n the movie Mars Attacks, the US president, played by Jack Nicholson, stands
in front of the Martian invaders and asks, “Why can't we all just get
along?” The Martians' response is No: their goal is absolute supremacy, and
they vaporize him with their ray gun.
That scene was highly amusing, but we're re-enacting it in the real world in a much less amusing way. People are trying to get absolute supremacy over each other. They create ideologies in the hope of understanding what's happening. These ideologies create polarization, and people fight because the other side threatens their livelihood and their freedom.
Global warming
The argument over global warming is an example. We have two factions. One says the Earth is warming by three degrees and it's a disaster; the other says it's warming by one and a half degrees and it's not a disaster. So in true American fashion, they've dug in their heels and are at each other's throats. Over at Quillette, a forum for calm intellectual discussion of issues, a debate on AGW last week turned uncharacteristically nasty, with one person calling another a “denier” for questioning the motives of the warmers.
Anyone who thinks there are climate deniers should read this article by David Legates, a professor of geography and climatology. He represents the conservative point of view pretty accurately. He's also gotten the science right, which is a difficult task for laymen.
CO2 does absorb some energy, but it immediately re-emits it at the same wavelength, so technically it's scattering, not absorption. This, not absorption, is the basis for its warming effect, and everyone agrees it's small. The Stefan-Boltzmann law lets us estimate it fairly accurately. What's in dispute is the computer projections. For God's sake, we're fighting over a computer program!
Pretty much everyone agrees on these scientific facts. The so-called deniers are unicorns: an animal that everyone knows about but which doesn't really exist. Call me a climate denier denier, but the fact is that while there may be debate about the accuracy of the temperature readings, and there is certainly debate about their significance, there's not much debate about the basic science, and there never has been.
People fight because their livelihoods and freedoms are threatened. Skeptics are insulted and accused of being paid off. Threatening the opponent's livelihood and impugning their motives not only guarantees that they won't agree with you, it prevents them from doing so, and it often appears as if the goal is to achieve absolute supremacy rather than come to an agreement.
Feminism
Liberals believe that men and women should have equality. Conservatives believe that men and women should be treated equally. Their viewpoints are virtually the same, yet people are literally screaming at each other in restaurants and getting people fired for disagreeing with them. They are trying to win the argument by using coercion. People are judging each other not by the color of their skin, but by the color of their hat.It's as though the whole country has gone hormonal. Instead of talking like adults, people choose to insult, threaten, and denigrate one another using inflammatory language. Feminists use terms like patriarchy, mansplaining and toxic masculinity, sometimes saying they hate all men. They talk about The Handmaid's Tale as if that's what our society is like. Their opponents call them feminazis. A few feminists, like one NYT editor, even began dabbling in racism.
There are, of course, certain sticking points. But this approach—the demonizing, the name-calling, and the hate—only causes your opponent to reject your argument. Neither side will ever get absolute supremacy, and trying to do so would produce a catastrophe.
march 01 2019, 7:51 am. edited mar 07 2019, 7:20 am
