Decompiling Oppression #140
Sam McVeety
As I was reading through Defectors, it had me thinking a lot about what it's like to feel right about something, and how that can ultimately be a place of stuckness. This can take on different forms: there are the cases where there is a disagreement about facts, like modern-day claims of benevolent conquistadors, and also the cases of retrospective rightness, the feeling that something has come to pass that you've warned against all along. I think these can both be places where we get stuck.
I remember very distinctly an episode in high school, with a classmate of mine who was adamant in his defense of Creationism. We spent a lot of time arguing about it, but (unsurprisingly, in retrospect) neither of us seemed to change the other's mind about much of anything. When I reflect on that now, I also realize that I really didn't learn anything from the exchange at the time. I wonder now what I might have learned, perhaps about the needs all of us have to find stories that make sense to us.
This memory is an important one, because it is a frame for engagement that comes very naturally to me: I've done my research, I've checked my sources, and I feel like my fact-finding work is done. This is what I mean by stuckness: that we, on some level, absolve ourselves of thinking more deeply about the situation. This is something that Defectors does well: it points out where there are factual errors, yes, but also digs beneath the surface, to understand why myth might be an irresistible alternative to reality.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for an all-encompassing relativity of information, where nothing is stable and everything is contingent. Particularly in trying to further liberation, I think it is crucially important to be intentional about identifying what is true for you. Without a strong sense of truth to guide you, it's far too easy to become distracted by the sheer amount of complex information that we all have to process. Instead, I'm offering the idea that finding out what is true for you is only a part of learning about the world. It can be a milestone in the journey, but not its end.
I see this topic as particularly important at a time of rampant misinformation. Yes, we should absolutely be working to promote reliable sources of information, and, it can be easy to fixate on misinformation as the thing to fix, when there are many people with ample access to information, who still gravitate towards fictional narratives. If we don't also get curious about addressing the "why", we'll only ever see a fraction of the picture.
More fundamentally, getting stuck (consciously or unconsciously) on the idea that just having the right facts is enough to build a movement for liberation is empirically not working. This is a place to practice acceptance: it might feel wonderful to imagine that, if everyone could just have access to all the relevant information, they'd change their minds, but it's obviously not true. I'm reminded of a similar reality check from SURJ: "White privilege is real and it is deadly, but is not an organizing strategy". Both can be true at the same time.
This gets at the messy reality of actually engaging with people, and what it actually takes to change someone's mind. Plenty of research (High Conflict is a good starting point) finds that people who are in a state of ideological conflict are more apt to double down on their existing beliefs than to change them, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. (Importantly, there's a warning for everyone here: being overly attached to your viewpoint closes you off to new information.) Though it may seem paradoxical, the only way to have a chance of changing someone's mind is to get them out of this heightened state: through things like increasing their sense of safety and making them feel heard.
All that said, none of this is easy. It might be unfair, frustrating, even infuriating to hear that facts are not enough to change someone's mind when people are literally dying because a DHHS Secretary doesn't believe in vaccines. It can feel overwhelming to contend with the idea that it is not enough to simply pursue your own truth, but to make enough space for others to safely pursue theirs. And yet, this is what the work of change is: to seek to know the world as it is, well enough to change it.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: When has the desire to be right prevented you from learning something you otherwise might have?
Communal: How can we support each other in holding the discomfort that staying curious can bring?
Solidarity: Support the South Seattle Emerald and their work to accurately represent the cultural, economic, and political breadth (and depth) of South Seattle.
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