I am new to the forums but have been following AE and libertarian politics for a few years now. I used to be very interested in the Ron Paul campaign and other minarchist causes but have slowly been immersing myself in the anarcho-capitalist literature. My ultimate stance on that ancient debate, however, remains unresolved for the time being.
As of a few months ago, whenever I ever look at politics, be it in the mainstream discourse or even within libertarian circles, the same old trends keep popping up: argumentum ad homenim, strawman arguments, accusations of misunderstanding the argument from both sides, buzzwords, and other rhetorical ploys that undermine what should be the ultimate goal: seeking the truth to the question of what is ideal social organization. Whenever I see those trends, I cannot help but be skeptical of the arguments given, which makes matters difficult when people on both sides of the argument are doing it.
There seems to be truth in the rule of thumb to "avoid religion and politics" if one wants to have any peaceful conversation. Whenever those discussions do come up, people instantly jump into fight-or-flight mode and try to pull out whatever tactic they can think of to "win" the debates and defend their positions.
This leads to my question: why does politics always seem to invoke an emotional response in people unlike other scientific disciplines? Is it biological? Sociological? Some psychoanalytic unconscious memory thing? What are your thoughts?
Hi, welcome to the forum I.I.,
I think, regarding the answer to your question, you're onto something with your use of the term "fight-or-flight mode". To an extent, people descend into "biological competition" mode, because they do not perceive the harmony of interests, the cognizance of which requires knowledge of economics. Any given opposing two parties don't recognize that there are solutions which both would agree to, if they only knew what the solutions entailed. Thus each operates according to the "Montaigne Dogma", the principle that each cannot benefit except at another's expense. When people argue, they are not trying to convince the other side about their rightly-understood interests. Instead, by flourishing their anger and righteous intransigence, they are in effect trying to tell the opposing party, "We, your enemies, know what we want, we are firm in our resolve to get it, and we will struggle until we prevail, so you might as well give up." They are basically displaying aggression to get the other side to simply yield, like an animal baring teeth.
The beauty of economics is that it shines light on the harmony of interests, dissolves perceived irreconcilability, and turns beasts back into men.
Another short answer is that most political doctrines (even a lot of libertarian ones) come with built-in cognitive dissonance, so believing them or holding to them in argument actually requires doublethink on the part of the adherent. This is uncomfortable, a fundamental lying to oneself and an annoying clutter in one's own mind, but the stakes are high so people must suppress this and hide it from themselves and others, and they can only do so by getting feisty and dirty with their rhetoric as that distracts everyone and lets them feel comfortable in their cognitive dissonance.
This suggests that a fairly reliable heuristic for guessing which political philosophy is most coherent might be to look at how calm and free of the kind of demagoguery you mentioned the arguers are, especially the lay proponents (because scholars tend to be calmer by norm). If you compare the veteran posters here to those on any other forum over several weeks, I think you will be impressed.
Why anarchy fails
If someone has the capability of admitting that they are wrong, they are worth listening to. No one is infallible, not even the great geniuses such as Mises. A large proportion of internet arguments have the problem that either one or both of the protagonists believe that they are infallible, or at least do not want to appear fallible. I suppose that to appear fallible would be an enormous blow to the ego. I also half suspect that they live in fear that if they admit fallibility once their fellow forumites may then not trust their judgement. So in that respect I think the appearance of infallibility may be some kind of social pecking-order signal, like the gypsy who has never lost a bare-knuckle fight.
Biologically, I think incredulity holds up the brain from being completely flaccid in the face of new ideas and events. How incredulity manifests in an argument depends on the individual.
I can identify three reasons.
a.) The nature of online forums. Arguments always suffer online in comparison to what you could have face to face as you don't get as much information. I'm sure even stamp collector's forums get flame wars.
b.) The nature of humans. We are by nature irritated by percieved hypocrisy and double standard. I recall an experiment where a group of caged apes had been content but became angry when it found out another group was receiving larger rations than they had been. c.) The nature of politics. Politics are about which group gets to inflict what violence on what other group. In our natural environment switching into fight mode over someone trying to prevent you from smoking cigarettes is the appropriate response.
JohnnyFive: If someone has the capability of admitting that they are wrong, they are worth listening to. No one is infallible, not even the great geniuses such as Mises. A large proportion of internet arguments have the problem that either one or both of the protagonists believe that they are infallible, or at least do not want to appear fallible. I suppose that to appear fallible would be an enormous blow to the ego. I also half suspect that they live in fear that if they admit fallibility once their fellow forumites may then not trust their judgement. So in that respect I think the appearance of infallibility may be some kind of social pecking-order signal, like the gypsy who has never lost a bare-knuckle fight.
Or you get ridiculed.
The state is not the enemy. The idea of the state is.
We get emotional because we don't respect any other's opinion but our own. Also, there is plenty of emotional response in other scientific disciplines, from Physics, Biology and Astronomy to Sociology and Psychology. The whole Darwin and Intelligent Design debate. The Nature v. Nurture debate. The Ether v. Speical Relativity debate. etc. etc. It can bet pretty heated.
To throw my psychoanalysis in- when it comes to politics people personally identify with the beliefs quite easily, since the labels are not just readily available but also expected depending on the culture such as "I am a republican" "I am a democrat".
So anything that could tarnish that belief is felt as an attack on who they are, their past, present, and future. They'd have a whole lot of past regret if the beliefs were incorrect- and all sorts of future worry since trust in themselves is tarnished. Both the regret and the worry are just mental illusions of course. There's no reason to believe any negative thoughts that arise about yourself.
People are more than what they say they are 100% of the time. I don't know anyone who's been consistent with everything for their whole lives- personalities always go through change.
Like Lyle and marko said- this type of emotionalism can be found anywhere and everywhere as long as people can personally identify with something. There are some people that swear up and down that the playstation 3 is the best system out there- and anyone who disagrees will be swallowed up into the void.
For me its best not to get caught up in the game and try to understand why someone would come to the belief that they did. That opens up more avenues than labeling someone "crazy and emotional"- because they're probably labeling you the same way so what's the point of being back at where you started? Lots of people are emotionally charged about something- but when talking about conflicting topics its best to step outside of the mental thoughts that are making you feel a certain way such as "Why can't this person understand what I'm saying!?! ARGGH!!!"- more towards "Ok I'm feeling a bit angry because I can't control this person the way I want to"- then the feelings dissipate and the right words come quite naturally.