Argument 1 - Asking as attack

Mae Wright

I love a good argument. I don't mean an angry disagreement. I mean the curious and respectful exploration of opposing ideas to find the source of difference, see if there is some 'middle ground', and something new to learn.

But genuine arguments so rarely happen these days.

The so-called 'argument' these days is more like a vehement battle of opposing ideas. A battle to the death with tongues as weapons: 'I believe 'this' and I'm right.' 'Well no, you're wrong; I believe 'that'.' 'No way, how could you think 'that'? You are so brainwashed and stupid.' 

The aim of the contemporary 'argument' seems to be to beat your opponent's idea, and really, to conquer your opponent personally.

Nowhere is this more evident than on social media - platforms geared to witty and pithy comments which reward those who generate outrage (going viral). Social media platforms were born of a part of youth culture where verbal one-upmanship and scathing put-downs were a 'performance art' that replaced genuine conversation. Fun for some. Entertaining for some topics. But now, serious topics of discussion on social media get the same treatment.

Arguing on social media is so well known to be pointless, it has generated its own memes. A new golden rule for our times is never argue with someone online.

Recently, I broke that golden rule.

Long story short: it did not go well.

Long story, not short at all: the contemporary 'argument' remains pretty woeful. World harmony and understanding was not advanced. No agreement was reached. But I learnt a lot. Mainly about myself. And I learnt to pay attention to some red flags that can lurk in an argument.

In fact, I would go so far as to recommend it to you!

Prior to my venture into online argument, I had read about the benefits of engaging with people you disagree with. It is promoted as a starting point to resolving some of the bigger issues facing humanity: 'Get out of your own bubble!' In our increasingly polarised society, it made sense. So I thought I would try it. 

I was not going to criticise anyone's claims. I would be respectful. And remain calm. And maybe I might learn something and understand other people's views better.

(I haven't included any actual content of the various 'arguments' in this blog, as I want to focus on the process. For context, I responded to various posts I disagreed with about what caused the disastrous bushfires in Australia over summer of 2020, religious education in primary schools, and aboriginal land management prior to white colonisation; all easy topics - not!)

I had no intention of  arguing or trying to persuade anyone to change their point of view. Instead, all I wanted was to open discussion: I planned to ask people about what they thought in more detail and the reasons they held that view.

Snipped from social media

The opportunity soon presented itself. A post accused 'greenies' of causing the bushfires, and implied they were enjoying see the fires ravage the country. And several others like this, with or without personal insults. Here's one of this ilk.

Okay, ready… how to start? I sat at the keyboard pondering options: 'That's an interesting idea, S. Why do you think that…'

But I couldn't type. My body was not on the same page at all. My heart was pounding, my legs shaking violently, my chest felt tight. I had to walk away from the keyboard.

In the only way that it could, my 'psychology' was sending me a clear message.

My body was communicating dread and fear. But what on earth was I afraid of? What peril was my body anticipating in the safety of my office?

A simple definition of fear:

An anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience.

Regardless of what we fear, the body send essentially the same set of signals: through your body, like leg shakes or rapid breathing; through your own actions you don't quite understand, like not 'getting around to' applying for a job that you think you want; and through feelings like fear, anger or sadness.

The purpose of fear is survival. 

If it's a physical threat, like a dangerous animal, those signals trigger us to avoid the danger or to defend ourselves. If it's a social threat, they signal the need to change our actions to avoid social rejection. Fight or flight; engage or retreat from personal conflict.

So, I thought about the likely 'suspects' for my fear.

Was it a fear of conflict? Many of us fear and avoid angry conflict. Sometimes we avoid it as a way of taking care of others' feelings: we don't want to upset others. Women, in particular, are socialised into this in their roles as caretakers. Other times, we are just making sure the other person still likes us. We might not reveal our contrary opinion to avoid disapproval, as the fear of rejection is a deep one for all of us.

Another common fear is a fear of being exposed as wrong or a failure. This can be the reason we avoid things like singing or speaking in public, fully completing creative projects, putting a view forward in a discussion. Oh…

At its pathological extreme, the fear of being wrong or a failure is known as kakorrhaphiophobia. It's from Greek kakorrhaphia, meaning 'a contrivance of ill, mischievousness' (with kakós, meaning 'bad' plus -rrhaphía, meaning 'I sew') with the ending -phóbos, meaning 'fear.'  So, the literal meaning is 'a fear of creating something bad'. (I could also apply this to my fear of messing up my sewing, so that's handy to know!)

I recall experiencing kakorrhaphiophobia in my childhood at school. I have a strong gut-turning memory of the minute I realised I would be exposed as not only wrong but also lying about being wrong, feeling nauseous an dizzy, and needing to rush to the toilet. Fear and shame can not only make us feel physically sick, our skin crawl or flush, our guts fill with stabbing pain, we often also want to crawl into a hole and hide. The standard fear signals.

Was it fear of being thought of as bad or dumb? We may avoid declaring our views to allow others to continue to think we are who they imagine us to be. In the social group I shared with S, I had the image of being clever, as I had done well when we studied together. It would definitely annoy me if someone insulted my opinion as stupid or implied that I was bad or dumb - the ubiquitous insult in disagreements. But fear?

Finally, it could even be a fear of engaging in what I suspected may well be futile. The fear of futility, the fear of dedicating oneself to useless activities, is strong in all of us. In the extreme, it's a paralysing perfectionism. For most of us, it drives us to creative and engaging activities and to meaningful occupation and work.

I read about all these types of fears, and more.  

None of these 'social threats' seemed to explain the intensity of my body's messages of fear; this person is an acquaintance only; she doesn't matter to me, and if she doesn't like me and we never speak again, well, meh. I didn't think it would really matter to me if she thought I was dumb. I wouldn't like it, but I didn't think I needed constant validation for my self-concept as clever, friendly, curious. I was not planning to push my own views, so I wouldn't be exposing myself to the risk of being shown as wrong or a failure. However, despite the various articles suggesting engaging is THE way forward, I did suspect it might be futile. But that's okay; it's just a trial and if it doesn't work out, I will stop.

Well, I could tell myself that. I could rationalise that I was prepared to engage with people with whom I disagree. But my body was telling me loudly that I was not.

Fear is not easy to ignore even when we know it's not rational or warranted. 

Fears are not easily overridden; they are deep evolutionary responses to both physical threats and social threats. The reason for this is obvious for physical threats - ignore them, you likely experience pain or die. Similarly for social threats, if an early human was kicked out of the group they would likely have died. Not being accepted, respected or valued by others could literally threaten our survival. 

It seems even now when we consider taking certain actions, like engaging with someone with a chance of conflict and rejection, those deep fears of being 'kicked out' can be triggered, even when there is no real danger. 

What to do then? How could I continue with my plan?

I found a useful way to think about my reaction in Dr Karl Albrecht's five basic fear categories, a sort of fear 'hierarchy' from most direct and overt threats (fear of extinction: death, dark, spiders) to less obvious but very real personal psychological threats (fear of  ego-death: disapproval, humiliation, shame, being wrong, being worthless). More examples are provided at the end of this post. 

The fears communicated through my pounding heart, shaking legs and tight chest would fit under fear of ego-death: fear of humiliation, shame or worthlessness. The threat of 'ego-death' is a threat to our sense of ourselves in the world.

Albrecht's concept of ego-death explained the signals from my body: an anticipated threat to my sense of myself was under it all. That WAS a threat to take seriously!

Okay, having anticipated what could happen, what I might feel and why, I thought I was ready. My body now agreed: the shakes and heart pounding stopped, but my persisting tight chest signalled that I should still take care. I was confident I could read words of anger, insult, etc., and not take them on. My aim was merely to remain engaged and be respectful. My second aim was to observe my own responses. If I learnt anything about the topic of the 'argument' it would be a bonus.

I would feel the fear and I would 'argue' anyway. 

I took a day to draft a careful response off-line, asking for the reasons for S's position. My comment was met with outrage within minutes. I kept what I thought was a careful and measured tone in my next comments, tried to further soften my questions, to make it clear I was genuinely asking, not baiting her. It went badly from there. At no time, did she present any reasons for her views. She thought I was attacking her, her friends, her grandparents' parents, and her god. She said we would have to 'agree to disagree' while commenting that any view other than hers was stupid brainwashing. (And I hadn't even presented my views!)

My main feeling was shock at her intensity. In fact, her vehement response was almost like I had threatened to annihilate her. 

And perhaps I had. Did S lash out due to her perceived threat of 'ego-death'?

Other friends watching the discussion posted pap memes about the importance of being kind to each other. They too apparently interpreted my comments as a personal attack, or at least as unkind. Other mutual friends (all women) supported S, giving her comments a 'thumbs up' or responding to her angry statements with 'Well said.'

But, I wasn't disagreeing, I was just asking S why she held her views.

It seemed even being asked why she held a particular point of view threatened S's sense of herself in the world.

Okay, mark that one as a 'fail'.

I tried a few more times. But always the same: offence, anger, insults, and statements I was unreasonable, brainwashed, or plain stupid. 

It was an experiment, and success would have been any direct answer to my question, 'Why do you think that?' But nothing like a reason was forthcoming. Those statements presented in 'support' of their position referred to their family 'traditions' or emotions like pride and loyalty, and always, outrage that I didn't respect their views which they had a 'right' to hold. One person just deleted their post altogether rather than answer my question.

It was not engagement. It was entirely futile.

So I gave up. I wasn't hurt or even disappointed. I did worry that I came across as a nasty person, and wondered how that might affect our future interactions in the bigger group, but I could cope with that.

But I did have some other nagging sense…

It took a few days until I stopped replaying the various 'arguments' in my head. Over time, what emerged was a sense of unfairness. A feeling that the 'arguments' involved foul play; that my 'friends' hadn't been playing fair.

Why on earth would I be feeling badly done by?

I found the answers to my feelings of fear and unfairness, not in psychology, but in the way we 'argue', and in the nature of the answers we think are possible.

My next post will attempt to unravel it all. 

Examples of Dr Karl Albrecht's five categories of fear (2007)

1. Extinction: fear of annihilation or of not existing; fear of death; fear of heights/falling; fear of the dark; fear of sick people.

2. Mutilation or Bodily Invasion: fear of losing a body part (a hand) or a body function (hearing), fear of having our body's boundaries invaded, fear of wild animals, snakes, spiders, dogs, sharks, cockroaches etc; fear of crowds; fear of needles, germs, the dentist.

3. Loss of Autonomy: fear of being restricted, confined, trapped, suffocated, paralysed, overwhelmed, etc; fear of being controlled by things outside us; fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia); fear of poverty (scarcity); fear of lack of time; fear of aging; fear of commitment; fear of others' dependency.

4. Separation, Abandonment or Rejection: fear of abandonment, rejection or exclusion; fear of not being respected or valued; fear of being alone and isolated from others; fear of punishment; fear of vulnerability; fear of intimacy (due to risk of loss).

5. Humiliation, Shame or Worthlessness: fear of not being lovable; fear of disapproval; fear of public speaking; fear of conflict; fear of futility; fear of being wrong (perfectionism) or appearing foolish/stupid; fear of being found out; fear of not being 'good enough'; fear of the disintegration of our idea of ourselves.

Credits for images, used under Creative Commons

1. I see you are arguing: meme generator

2. Do it anyway: https://me.me/i/5826313