So I got into it with Facebook acquaintance, in spite of my better judgment. I ignored that little “do you really want to go there?” voice telling me to not engage in what would most likely be a fruitless battle. But I did it anyway.
He had posted an already widely-debunked article about how this rifle-packing granny turned the tables and shot a young miscreant who dared to attack her as part of some sick knockout game. He said it was the “greatest story” he ever read. The knockout game, an urban myth perpetrated by the right-wing media to spread racial panic, claims that roving bands of black teenage thugs are on the hunt for vulnerable white people to knock out with one punch. It sounds insane because it is insane, and it is not any kind of widespread criminal epidemic. Has it happened ever? Probably, but so have countless other aberrant crimes, and they weren’t featured for weeks on the most popular cable news station in the country.
So I posted the link that debunks his story, with the word “hoax” over it. I should have known better. No one likes a know-it-all, and sure enough, my former classmate wasted no time in responding that, true or not, it was exactly what “those animals” deserved. And that astonished me. The truth of the story was immaterial because it enforced a conviction in his head that those subhuman “animals” deserved death. The narrative he was clinging to was clearly racist, but it could just as easily been sexist, homophobic, classist – you get the picture. That revenge story made him feel good, and it comforted him that the world was indeed just as hostile a place as he thought it was. Bad things happened because of them, not us.
I think we all like to think we are rational, but that is not true. Many of us have our moments when we are able to make lucid calculations leading to better decisions, but most of the time our minds and hearts are made up already. I know it is in my case. And being hit with facts refuting our story makes us feel uncomfortable, and attacked, making us that much more likely to retreat back to our own little bubbles. And that is the problem.
So I say know your own bubbles and have compassion for other people’s. That does not mean you have to avoid conflict or let harmful information stand uncontested. But also know that winning an argument should never be a goal in and of itself. I think it is far more useful to try and live by example and be consistently mindful of where our biases lie. We are never “done” and people evolve at different levels. So while you cannot force someone to wake up to their own rational self interest, you can ask yourself if your own dealings with others are motivated by love or fear.