That’s a fair point too; if you go in anticipating a conversational slap, you’re in a defensive posture from the start.
This reinforces my feeling that setting out to specifically create that no-slapping environment from the start is critical, but it also adds in another twist and problem: There’s increasing evidence that political “language” between various groups is diverging. In other words, ~20 years ago people used the same words to mean the same things, even when they disagreed. Now people on different sides of an issue use identical words to mean totally different things - including some that can be perceived as a verbal slap.
I’ve been tooting that horn for a while, but it’s a pretty hard point to translate into real political discourse with people. I try to weasel out of it, but at some point, people get really fed up and want you to “state your actual opinions”, or otherwise will just bully you relentlessly. Basically, I’m just saying that with any change of opinion, there’s going to be, probably, some necessary amount of discomfort. I guess my extrapolation from that would probably be that it’s a better policy as a whole if people just stop taking the slap so personally or so passionately. Better policy if your face goes numb, easier to work with, rather than handcuffing everyone, ja feel?
I dunno but there’s also definitely an amount by which that political polarization is strictly due to social media algorithms keeping people in bubbles where they’re constantly drip fed their own personalized optimal ratio of ragebait to wholesome garbage. It’s kind of inevitable that anyone starts to lose it, if they’ve been confined to their schizo microculture for long enough.
That’s a fair point too; if you go in anticipating a conversational slap, you’re in a defensive posture from the start.
This reinforces my feeling that setting out to specifically create that no-slapping environment from the start is critical, but it also adds in another twist and problem: There’s increasing evidence that political “language” between various groups is diverging. In other words, ~20 years ago people used the same words to mean the same things, even when they disagreed. Now people on different sides of an issue use identical words to mean totally different things - including some that can be perceived as a verbal slap.
I’ve been tooting that horn for a while, but it’s a pretty hard point to translate into real political discourse with people. I try to weasel out of it, but at some point, people get really fed up and want you to “state your actual opinions”, or otherwise will just bully you relentlessly. Basically, I’m just saying that with any change of opinion, there’s going to be, probably, some necessary amount of discomfort. I guess my extrapolation from that would probably be that it’s a better policy as a whole if people just stop taking the slap so personally or so passionately. Better policy if your face goes numb, easier to work with, rather than handcuffing everyone, ja feel?
I dunno but there’s also definitely an amount by which that political polarization is strictly due to social media algorithms keeping people in bubbles where they’re constantly drip fed their own personalized optimal ratio of ragebait to wholesome garbage. It’s kind of inevitable that anyone starts to lose it, if they’ve been confined to their schizo microculture for long enough.
Yeah, I feel you. On both points.