If you deal primarily in subjective experience and impulse-driven reaction, under the assumption that you occupy the undisputed moral high ground, and you’ve been incited by fake news and want to signal your allegiances to your social media friends, then you can’t engage in rational discussion with your opponent.
Very good article. I think this is one of the key points too. I’ve been thinking about how insufferably smug some of the key protagonists are in this shitshow - especially male allies of the ilk of Maugham and Harrop.
They don’t doubt their occupation of the moral high ground for a single second. Which is what makes them so fanatical and dangerous, and, as Bueskens says, wholly impossible to reason with.
Whereas I think most of us will have questioned our views pretty rigorously, and have arrived at where we are despite self-doubt, because of reason, evidence, truth. And a genuine belief in social justice.
When I see Maugham et al congratulating themselves on how thoroughly Right and Good they are, it does kind of make my innards combust.
Let’s not forget that those carrying out the Spanish Inquisition, and many other atrocities in history, also assumed they occupied the undisputed moral high ground. As I said, fanatical and dangerous. And utterly inhumane.