Death threats and actual harassment are serious business and are a matter for law enforcement, but a great strategy for dealing with the casual climate denier, anti-vaxxer, or Q idiot, is to just laugh at them. Not with, at. They cling to these ridiculous theories because at some level they want to feel in control and relevant in a scary world that they either won’t or can’t understand.
Treating them like kooks and refusing to get aggravated hits them the hardest because it tickles that suspicion that they really don’t get it. On the other hand, getting frustrated and trying to debate them about whether Hillary eats children just fuels the internal narrative that they are heroic truth warriors holding out in a hostile world.
Either way, kooks are gonna kook. You are not going to change their mind anyway, so why let it destroy your mental health.
I recently read a letter by Dietrich Bonnhoefer, who was a German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, who was imprisoned in 1943, hanged by Hitler’s personal directive in April 1945.
His letter is titled “On Stupidity” and it explains A LOT.
(Stupidity is not meant as little mental capacity, but “people [who] are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.”)
We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.
I totally agree. At the very least it provides the opportunity for debate or the option to just agree to disagree.
I don’t know anything about the Q stuff, but I certainly qualify for how many characterize the first two. I don’t get any value out of name calling and meanness, but it is important to freely voice my opinions regardless of whether anyone else agrees. I’ve never understood why some people have such a problem with that.
I have lived my whole life having opinions that not everyone agrees with, it really isn’t the kind of thing that causes “PTSD” for crying out loud.
Death threats and actual harassment are serious business and are a matter for law enforcement, but a great strategy for dealing with the casual climate denier, anti-vaxxer, or Q idiot, is to just laugh at them. Not with, at. They cling to these ridiculous theories because at some level they want to feel in control and relevant in a scary world that they either won’t or can’t understand.
Treating them like kooks and refusing to get aggravated hits them the hardest because it tickles that suspicion that they really don’t get it. On the other hand, getting frustrated and trying to debate them about whether Hillary eats children just fuels the internal narrative that they are heroic truth warriors holding out in a hostile world.
Either way, kooks are gonna kook. You are not going to change their mind anyway, so why let it destroy your mental health.
I recently read a letter by Dietrich Bonnhoefer, who was a German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, who was imprisoned in 1943, hanged by Hitler’s personal directive in April 1945.
His letter is titled “On Stupidity” and it explains A LOT.
(Stupidity is not meant as little mental capacity, but “people [who] are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.”)
Heed my blue check mark.
I totally agree. At the very least it provides the opportunity for debate or the option to just agree to disagree.
I don’t know anything about the Q stuff, but I certainly qualify for how many characterize the first two. I don’t get any value out of name calling and meanness, but it is important to freely voice my opinions regardless of whether anyone else agrees. I’ve never understood why some people have such a problem with that.
I have lived my whole life having opinions that not everyone agrees with, it really isn’t the kind of thing that causes “PTSD” for crying out loud.