06-07-2017, 02:50 PM
Right, extremists never realize they're extremists. They don't wake up one day and think "you know, maybe my black-and-white world view is based on an emotion that I've reinforced by primarily soaking myself in echo chambers that only validate my opinion, and I'm failing to realize the world is actually complex shades of grey that does not contain easy, simplified answers to its problems."
Instead, extremists all believe that they've "seen the light" that the masses are too ignorant/stupid to understand, that they have found the "one true way," and everyone on Earth could be made to understand if they were just educated enough in their worldview. Thus, extreme measures are justified to draw attention to these viewpoints.
From what I've seen, the causes come in three forms:
The extremists never really figure out that us "ignorant masses" just kind of shake our heads and go "oh, ffs." As this forum attracts extremists from all ends of the spectrum, you sorta have two options: ignore the trolling, or else make it clear to other readers that extremist positions are just that, extreme. But you should never expect to actually convince an extremist that they are an extremist; from my experience, it's just not doable over an anonymous medium such as the Internet. In a real-life relationship it's very difficult, but eventually possible over time if you make sure that the extremist believes they came to a different conclusion themselves and that you didn't "push" the idea onto them.
You use gentler tactics like showing them other positions and cultures and just generally waking them up to the knowledge that everything is, as I've mentioned, shades of grey. If life had easy answers to big problems, don't you think those solutions would have already been tried throughout human history? Is it really that somehow YOU, this one genius individual, has finally figured it all out and if you could just get humanity to listen to you, the world would be so much better? Really? Ego plays a huge role here, as just admitting that you might be wrong is very difficult to do.
Instead, extremists all believe that they've "seen the light" that the masses are too ignorant/stupid to understand, that they have found the "one true way," and everyone on Earth could be made to understand if they were just educated enough in their worldview. Thus, extreme measures are justified to draw attention to these viewpoints.
From what I've seen, the causes come in three forms:
- Lack of education or lack of exposure to other cultures / points of view. The poor and uneducated in all countries of the world make good targets.
- Belief in intellectual superiority, the "I'm so smart that I can see this and others can't" feeling that drives many people. Anti-vaccers fall into this a lot; people with advanced degrees that should know better but still think they've stumbled upon some "secret" that makes them superior to the sheeple.
- The need to belong, probably the strongest pull of all. An extremist belief system makes you "belong" to a group made up of others holding that position, giving you status and a feeling of belonging that all humans crave. Good example of that one German who went from being a Neo-Nazi to an Islamist terrorist, something that's reportedly somewhat common. He didn't really believe all that much in the ideal, he just needed to belong to something bigger than himself and latched onto groups that would accept him.
The extremists never really figure out that us "ignorant masses" just kind of shake our heads and go "oh, ffs." As this forum attracts extremists from all ends of the spectrum, you sorta have two options: ignore the trolling, or else make it clear to other readers that extremist positions are just that, extreme. But you should never expect to actually convince an extremist that they are an extremist; from my experience, it's just not doable over an anonymous medium such as the Internet. In a real-life relationship it's very difficult, but eventually possible over time if you make sure that the extremist believes they came to a different conclusion themselves and that you didn't "push" the idea onto them.
You use gentler tactics like showing them other positions and cultures and just generally waking them up to the knowledge that everything is, as I've mentioned, shades of grey. If life had easy answers to big problems, don't you think those solutions would have already been tried throughout human history? Is it really that somehow YOU, this one genius individual, has finally figured it all out and if you could just get humanity to listen to you, the world would be so much better? Really? Ego plays a huge role here, as just admitting that you might be wrong is very difficult to do.
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.