I thought I would share this story because in a small way, with all the craziness in the world these past few days/months with the pandemic and the storming of Capitol Hill in the US, it was a small attempt on my part to understand and make sense of why things are the way they are and do whatever little I could to help. I have learned a lot on this journey.
Some background. I was asked to take over this year as one of the admins in a Whatsapp chat group of my old schoolmates. Now I don't know if any of you are in a chat group with individuals that have extremely strong opinions. Things can get heated up pretty quickly. I wasn't that eager to take it up, and in fact I had contemplated leaving the group before when some people made some personal comments - in the end I did not leave and just made peace with it. Deleting the messages is a key step. It meant I did not hold on to whatever negative feelings I held about the comments, and let them go so that they did not have control over my emotions.
Anyway I agreed to take over as an admin but I could never imagine that my schoolmates in Singapore would get so worked up about the US elections - until I realised that the most vocal were those who were living there, and naturally it is a matter of great importance to them. The other chat group that got slightly heated up was a prayer chatgroup of schoolmates who were brothers in Christ - naturally the tensions there revolved around whether Trump was the incarnation of the devil himself, or the Lion of Judah (I'm not kidding - someone shared a post from some evangelist that used this description. Some tips on assessing such posts - making such proclamations without proof, and then using that as a fear tactic i.e. Do not challenge Trump because he is anointed by God, is probably an indication that this is on some seriously shaky ground. So now that Biden won, what has the Lion become? Or is Biden now the Lion? Who knows?)
That prayer chatgroup experience is relevant to this story because along the way, people shared what I felt were really aggressive posts with a clear political agenda. Before that, the posts were usually balanced in seeking to understand both sides from a believer's perspective. The new posts that got my attention were along the lines of "Voting Biden makes you a baby killer". Taking a complex decision about choosing the best candidate, and boiling it down to such a simplistic argument was not the best way, in my view, to think about the subject. I kept my counsel about what I thought about the argument itself, but shared with the group that I thought it best to keep politics out of the prayer chatgroup because it was becoming divisive. Someone said they were just sharing posts so that we had views from different perspectives - my reply was that if the posts were balanced, that was fine but anything that demonized people who had a different opinion, did not show the love that Christ called for. But I also did say that it was just a suggestion and if others did not agree, I was fine with it.
Interestingly, someone asked if the same thing was happening on the main chat (which has a few hundred members). I said I was ok with it there - though I didn't know at the time how bad it would get. To cut a long story short -a heated debate started between those who believe Biden won, and those who believed Trump was robbed. There is clearly little or no evidence for the latter but once people publicly plant their flag, they are going to die on that mountain in the online world for which there is little personal price to pay. So there is no way to convince them otherwise. And you really should not try, but...pride gets in the way.
Things got heated, and the chap who believed the election was stolen from Trump, was being berated (I appealed for calm and civility, which worked for a while) for his views - he insists his version is the truth and that others are close-minded for not listening to him. He wrote to me since I was an admin, and told me how he felt bullied, and that others sympathised with him - and that this sort of bullying behavior was discouraging participation in the chat.
I debated whether to reply at all, because he said he was just sharing his thoughts. It would however have been rude not to. And since he was commenting about the behavior of members, I thought that I ought to respond, and to share what the admins felt was the best way to manage the chat in order to serve the best interests of members. I did not want to take the approach that others had used - which was to engage him on his points. He was not going to be convinced.
And that is the crux of the problem - the world today is full of people who feel that they know better, and are so busy trying to convince you that they are right that they don't listen. Hence the title of this post. And I am sharing this because I think that along the way, I found an approach where I was fair to him, even if I did not agree with his views.
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Thanks YP.
Let me try to address the points you've made and explain how the admins aim to do their best to keep discussions flowing. (Full disclosure: I do not agree with most of what you claim is "truth" or "evidence" but let's put that aside for now).
I think the vast majority of discussions have been acceptable to most members, and so the admins have seen little need to intervene. There have obviously been flashpoints (inevitable when people on all sides express strong opinions) but they are mostly peacefully resolved among the parties themselves. This is our preferred mode of operation.
You pointed out that some members are unhappy about what they see as overly robust challenges, or with the tone which people make their points and that this will discourage participation.
I understand the concerns, and they are not new. This is where we have decided to adopt a light touch for a few reasons. Firstly, I believe most if not all are like yourself, willing to share their views and no malice is intended. Some members may slightly overstep the line occasionally but I do not think there are any who have been consistently rude or personal - we will step in in such cases. (Another circumstance where we might do so is when a topic dominates the chat to an extent that we get complaints. Then we may tell the main participants to start a separate chat)
The most important reason for a light touch is that robust debate is good because it sharpens the arguments. People who choose not to engage because they don't want to deal with a robust rebuttal, make their own choices. If it means less participation then so be it. I'm not sure we wanted participation (whatever that means) for its own sake. This is my own opinion by the way.
As I said earlier, sometimes comments (on all sides) are uncalled for, or at least should not have been said in a certain manner, and here I do appreciate those members who choose to not respond and thus help to defuse tensions. They show themselves to be the better man, and that they treasure relationships more than winning the arguments.
Hope this helps.
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