Hoodwinked !
When we start engaging in a discussion with some people, many a times we walk away frustrated. We walk away with a feeling that nothing was accomplished and the discussion went in an entirely different direction from the stated or understood purpose. Instead of clarifying the issue at hand, we ended up defending something entirely unrelated, mostly ourselves.
Here are a few ways that is done, very purposefully.
- What Aboutism
- Shooting the messenger i.e. questioning your intent, motive or casting aspersion at your character itself
- Making light of the matter, laughing your concern off as trivial
- Seeking support of others who are politically or socially aligned and then shouting you down or scoffing at you.
- Emotional blackmail i.e. playing the victim card.
- Conflating your position with an untenable one and putting words in your mouth
This happens in discussions within families and in social scenarios. I will lay out a few examples and share how one could recognize and therefore deal with them.
1. WhatAboutism:
Example 1 : Wife says to the husband : I saw you having dinner with that woman yesterday evening. Husband : What about when you came late from office on Tuesday?
Result : Wife gets into a tizzy about explaining that she had a deadline at work and she had to deliver etc etc..
Husband: Oh Ya.. but what about that evening when you went out with your girlfriends? Where did you really go?
In essence the discussion went from an obvious real concern of a person to some “Whatabout” scenarios and the person who has a legitimate question or concern is put on defensive.
Example 2 :
Person 1 : You know Burkha is not good as a social norm. It limits people from living freely and expressing their full identity…
Person 2 : But whatabout Ghungat? And what about Nuns and how they dress…
Person 1 : In a tizzy explaining the reasoning behind Ghungat or Nun clothes, while the actual affront on humanity, Burkha, is not even discussed.
2 . Killing the messenger :
Example
Person 1 : You know this open border situation is causing serious damage to our country.
Person 2 : Oh so Are you a MAGA Trumper now? I bet you are Xenophobe.
Person 1 : In a tizzy.. no no some of my best friends are from India and I love diversity and and..
Result : By casting you as the problem, the problem was not discussed further but person 2 became a subject of the discussion so judgement could be passed on them.
3. Making a joke/caricature out of you:
Example : Husband : I saw that guy putting his hands suggestively on your bare back last evening.
Wife : Oh you are so suspicious always… what now I have to dress like a nun? You are going to be a Policeman now? C’mmon!! be a sport. You are too serious all the time.
Result : Concern was not addressed, not even touched. Instead the man is feeling ridiculed for even bringing it up.
4. Seeking support of others :
This happens when there are multiple people in the vicinity.. and everyone agrees loudly that you are being ridiculous at the prompting of the other person. Sometimes, when there is an audience during a public debate, they will throw their weight behind their preferred speaker by clapping at even his baseless arguments.
Emotional Blackmail : Victim Card :
Example1 :
Wife : Instead of spending yet another weekend with your family, can we do something together? Just you and I.
Husband : Tear me into pieces.. you take one and let them take one. Day and night I am working for you. And for the slightest inconvenience I have to hear this.
Example 2 :
Person 1 : Why should airlines serve halal meat, when most of their passengers do not want to cause the pain to animals that happens in the process of butchering an animal by letting them bleed to death.
Person 2 : You Islamophobic person, you. You are just singling out Islam to cast aspersion at.
Person 1 : No no no.. don’t call me islamophobic. I will die. My best friends are muslims. Let me tell you how I we celebrate Eid…
Conflating your position with an untenable one:
Example we see in news media all the time. A person protests against illegal immigration, he is debated to as if he was saying he is against immigration.
A person protests against 9/11. He is debated to like he is a bigot.
Standard operating procedures for the disingenuos ones.
Result in all these circumstances is the same. The offender got away, leaving you on the defensive and more confused and frustrated than ever. Or perhaps, the two people behaved like those two folks in the asylum, both taking turns speaking on completely different threads but giving each other room to finish their thought out of politeness. Sadly even that part is missed sometimes, politeness!
Best Response : Simply knowing that this is what is being played and bringing the discussion back to the real discussion item again and again will neutralize some of this. In the real scheme of things though, you can’t have a legitimate discussion or argument with a disingenuos person.
Starting with assumptions that "may" be acceptable to all except a miniscule minority
ReplyDelete- In the world everything is a shade of gray and nothing is black or white.
- Perception is the reality
- Discussion doesn't have to have a conclusion.
- Its perfectly ok for 2 different ideas or thoughts not to overlap.
That said, whataboutism is perfectly ok, if the goal not to avoid the discussion altogether, but to draw parallels.
If one considers burka an affront to humanity but finds justification for ghunghat as harmless practice when both achieve the purpose of hiding the face, and then one must be willing to discuss this "whataboutism".
If one objects to Halal meat, but has no compunctions about Kosher meat when the process to slaughter process is identical, it compels one to question the (mal)intent behind the thought process.
One can't accuse other of "hoodwink" if one doesn't accept the diversity of thought.
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ReplyDeleteThe point of the article is to highlight how we get hoodwinked and that people use these tricks that are disingenuos instead of putting up legitimate arguments
ReplyDeleteOpen debate needs to be just that. Open. You cannot place boundaries on what or how one may respond to you. Disingenuous is when one were to ask, "did you beat your wife with a stick or fist", and then claim he/she was hoodwinked because the answer was anything but a stick or fist.
ReplyDeleteWhen pure speculation is presented as fact, then too a discussion is impossible. In the article, the presumption that burka is an affront, is itself an affront to those that wear it willingly, as if they were imbeciles and you know what's better for them.
The statement about most people not wanting halal meat is flawed too. Especially when Halal meat production and consumption has been increasing year after year. And despite the uptick in the vegetarian population, 86 percent of the world consumes meat
I have nothing against Burqua except that it is visible barometer of decay in a society and that it is the most powerful de-humanization tool invented by mankind (due to the scale at which it operates) to wrest away the identity of a free person and therefore their ability to freely engage in society with the entirety of their being, as others do.
DeleteIt is harsher in it’s import than forcing Jews to wear a Star of David on their lapel, for all to see and know before they open their mouth that they are dealing with severely bondaged person, before the first words ever get spoken.
A little girl who was romping around in a soccer field, feeling the sunlight on her skin and air through her hair is saddled with the madness of a black bedsheet for the rest of her life in the name of purity??
SORRY it is an extremely perverted doctrine.
So true. The whole point of coming out of an argument you are in or that perhaps you were pushed into hinges of how genuine the other person is to the topic at hand. Are they trying to turn on the circle of fire around you or are they wanting to have a healthy argument that produces solutions? Did they approach you alone or bring in the gang? Basically , are they a friend or foe or another wolf in sheep’s clothing? I have seem many a latter, great article. Well thought out !
ReplyDelete