Arguing on Facebook

Arguing on Facebook is like arguing anywhere else. I have serious exerience with arguing, especially having learned it culturally through my family, specifically my father, whom I deeply respect and love. My only senior class superlative in High School was "best arguer". If not for that category, I would not have won any superlative, only ranking third in a class of 113, and being a total geek outcast otherwise.

I am drawn to argument the way most people are repelled by it. My father was always engaged in stating his views on issues (religious and political... what else is important?) and I absorbed these scenerios in my young life. My favorites were family situations, particularly when my father and his brother discussed Roman Catholic Theology until the wee hours and I was transfixed on every point. Though my true interest was the actual debate points being discussed, the greatest impression on me was the way that my father and uncle were always the best of friends no matter their disagreements.

I ended up enrolling in college as a Political Science major, which I completed, but not after picking up Anthropology, the study of humans, as another degree. The "science" aspect of my original major has since been modified at my college to just "politics", which is a truer statement of the field, though does a disservice to some true scientific study in the area of politics. Anthropology offered an alternative way of viewing the sources of human behavior besides the ever popular "psychology" discipline.

I just got on Facebook about 8 months ago and immediately found myself involved with the same old characters from my family and High School days. The arguments haven't changed. A lot of people decry the medium as too impersonal and statements misconstrued, which is true to a certain extent, but I find that sarcasm is never a useful tool for persuasion whether in person or not.

Most people do not really care about debating a point, whether in text or spoken verbiage. They care about reinforcing their own beliefs. It is always the other person who is supposed to back up their statements with "data", never themselves. This is due to the sin of "pride". We all have it. We can't help it. It is hard-wired into our brains. We are smarter, funnier, more-talented and better looking (DISCOVER, Seven Deadly Sins, Sept 2009) than everybody else.

My engagements in arguing issues on Facebook (socio-political issues, I guess philisopho-religious as well) follow this pattern. Most people are not concerned with actually debating a point. They resort to name-calling, virtual spankings, and just plain "you are wrong" as opposed to serious debate points. I am not innocent of falling to this sad side of human behavior. We have some serious issues to tackle if our species is going to progress to a point of moral and biological sustainability and being engrossed in our individual/group rightiousness is NOT going to help.

My hero Carl Sagan suggested that we are ALL wrong about ca. 90% of the things that we truly believe in. That round figure comes from the scientific process that sets up empirical, controlled testing of hypotheses (beliefs) and results in about 90% of the time the hypothesis being wrong. This despite the fact that the scientist that conjectured the hypothesis based it on all manner of empirical observation and rational argument. The part that messes it all up is bias. We just can't get a grip on personal bias unless it is truly controlled for in an empirical experiment.

I have no end for this blog. The debates are ongoing. But, if you care about the progress of our species beyond its pathetic, current state, please consider civil debate as a way to resolve our most difficult problems. We are all seriously flawed and must recognize those flaws in the same way an alcoholic must recognize his/her addiction, if we are truly to progress.