Them!

An unrelated pictures about a band from the 60ies.

Them ! They stink don’t they ? They are stupid mouth-breathers with nothing but deceit and bad intentions in their tiny, tiny minds.

Who are they, you ask, already readying yourself to agree with me (because, seriously, who can stand them)? Well, it all depends, doesn’t it? Who ‘them’ are actually depends about who ‘us’ are. We are good, virtuous, intelligent and good smelling. Them, they are the others, the ones that are not… (and yes, that does, technically include giant atomic ants, but as far as today is concerned, my topic is broader).

The human mind, you see, is extensively tribal. Not only there seems to be a limit, of approximately 150 people, to the number of individual our brains can effectively process as part of the extended tribe but one of our most fundamental psychological needs is the need to belong to community. The problem is that, within such groups, the members will tend toward unanimity. Not only are we unwilling to risk affecting our status within the group by appearing to disagree with the prominent opinions, but we also, at an even more fundamental level, want to minimize the conflict, tensions and cognitive dissonance that come with such disagreements. The negative consequences of such unwarranted unanimity (the prevalent term, popularized by the psychologist Irving Janis, for this behavior is ‘groupthink’) have been illustrated by many anecdotal cases. This situation, in short, could be summarized by a quote from Nietsche’s (in his book ‘The Dawn’, published in 1881): “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

But, there is another side to this problem, because a community is defined as much by who is outside of it than by who is inside: If you think of an easy representation for your community, you will probably end up labeling a little circle. There, the line of the circle, acts as barrier between the community and the rest of the world, where the ‘Them’ run free…

Not only is the disagreements the ‘Them’ so shamelessly flaunt an insult to all these beliefs that we hold so dear, such exposure to contrarian ideas cause a risk to the groupthink and, eventually, to the very community we belong to. It is, therefore, quite a natural development for a community to polarize, and to simplify caricaturize and diabolize the other side (after all, they probably fall well beyond the 150 people limit we can process) creating a ‘with us or against us’ mentality…

To give a particularly example, Rush Limbaugh recently vehemently attacked the automobile reviewer ‘Motor Trend’ over their choice of the Chevy Volt as car of the year for 2011. Such vehemence might, at first glance, seem surprising. But, in fact, Limbaugh’s trend of thought is easy to trace back: The Chevy volt is, as the name suggest, an electric car. The people pushing for such a type of engine are people concerned about global warming, an issue that Limbaugh’s tribe has often dismissed in the most vitriolic terms. By promoting an electric car, Motor Trend is therefore guilty of siding with ‘Them’. And, as such, deserving of Limbaugh’s ire…

Closer from our regular topics of interest, the Anti-vaccine crowd is pretty infamous for such practices. Particularly egregious is the case of the McCafferys whose child died of Pertussis in March 2009. The McCafferys were quite vocal about their child’s cause of death and it did offer a chilling contradiction to the AVN, and Meryl Dorey’s, stance that “You didn’t die from it 30 years ago and you’re not going to die from it today”. The McCaffery, therefore, became “the enemies” and were subjected to a campaign of harassment and hatred. In the US, the blog Age of Autism published last year a pictures of some of their principal opponents eating a baby as part of their thanksgiving feast, among other, rather reprehensible, behavior. The latest occurrence in this shameful series was last week when skepchick Elyse Anders  was attacked in the vilest, most disturbing and hateful of terms over the Age of Autism’s facebook page.

Now, that does not surprises me too much, it might be my own prejudices showing, but I am not expecting much in term of balanced and reasoned argument from Mr. Limbaugh. Similarly, I am not surprised by any excesses from the crusaders of anti-vaccination. What I am most concerned about is when such Manichaeism shows up within my own thoughts which, I must admit, is much too often. It is something that I do, recognize, though, and on which I am making a conscious effort.

Then, there is the risk of my own skeptical community to go through a similar reply onto itself, such a close-mindedness, after all, would be directly antithetic to our values and goals. For example, there has been some tendency of attacking Jenny McCarthy, for her past as a playmate, as it was freaking relevant to the debate. Indeed, the attacks on her person have sometime taken a disturbing sexual and misogynic tone.

Now, before it turns into the old accommodationist/confrontationists argument, I want to mention that such phenomenon can work at any level. It is entirely possible for a faction within the skeptic movement to summarily and unfairly dismiss another faction as a bunch of jerks more interested in conflict than in meaningful arguments. To behave, in short, dickishly toward the dicks… Especially as, as mentioned, snark and confrontationism do have a positive effect that help giving the community more cohesion. So it probably as its role, as long as it is reasoned and not a knee-jerks “us versus them” tribal reflex…

Nonetheless, because this kind of shortcuts in our thinking, our tendency to put people into well ordered boxes, in clearly delimited camps of good and evil, is so very easy to fall into, it is a danger to keep in mind at all times. This is a trap that is always waiting to open under our mind and cloud our judgments. A fallacy we should always be wary of and one that we can only counter through a constant effort to truly listen to those we disagree with you and understand their true motivations rather than to reduce them to two dimensional caricatures (I mentioned earlier how, for example, misguided and hateful as their positions can be, many anti-vaccers are acting on a personal desire to do good and are motivated by personnal sufferings and tragedy one can not help but sympathize to). Our judgments, to put it another way, will only be truly guided by reason, if they are also inspired by compassion.

And that, my friends, is way enough pontificating for today, at least from my part as this is a heated issue and some of you probably have strong opinions… The comment section is waiting for you!