Reactionaryism
Apr 12, 2024
I recently read a piece of writing that infuriated me. In my view, it was full of inaccuracies, yet the tone was authoritative and prescriptivist. The worst combination: someone being confidently wrong. My immediate reaction was outrage, then an overwhelming desire to send the article to a friend who I knew would share my opinion.
There's been a lot research and writing about outrage-generated virality, especially in the recent context of the social internet. It seems like an obvious recipe. Rage, righteousness, the firm belief that you're right: these are powerful emotions. They push us to judge and to act. With a strong cognitive dissonance specifically, like the one that's triggered when you read someone emphatically saying something you disbelieve, the understandable instinct is to realign reality with your beliefs, to resolve the cognitive contradiction. The best way to do that? Ask someone else, who you know will reaffirm your belief, to reaffirm your belief! In the words of social media, to share. No wonder rage-bait is the easiest way to go viral.
I can't lie. I did fire off the essay to a friend. Not just one, actually. Three. And I almost sent it to a fourth. Virality quadrupled.
Right after my outrage subsided, though, I felt discomfort. Not only for sending off this piece of writing for my friends to mock, but also for the original author. How could they so confidently believe something that I thought was so incorrect? Regardless of who was truly right, how could two people hold such different worldviews, each with such conviction? What went wrong here? Was it a failure of education, either on my part or on the author's part? If the author were the wrong one, shouldn't I feel empathy for them, rather than contempt and anger? Somehow, they have learned a wrong piece of information. Has formal education failed them, or perhaps misinformation on the internet?
In this specific incident, it so happens that the article's topic is the one that I study, as a research academic. The topic is literally my expertise, so I felt doubly confident and righteous in my correctness. "This person is a lay-person," I thought as I read the article. "They don't have a deep understanding of what they're writing, clearly no rigorous training like I have had. Of course they're wrong. They shouldn't write garbage on the internet and spread incorrect Takes." But isn't this outcome simply an indictment of myself, indirectly? As the part of the academia on this topic, haven't we failed at educating the general public? Put plainly: no matter the topic, you shouldn't need a doctorate to have a working understanding of it (if that's what you seek).
(Of course, let me take a moment here to acknowledge that an academic can be wrong! And someone without a formal education can be right! In fact, academics sometimes can learn a lot from non-academics, since they have a different perspective, not being steeped in the academic way of thinking about things.)
So you might say that, whoever the author's university professor was, they failed in educating them. If the author didn't go to university, the publically-available educational resources, provided by the academe, failed them. Or the education system failed them, if they wanted to go to university but couldn't because it was too expensive or otherwise inaccessible. In any case, it isn't entirely on their shoulders. And regardless, aren't compassion, empathy, and interpersonal understanding healthier reactions to something as harmless as a low-traffic internet article?
I don't just mean healthier for myself, for my own mental health, for regulating rage and blood pressure. I mean socially healthier, better for society. It's so easy to blame others for negative outcomes. This author is dumb, they don't understand what they're writing about, they shouldn't have written this essay that spreads falsehoods. While that's all possibly true, I guess I don't think it's very relevant. I think the purpose of a moment like this one is reflection, not only on our own part in an outcome, but also on the larger systemic forces that shape outcomes. Systems are disproportionately powerful compared to their visibility. If we really want both a deep understanding of why things are the way they are, and by extension how to change the way things are, we need to start understanding things in terms of systems rather than individual action.
Of course, constructive positive reactions are also personally healthier than directionless self-centred outrage. Ultimately, this moment was a intellectual David and Goliath story, and I was the Goliath. Of course I understand the topic better than the essay author. I have years of formal education on the topic, followed by years of deepening my understanding by doing academic research. Why do I need to get angry about a person who understands it less? How does it affect me? And is my cognitive reality so fragile that I, a formally-trained expert, need to reaffirm my own worldview by getting my academic cronies to pitch in on ripping a stranger who is just working out and expressing their ideas on "our" topic? In this story, I am the fragile-egoed villain.
A few months ago, I wrote about what to practice. Today's incident was an opportunity to hold myself accountable to my vow there. So I've come full circle: from externally-directed anger to internally-directed disappointment. I can do better, in both regulating my own reactions, practicing empathy, and my part in the education system.