Guest post: The need for designated “zeroists”
Originally a comment by iknklast on Another scourge of White Feminism.
I definitely understand the “not wanting to start from zero” argument, because I face it so much myself in discussing global warming. I really don’t want to have to present the basics of the evidence over and over to people who have made up their mind. But I have to. The problem is, that takes time from actually doing what needs to be done, so it feels like we never progress.
I feel the same way about women’s issues. Even in groups of women, I sometimes have to start from zero to say, yes, there are women out there who do not make what their male counterparts make, who have few freedoms accorded them, etc etc etc. Can we please get on with the important issues of fixing things? The answer to that is no, because you always have to start at zero and by the time you get your interlocutor up to speed, assuming you ever do, the day is over. The next day, you have to start at zero again.
If there were ever a thing doing solid work for the oppressors, it’s ignorance. They count on it. Keep us busy starting at zero, and what little time is left we put out brush fires, etc. Nothing major will get accomplished, the world keeps spinning with the same rhythms as always, and the white male Christian component of the population remains largely in charge.
Perhaps what we need are designated “zeroists” who are in charge of starting at zero, while everyone else can pitch in and get the work done. These “zeroists” are who we refer questions to, and they will be trained and expert in starting at zero, and the constant nagging person who doesn’t know much and doesn’t accept that they don’t know much will no longer get so much in everyone else’s way.
In large discussion groups I’ve been in, over time there’s a tendency for “specialists” to naturally sort themselves out. I’m familiar with atheist forums open for debate. A former priest may take on Thomists, several feminists will have the ready statistics on abortion, someone who left a cult will jump to attention when they hear dogwhistles. And as for the “ zeroists?” The ones routinely working with the innocent, the ignorant, the belligerent, the smug, and the slow, over the same starting ground?
It would end up being those of us with a great deal of both patience … and cynicism.
Why cynicism? You can’t get frustrated when you harbor few illusions, or disappointed when you expected nothing in the first place. The struggle is it’s own reward. We must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.
Again, this is why I’m such a proponent of writing down the introductory, 101 level stuff just once (while making some serious effort to make sure Your argument is carefully worded and thought out, well sourced etc.), putting it online and pointing to that, either by linking or copy/paste, whenever the need to go through the basics arises again. At least that way You don’t have to start from zero every time as far as the actual formulation of Your argument is concerned.
@ Bjarte Foshaug:
Excellent advice. That’s assuming that the real questions are the basic informational ones, though. A lot of times, they’re not. They’re actually pursuing something else, and you can waste a lot of time posting beautifully written 101 stuff when you should be asking more questions.
Example:
Christian: I got a question. Can you evilutionists give me one example of a “transitional form?”
Designated Zeroist: Yes! Link! Here is a list of 50 of them, with citations, and an explanation of why we know they’re transitional! That will get us started.
Designated Sub-Basement: If you had evidence for transitional forms, would you accept that evolution happened?
Christian: Nope.
Designated Sub-Basement: Why not ?
Christian: I trust God.
Designated Sub-Basement: Then let’s drop evolution and talk about that…
Of course, someone with a ton of experience could have a dozen 101 courses, all coordinated, in color.
Bjarte, I could get behind that too, and in fact am a proponent of it. The problem is, very few people are going to read something like that. Pointing them to a link often gives them an excuse to brush you off. For instance, many of my students (in college, yes) have such poor reading comprehension that they can read the statement “Scientists agree that global warming is real and caused by humans” and get it totally wrong. Of course, trying to use words to explain such things to people who don’t understand written words any better than that is often futile, anyway, because they may not understand the spoken word, either.
And this is students who can pass the basic reading comprehension tests. I shudder to think what those who can’t pass those tests would do.
This is something like that for feminism: https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/
@Anna #4:
Thanks for the link!
Sastra #3, iknklast #4
By all means, having a pre-written answer to the 101 stuff is not a substitute for ever having to come up with another argument again, and it definitely doesn’t always work, but, then again neither does anything else. But even starting from one instead of zero saves an awful lot of tedious repetitive writing, and, at least in my experience debating theists (a rather low bar admittedly), it ends the debate more often than You might think.
I definitely agree that often – indeed usually – it’s not really about the actual arguments at all – 101 level or not. I seriously doubt that there are many theists out there who can honestly say that they would not believe in God if not for the fact that, say, the Kalam Cosmological argument (or any of the others) were so compelling. For that matter I don’t think there are many climate change deniers who would accept the scientific consensus on climate change if not for the fact that the climate has changed in the past etc. etc. The “information deficit” model of climate change denial has mostly been abandoned, because, by and large, providing more information has been shown not to work. What appears to be an argument about facts and logic and probability etc. is really an argument about ideology, identity, self-image, psychological comfort etc.
On an interesting side-note there is at least anecdotal evidence that something I once wrote did in fact lead to the de-conversion of some Christians, which (if true) is telling indeed, since that particular article was really just about atrocities in the Bible and didn’t have anything to say about the actual existence of God at all. If belief in God was ultimately based on following evidence and logic where it leads, it’s unclear to say the least why learning that the Bible portrays God as a monster should change anything. After all, why should an evil God be less likely to exist than a benevolent one? If, on the other hand, faith is based on wishful thinking something like this is exactly what You’d expect: Make the conclusion look less desirable, and suddenly the arguments supporting it don’t seem so convincing after all.
Of course I believe myself to be better than that, but, then again, so does everyone else (as somebody once put it “most people think they’re not like most people”). I didn’t start believing in God, but somehow the whole topic just happened to become so much less important and interesting around the same time the atheist movement (R.I.P.) devolved into a sub-branch of the alt-right (except one much smaller fraction that went and joined the alt-left). The story I tell myself is that climate change is just so much more important (as it is), but of course that was true long before Richard Dawkins posted his infamous “Dear Muslima” comment on Pharyngula. So I’m probably just as biased as everyone else. *sigh*
Gender criticism needs one of these.
Jane Claire Jones is pretty good, I think.