This is kind of an expansion of the previous article on Putin's winding rant about the history of Russia, but I think I touched on something important that deserves its own article, and that is the idea that people need to be able to argue on their own terms.
I hate debating on someone else's terms. If you let someone else frame a debate, you're probably going to lose it. Because you are playing by their rules, within their narrative, and within their own morality.
This is why I believe worldviews are so important. They are the views behind the views. Everyone's ideological, political, or metaphysical perspective is loaded with implicit assumptions that are often taken for granted. Within societies, people often have shared assumptions, but these assumptions often go unquestioned, as it is assumed that everyone just believes them, and that that's just how the world is.
But in reality, a lot of our concept of reality is socially constructed. This is not always a bad thing. It's kind of inevitable, really, but what is important is that people are able to question their own culture's assumptions, and to be able to figure out what works and what doesn't. I have had the luxury to do this. Leaving Christianity basically burned my preexisting worldview down, and a humanist one rose up in its place with the idea of "question everything" behind it. And I did. I have to admit, I still ended up with a rather western worldview, albeit a far more liberal one than I started with. I believe that many social structures we take for granted came to be out of trial and error and hold implicit assumptions that are worth maintaining. Think about things like liberal democracy, rule of law, constitutional rights. We live for millennia without any of that stuff, and it was markedly worse forus than with it. We made those constructs and maintain them because they serve a purpose, I have nothing against that.
But sometimes, our assumptions are a bit bogus, or alternativey flawed and nuanced. I get where we're coming from with property rights tied to work, but such an assumption is, to me, more controversial, and very problematic. Having gone down the rabbit hole with it, I found it to be very problematic, and believe that the relationship between income and work should be questioned to some extent. While there is functionalist validity to the idea, I also believe that this idea, taken for granted as it is, and taken to extremes, is also quite harmful and holds us back.
Of course, if I try to just say that to people, people will interpret my statements through their worldview. And believe they believe that property rights and work being linked to income is inherently just, and that anyone who questions it is some sort of "pinko commie" or even "lazy", they'll just blast anyone morally who questions the assumptions their morals are laid upon.
This makes it challenging for me to make an argument that reaches normies. In my own mind, I've kind of challenged these ideas, rejected them, and have long since replaced them wiith new ideas that are quite incompatible with current culture. And trying to present these ideas within our culture leads to a lot of misunderstandings and pushbacks, as much of what I say is very counter to their own internal society driven moral compasses. And again, if you debate on your opponent's terms, they can frame the debate in such a way they you lose by default.
That is why Doreen Ford, the r/antiwork moderator from when r/antiwork was more respected by me, ended up doing so badly on fox news. She went on a hostile network and let Jesse Watters dictate the terms of the debate. And she got destroyed. because the purpose of the interview wasn't to frame the debate on her terms, but for fox to frame it on theirs, to make her look bad, lazy, and incompetent. And it worked. And now she's a pariah, and the anti work movement lost a lot of credibility.
This is also why I found many democratic debates and interviews in the primary seasons in 2016 and 2020 to be so offputting. I mean in 2024 they're just going all in with Biden and not even having the pretense of a debate, but in 2016 and 2020, the mainstream media would do this thing where they would have bernie on, or yang on, and then ask loaded questions. I remember CNN once was like "bill clinton said in 1996 the era of big government is over, so why are you for big government?" They basically framed the debate in such a way to make expanding the government bad, and then put Bernie on the spot for increasing the size of government. Basically, the whole purpose of that debate was to make Bernie look bad. or consider how after Andrew Yang had a town hall, they immediately put on shark tank guy to go on about how work ethic is great and free money is bad. Obviously trying to counter yang's narrative to frame UBI and moving away from work bad. That's what these media networks do, they want to frame things on their terms and then blast any opposing perspective.
This is why I find so many debates so distasteful. Rather than letting the person defend their perspective on their terms, these networks force certain narratives and make anyone who goes against them look bad.
This also happens in religious debates. Ive seen quite a few religious debates where the religious guy won. It isn't that he convinced me god was real, mind you, they were just able to frame the debate on their terms, and the atheist fell for it. I remember watching that one infamous maddlyn murray o hair debate when I was deconverting and some preacher was painting her into a corner by refusing to let the woman debate atheism on her terms, but rather forcing her to accept his strawman definition of it. In that case, i found the preacher's behavior distasteful, and I found him hacky and honest, which just further fuelled my doubt on the subject of the existence of god. but in conventional terms, such a debate actually favored the preacher guy, because o hair was never allowed to defend her actual perspective. Someone who is logical like me can pick up on this and see the behvior for what it is, but most people don't.
And if you arent allowed to debate on your own terms, then you might as well not be heard at all. Your message will be distorted at best, and lost at worst, and you might even walk away looking bad as their framing trumps your own.
It's really a bad position to be in. And it's why I spend most of my time putting my perspective on here. Id rather argue on my own terms, without anyone pushing me or pressuring me or strong arming me into a perspective i resent. And when I do debate, I make sure to call that crap out. Like, I had a guy recently tell me capitalism cant be saved because it requires infinite growth or whatever. The dude was a marxist, and i recognized this as a marxist talking point. I called it out, explained the whole point was to paint the debate into a corner where the only sane answer is to abolish capitalism, and then insisted on pushing back and explaining my own terms, as well as poking holes in his. I didn't let the guy define the debare. Rather, I reframed the debate on my own terms. Because it's a total waste of time to debate on another's terms, and youre just bound to lose if you do. If youre not allowed to actually discuss your perspective, including the underlying worldview, then you're gonna lose because your opponent sets the terms of the debate. I'd rather not debate than do that, and if anyone tries that with me these days, I'll just drop the debate. Because it's a waste of time otherwise. If you wanna hear my perspective, you let me discuss it on my own terms. You dont force me to respond to yours. And that's how I see it.
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