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I think the scold is irrelevant. Those who want to be radicalized get there one way or another. Outside of extreme and closed brainwashing/cult contexts, “radicalizing” is not really something you can do to another person who can freely choose who they listen to.
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Saying you’ve been radicalized by someone else is playing victim. “Look what you made me do” is for things like spilling something when someone startles you. It’s not really a justification for holding beliefs. If you’re an adult with Google access, you chose your beliefs.
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Scolds trigger “counterwill” but that doesn’t make them responsible. There are no psychologically perfect adults, that’s why things like the temporary insanity defense are only narrowly used even in courts.
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The idea of counterwill, as introduced to me by Gabor Mate continues to inform how I view behavior
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I’ve found it useful to adopt a “cold listening” attitude to both radicals and their scolds. Listen for what they know from experience that you don’t, ignore the rest. You don’t have to like or agree to learn from what they say, and it doesn’t have to be what they aim to teach.
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Pluralism rests on a diversity of lived experiences and responses, and sometimes the only person capable of representing the truth of a particular lived experience, among all who share it, is some breed of asshole. The scold scolds, the radical sieg heils. It’s all data.
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I used to like the Madame de Stahl line when younger: “to understand everything is to forgive everything.” Now I operate by a modified version: “to understand everything is to have the option to forgive everything — but you don’t have to.”
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I once summarized the intellectual posture of Hercule Poirot as “keep your psychology complex but your morality simple.” Just because you understand the intricate psychodynamics of murder doesn’t mean you have to condone murder.
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Just because you understand the hillbilly-elegy realities that lead to sieg heiling doesn’t mean you have to condone mass shootings. Just because you understand how frustrations of injustice can turn people into scolds doesn’t mean you have have to condone mob rule
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I disagree. If people are in pain—I’d they are hungry, if a physician has dismissed their illness, if they are deeply depressed, etc—it’s not reasonable to say they have control over how they react to an internet scold. Nor should they have complete agency—we aren’t Data.
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The problem is that argument cuts both ways. The scold may be releasing their own pain. I’m arguing agency in the sense of accepting responsibility, not in the sense of being above influence.
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