Darkoshi

One of my biggest pet peeves is associating X action, opinion, or line of thought, with Y personality type or social group. "If you do this/believe that, you're this kind of person".

One example would be how those who identify themselves with "modernity", "rationality", and "progress" tend to hold knee-jerk opinions in favor of things commonly associated with those terms. And associate the opposite set of opinions with an outside, undesirable group. Example: "If I think that Monsanto doesn't have my best interests at heart, that would make me a hippie/conspiracy theorist".

I don't mean to stereotype rationalists; no group is a monolith. Nonetheless, because of these common biases, I find it hard to talk to a lot of self-identified rationalists. The dogma of their subculture precludes entertaining certain opinions (which is a problem of subcultural dogma in general; I'm using rationalists here as one example). For GMOs/nuclear power/free-market capitalism? Then you're for progress. Against any of those things? Then you must be against progress. The actual merits of the argument, when they're considered at all, take a back seat to a kind of tribal identity.

Another common mistake is made by those who seek a "middle ground", without realizing that the definition of the middle is context-dependent. For example, what is politically moderate in the US may be ultra-right in, say, Iceland. So those who associate a moderate position with being "sensible", and an immoderate position with being "crazy" or "fringe", face a conundrum. It's not that Americans are crazy, or that Icelanders are crazy. It's that the rules of the game are made-up. The Golden Mean doesn't actually exist, and even if it did, it would be a mistake to confuse it with majority opinion, or what the "average person" is thought to believe; as though that granted one immunity from irrational views.

Those who pursue iconoclasm face a similar problem; that it's very easy to become the kind of "free thinker" for whom the lines of thought have already been laid down by powerful economic and social interests.

I think part of the blame has to go to modern identity-based marketing. Whatever your issue, there's an app for that, a product to buy, a cultural and economic niche for a person of "your type". Stereotypes in the media reinforce these assumptions. This creates a kind of imagined baseline of normality, a "mainstream", which we then cut ourselves to fit (or, cut ourselves not to fit).

Ideas don't come as a boxed set. You can be pro-nuke, shop in farmer's markets, and use fluoride-free toothpaste. Or be anti-nuke, shop in Safeway, and not care about fluoride. Or any combination you can think of, for just about any reason or combination of reasons you can think of. What needs to be realized is that the world isn't made up of simple categories; of homogeneous, identically thinking and acting groups who exist in isolation to each other. Groups are often ill-defined, the lines between them constantly blur, multiple identities overlap, and even within a single group there's all kinds of differences and contentions. You absolutely have to look at issues in a case-by-case manner, instead of relying on past associations and using category-based intellectual shortcuts for everything.

Nor is it reasonable to say "I can't take this seriously, because the wrong sort of people believe in it". It's your basic ad hominem fallacy. That it's so common is a result of our imagined group identities.

Put aside identities, as best as you can, and try to see where you're flexible and where you're inflexible; then, try to figure out /why/ that is. If you limit yourself to what you feel you should think, or how you feel you should act, based on the type of person you imagine yourself to be, then you will indeed be a type of person: those unaware of their social context.


Footnote:

I wrote this because the backlash against the environmental movement by young, educated liberals is one of the most frustrating things I've had to witness in my life. Even when it raises valid issues, it's being gone about in all the wrong ways, IMHO. I'm deeply concerned about where it's coming from, and what sort of psychological needs are being exploited by it. If my fumbling can suggest another way to proceed, I'll feel vindicated.