My social media environment (mostly Lemmy for the last year, after I left Reddit) is very leftist. I’m finding myself floating more and more left because y’all have a point and there’s not many counter-arguments in this social media environment. I sometimes wonder if that’s how MAGA folks feel–floating more and more right because that’s what they’re surrounded by.
Of course, my floating is (naturally /s) based on reason and leftists making good memes/arguments.
Anyways, that’s this morning’s introspection.
Side showerthought: my convictions are based on memes. Anyone have nice, accessible resources for giving those convictions a more solid base? I’d love something like a graphic history of leftist thought (similar to Queer: A Graphic History). Something approachable but with citations. Thanks :)
The key to it is to never get comfortable in your beliefs. Challenge them, break them down in your head over and over. Not until anything. You never stop.
Yes, you still run the risk of self selecting what you already believe because you use the same reasoning each time, but there’s limits to what you can do in that regard. It takes practice to work around that, so the only way to avoid it is through practice. When you find yourself agreeing with what you already believe, seek out a different stance and pick it apart to try and convince yourself of it.
Again, it isn’t perfect, there’s no echo chamber as complete as our own heads. But the more you work at it, the better you’ll get.
Part of that is rigorous fact checking though, and that’s where the far right in specific falls short. Too much of what they rely on is about fear and hate that is based in falsehood. Now, the far left also has its problems with facts vs faith, and that can lead to hate and fear, but it isn’t based on it from the start, so it’s easier to sort out when a specific belief is poorly constructed.
That isn’t a centrism argument that the middle is better, there’s way too many flaws in that concept. It’s saying that you can end up at extremism in different ways, for different reasons and it’ll still behave the same.