A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about how impactful it can be to steel man someone else's position for them. Funny enough, my husband and I have had more ... ahem... passionate misunderstandings in the last couple of weeks than we had been having in the recent past, so it's been sticking in my mind more. Unsurprising, then, that when I saw a short write up about a statement made by Andrew Yang about people's views on atheists, my interest was piqued.
(Side note: am I the only one that thought for years that the phrase was "my interest was peaked"? I still think it makes sense. Just like "deep-seeded" seems better than "deep-seated." Oh, well. No one ever asks me.)
Now, from this original post that I saw on Patheos, there were several links to more information, including a video of the original statement.
There are a ton of problems with this statement, and this has nothing to do with my politics*. Or my religious beliefs, really. I realize it seems like I am pointing this out because I am not an atheist, and I'll admit that this is probably part of the reason that the statement stood out to me. But I think my critique holds up regardless.
The main problems, I believe, can be summarized in that Yang doesn't seem to truly understand the belief system of the people he is criticizing.
I'm going to take this one statement at a time because otherwise I would be here all night. I only need 15 minutes of journaling to get my points, so I definitely don't want to take all night. Plus, if I decide to come back to it later, I can squeeze a few points out of this one video and have my journaling points for at least a week.
The first phrase of interest that Yang says is this:
"I think it's ridiculous"
Let's stop there because I can tell you right now that when someone says that someone else's viewpoint is ridiculous, it's a pretty solid indication that they have spent very little time thinking about the viewpoint or have very little curiosity about what drives a viewpoint or have approached their consideration of the viewpoint with a biased assumption that the people holding it are somehow "less than." (Less intelligent, less thoughtful, less consistent, less caring, less accepting.)
I can't think of a time when I heard someone with an open mind and a goal for understanding explained an opposing viewpoint by calling it ridiculous.
So, lesson one:
- When we encounter a viewpoint that is different than ours or challenges ours, we should attempt to understand the reasons behind it assuming that the adherents to this belief have reasons for adhering to it, even if our first impression is that the idea is ridiculous.
*I actually like Yang more than most of the Democratic candidates.
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