be exposing myself to the risk of being shown as wrong or a failure. 

However, despite the various articles suggesting engaging is THE way forward, I did suspect it might be futile. But that's okay; it's just a trial and if it doesn't work out, I will stop.

Well, I could tell myself that. I could rationalise that I was prepared to engage with people with whom I disagree. But my body was telling me loudly that I was not.

Fear is not easy to ignore even when we know it's not rational or warranted. 

Fears are not easily overridden by logic; they are deep evolutionary responses to both physical threats and social threats. The reason for this is obvious for physical threats - ignore them, you likely experience pain or die. Same for social threats, if an early human was kicked out of the group they would likely have died. Not being accepted, respected or valued by others could literally threaten our survival.

It seems even now when we consider taking certain actions, like engaging with someone with a chance of conflict and rejection, those deep fears of being 'kicked out' can be triggered, even when there is no real danger.

What to do then?

How could engage while my body was 'shouting' about my deep fear of engaging?

I found a useful way to think about my reaction in Dr Karl Albrecht's five basic fear categories, a sort of fear 'hierarchy' from the most direct and overt threats (fear of extinction: death, dark, spiders) to less obvious but very real personal psychological threats (fear of ego-death: disapproval, humiliation, shame, being wrong, being worthless). More examples are provided at the end of this post. 

The fears communicated through my pounding heart, shaking legs and tight chest would fit under fear of ego-death: fear of humiliation, shame or worthlessness. The threat of 'ego-death' is a threat to our sense of ourselves in the world.

Albrecht's concept of ego-death explained the signals from my body: an anticipated threat to my sense of myself was under it all. That WAS a threat to take seriously!

Okay, having anticipated what could happen, what I might feel and why, I thought I was ready. My body now agreed: the shakes and heart pounding stopped, but my persisting tight chest signalled that I should still take care. I was confident I could read words of anger, insult, etc., and not take them on. My aim was merely to remain engaged and be respectful. My second aim was to observe my own responses. If I learnt anything about the topic of the 'argument' it would be a bonus.

I would feel the fear and 'argue' anyway.

Um... maybe don't! Source 

I took a day to draft a careful response off-line, asking for the reasons for S's position. My comment was met with outrage within minutes. I kept what I thought was a careful and measured tone in my next comments, tried to further soften my questions, to make it clear I was genuinely asking, not baiting her. It went badly from there. At no time did she present any reasons for her views. She thought I was attacking her, her friends, her grandparents' parents, and her god. She said we would have to 'agree to disagree' while commenting that any view other than hers was stupid brainwashing. (And I hadn't even presented my views!) 

My main feeling was shock at her intensity. In fact, her vehement response was almost like I had threatened to annihilate her.

And perhaps I had. Did S lash out due to her perceived threat of 'ego-death'?

Other friends watching the discussion posted pap memes about the importance of being kind to each other. They too apparently interpreted my comments as a personal attack, or at least as unkind. Other mutual friends (all women) supported S, giving her comments a 'thumbs up' or responding to her angry statements with 'Well said.'

But, I wasn't attacking; I wasn't even disagreeing. I was just asking S why she held her views.

It seemed even being asked why she held a particular point of view threatened S's sense of herself in the world.

Okay, mark that one as a 'fail'.

I tried a few more times. But always the same: offence, anger, insults, and statements I was unreasonable, brainwashed, or plain stupid.

It was an experiment, and success would have been any direct answer to my question, 'Why do you think that?' But nothing like a reason was forthcoming. The few statements presented in 'support' of their position referred to their family 'traditions' or emotions like pride and loyalty, and always, outrage that I didn't respect their views which they had a 'right' to hold. One person just deleted their post altogether rather than answer my question.

It was not engagement. It was entirely futile. 

So, I gave up. It was clear that even asking a question is perceived as an attack in what passes for a contemporary argument: asking as attack.

I wasn't hurt or even disappointed. I did worry that I came across as a nasty person, and wondered how that might affect our future interactions in the bigger group, but I could cope with that.

But I did have some other nagging sense…

It took a few days until I stopped replaying the various 'arguments' in my head. Over time, what emerged was a sense of unfairness. A feeling that the 'arguments' involved foul play; that my 'friends' hadn't been playing fair.

Why on earth would I be feeling badly done by?

I found the answers to my feelings of fear and unfairness, not in psychology, but in the way we 'argue', and in the nature of the answers we think are possible.

My next post attempts to unravel the mess we call an argument.



Examples of Dr Karl Albrecht's five categories of fear (2007)

1. Extinction: fear of annihilation or of not existing; fear of death; fear of heights/falling; fear of the dark; fear of sick people.
2. Mutilation or Bodily Invasion: fear of losing a body part (a hand) or a body function (hearing), fear of having our body's boundaries invaded, fear of wild animals, snakes, spiders, dogs, sharks, cockroaches etc; fear of crowds; fear of needles, germs, the dentist.
3. Loss of Autonomy: fear of being restricted, confined, trapped, suffocated, paralysed, overwhelmed, etc; fear of being controlled by things outside us; fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia); fear of poverty (scarcity); fear of lack of time; fear of aging; fear of commitment; fear of others' dependency.
4. Separation, Abandonment or Rejection: fear of abandonment, rejection or exclusion; fear of not being respected or valued; fear of being alone and isolated from others; fear of punishment; fear of vulnerability; fear of intimacy (due to risk of loss).
5. Humiliation, Shame or Worthlessness: fear of not being lovable; fear of disapproval; fear of public speaking; fear of conflict; fear of futility; fear of being wrong (perfectionism) or appearing foolish/stupid; fear of being found out; fear of not being 'good enough'; fear of the disintegration of our idea of ourselves.

Credits for images, used under Creative Commons Licences

• I see you are arguing on Facebook: memegenerator.net
• Do it anyway: https://me.me/i/5826313