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Abstract

/p>This was all well and good in the pre-Trump era, but since 2015, my perception of the health of public discourse in North America has taken a severe beating. Regardless of what you think of Trump himself (and there’s more than enough to work with either way), his ascension to the White House caused an adverse and hysterical reaction among liberals and lefties that seems to have changed our collective mental environment for the worse. Or perhaps it really was that bad all along, and that Trump’s election simply had the effect of shining a light on the rot that was already well underway.Over the course of the past five years, North American society has allowed itself to become further polarized, to the point where the very idea of a reasonable public debate online about anything is sure to get bogged down in identity politics, and to be characterized by total strangers vilifying each other.Especially on the Left, the <a href="https://www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/">othering</a> of those who disagree with you, even incrementally, is the order of the day. To those who don’t subscribe to the full and complete bundle of liberal/left policies, the now-usual lot of tiresome scare words awaits, such as racist, homophobe, transphobe, TERF, white supremacist, or even nazi.Don’t worry, however— I’m not really picking one side of the the artificial political spectrum over the other. The Right has its own scare words — such as Marxist, communist, jihadist, traitor, SJW, etc. — but it’s just that the Left circa 2022 is making the Right seem sane and tolerant by comparison.Probably the one area of overlap between those two solitudes is that both think the other’s preferred media outlets are fake news. (Thank goodness for that bit of unity, at least.)<h2 id="0aa2">In this current milieu, it seems to me that most people on social media aren’t looking to be persuaded, nor even to entertain any sort of nuanced argument. Rather, the online world is now little more than a noisy hellscape of people shouting each other down from within their respective silos, leaving themselves with nothing to show for it but hoarse voices.</h2>As for me, I’m simply done with it all.My views are what they are, and I don’t care what that makes me in any regard. I always try to keep an open mind, and am always willing to consider new i

Options

nformation that may affect my outlook, but beyond that, I no longer feel the need to explain myself to trolls who are simply looking to exploit any potential chink in my armor, no matter how superficial — if their purpose is to simply drive a sword through me by any means possible, rather than have a mature two-way discussion, then I simply can’t be bothered.On the surface, this all may appear to be some sort of apathy, or even a weary sense of resignation, but appearances can be deceiving.On the contrary, I decided a few weeks ago to (mostly) stop engaging with people online where politics and current events are concerned, simply because I decided that a person’s political or sociological leanings are the least interesting and least important thing about them.As such, I have now resolved not to care a whit about what you believe politically, nor about what cultural ‘tribe’ you identify with. I’d rather connect with people as fellow human beings, and to see any room full of random and assorted strangers as potential brothers and sisters. If I disregard you over something as stupid and superficial as party affiliation or political leaning, then I run the risk of not getting to know you as a person, or of missing the opportunity to learn from you and understand you better, and by extension learn about and understand myself better.Perhaps it is naïveté on my part, but I truly believe that if you and I understand each other better at the human level, then perhaps we’ll be better positioned to inoculate ourselves against those forces (in government, academia, mass media, and industry) who seek to divide and conquer us along superficial lines. (If you wish to manipulate a population, keep them on edge and living in fear or contempt of each other.)My approach nowadays is that if I come across something you’ve said (say, on Twitter) that I find disagreeable, I’ll look for something else you’ve said or done that is positive, and connect with you that way, and leave it to someone else to clang swords with you on the disagreeable part. I’ve tried this approach several times over, and it leaves me feeling much better about mankind in general. (Why fight with someone if there’s a legitimate other reason to lift them up?)And so, you as a person matter far much more to me than your opinions and affiliations ever will, and I can say with full honesty that it is a huge relief to simply leave it at that.</article></body>

I’m not apathetic — I just don’t care about your opinion anymore

“Echo and Narcissus” (1903), by John William Waterhouse

Something cool happened over the past month, or rather it was a confluence of cool things.

As I have written previously, I recently got my diet and exercise groove back while also starting to make more headway in processing the loss of my mother. This kinda/sorta coincided with the beginning of Great Lent (itself the coolest of cool things), which for me means going vegan until Pascha, a practice that has certainly helped keep my daily calorie count down. All of those things in and of themselves were awesome, but something else also happened that has been a tremendous boon to my overall sense of wellbeing.

In a nutshell, I stopped caring what you think or feel about politics and current events. By you I mean the collective you in general, as well as the specific you reading this article.

This was a huge and unexpected development for me as a recovering journalist, an occupation that had included regular opinion columns and editorial writing. From J-School onward, I had been conditioned almost my entire adult life to exalt the very idea being an influencer on any and every topic that happened to pop into my head, and to correct every ‘incorrect’ opinion (in the name of Truth!) that crossed my path. Subconsciously, or sometimes very consciously, I had been harboring some notion about shaping the public conversation around whatever the heck was being discussed, which is actually a narcissistic outlook, as it involves The Writer holding him or herself above the very public he or she is trying to shape.

Although I hadn’t seen the inside of a newsroom for 22 years, this sense of mission around shaping other people’s opinions had lived on via the various blogs I had written in the intervening years, as well as the wars of words I had allowed myself to become embroiled in on social media and in comment sections.

(You can take the boy out of the editorial pages, but you can’t…well, I think you know where I was going with that.)

This was all well and good in the pre-Trump era, but since 2015, my perception of the health of public discourse in North America has taken a severe beating. Regardless of what you think of Trump himself (and there’s more than enough to work with either way), his ascension to the White House caused an adverse and hysterical reaction among liberals and lefties that seems to have changed our collective mental environment for the worse. Or perhaps it really was that bad all along, and that Trump’s election simply had the effect of shining a light on the rot that was already well underway.

Over the course of the past five years, North American society has allowed itself to become further polarized, to the point where the very idea of a reasonable public debate online about anything is sure to get bogged down in identity politics, and to be characterized by total strangers vilifying each other.

Especially on the Left, the othering of those who disagree with you, even incrementally, is the order of the day. To those who don’t subscribe to the full and complete bundle of liberal/left policies, the now-usual lot of tiresome scare words awaits, such as racist, homophobe, transphobe, TERF, white supremacist, or even nazi.

Don’t worry, however— I’m not really picking one side of the the artificial political spectrum over the other. The Right has its own scare words — such as Marxist, communist, jihadist, traitor, SJW, etc. — but it’s just that the Left circa 2022 is making the Right seem sane and tolerant by comparison.

Probably the one area of overlap between those two solitudes is that both think the other’s preferred media outlets are fake news. (Thank goodness for that bit of unity, at least.)

In this current milieu, it seems to me that most people on social media aren’t looking to be persuaded, nor even to entertain any sort of nuanced argument. Rather, the online world is now little more than a noisy hellscape of people shouting each other down from within their respective silos, leaving themselves with nothing to show for it but hoarse voices.

As for me, I’m simply done with it all.

My views are what they are, and I don’t care what that makes me in any regard. I always try to keep an open mind, and am always willing to consider new information that may affect my outlook, but beyond that, I no longer feel the need to explain myself to trolls who are simply looking to exploit any potential chink in my armor, no matter how superficial — if their purpose is to simply drive a sword through me by any means possible, rather than have a mature two-way discussion, then I simply can’t be bothered.

On the surface, this all may appear to be some sort of apathy, or even a weary sense of resignation, but appearances can be deceiving.

On the contrary, I decided a few weeks ago to (mostly) stop engaging with people online where politics and current events are concerned, simply because I decided that a person’s political or sociological leanings are the least interesting and least important thing about them.

As such, I have now resolved not to care a whit about what you believe politically, nor about what cultural ‘tribe’ you identify with. I’d rather connect with people as fellow human beings, and to see any room full of random and assorted strangers as potential brothers and sisters. If I disregard you over something as stupid and superficial as party affiliation or political leaning, then I run the risk of not getting to know you as a person, or of missing the opportunity to learn from you and understand you better, and by extension learn about and understand myself better.

Perhaps it is naïveté on my part, but I truly believe that if you and I understand each other better at the human level, then perhaps we’ll be better positioned to inoculate ourselves against those forces (in government, academia, mass media, and industry) who seek to divide and conquer us along superficial lines. (If you wish to manipulate a population, keep them on edge and living in fear or contempt of each other.)

My approach nowadays is that if I come across something you’ve said (say, on Twitter) that I find disagreeable, I’ll look for something else you’ve said or done that is positive, and connect with you that way, and leave it to someone else to clang swords with you on the disagreeable part. I’ve tried this approach several times over, and it leaves me feeling much better about mankind in general. (Why fight with someone if there’s a legitimate other reason to lift them up?)

And so, you as a person matter far much more to me than your opinions and affiliations ever will, and I can say with full honesty that it is a huge relief to simply leave it at that.