There’s a lot of feel-good social media content circulating that is proudly declaring that if someone holds an idiotic or hateful position, you cannot disagree with them. Instead, all you must do is reject them as enemies, or worse, a flaw in the system, someone whose point of view does not even factor into politics.
This can never be the perspective that someone who supports democracy would take. Instead, we have to assume that our political opponents, or enemies, or whatever, have formed their ideas based on reasoning, experience, and exposure until they communicate that they have not. Then we have to shift gears into an even more uncomfortable or inconvenient attitude.
This uncomfortable position is to distinguish between the undereducated and the uneducated. These are not the same thing. Both are the result of the politics of capitalist austerity – there is not enough money for education that does not directly convert humans into obedient workers. When people vote against public school budgets (another way of doing this is to vote for charter schools), they are voting against democratic stability and good democratic practice.
This funding cut often leads to undereducation, which is apparent in the United States right now in a very clear way. Undereducation is most notably marked by the hermeneutics of suspicion, where people are taught to doubt everything they hear and see. This sounds like good critical thinking, but doubting everything is not the same as questioning it. Doubting is a never-ending exchange where no matter what someone offers as evidence or proof, it “isn’t enough” or can be undermined. This violates the burden of rejoinder, a basic tenet of argumentation theory, where the person being pushed to change their view is responsible for addressing evidence and reasoning that meets the burden of proof. You can’t continuously say “I don’t buy it” as a reasonable, democratic position when confronted with information you might not know.
This isn’t taught in undereducated classrooms, where questioning, no matter the source or information or process of how it was created, is rewarded as the act of a smart person. Dismissing these claims or these people as stupid or ignorant only fuels the flame. They see this as a marker that they are thinking properly, thinking outside the norms of society and the social control that comes from the government and media, and they will feel proud that they made you angry and cut off the conversation.
The thing to do here is to discuss the difference between doubt and questioning and the legitimacy of questioning until you get a substantive answer with acceptable proof. The biggest example of doubt versus questioning here is in the words and thoughts of RFK Jr., who many people admire for his doubt, seeing it as critical questioning. The issue with Kennedy’s approach is that no evidence for vaccines can be accepted – no data will end the discussion or stop the doubt. That’s the difference – doubt is a self-fueling machine where status and intelligence are conferred by never stopping the questioning.
This is tough to address. Undereducation, as I’ve described here, is a process flaw. The reason why is the questioning is, in and of itself, a positive social good. Unraveling everything you see and hear is the good work of an intelligent citizen.
Uneducated people are people who don’t have any connection to long term principles of judgement that either come from literature, history, or some other liberal art. These have been eroded by charter schools, low public school funding, or the desire of the plutocrats to have the school system create for them ready-made workers who are obedient, polite, and resist conflict.
Having a principle that you stand for is necessary for critical questioning. The questioning has an end goal of revealing what reasons, thoughts, and evidence are there under the position that is being advanced, and you can find through the wording and rewording of it ways that it can connect or disconnect from your principle. For example, if you have a principle that the government should legislate things that help those who are in dire circumstances, your questioning will continue until you find that your opponent either 1) isn’t interested in that principle, 2) the proposal either accidentally or wilfully denies the principle or 3) your opponent or the principle willfully thinks that principle is bad. Then you can articulate an alternative, or what modifications would be needed for you to support that idea.
Uneducated people are not at fault; this comes from their schooling and the lack of society to consider schooling important to alter it to fit what students need. Life is complicated and difficult, requiring multiple income sources and ways to care for the elderly and the very young, which can break anyone’s budget. School versus survival is often the choice some young people must make, and it’s very easy when school lasts from 7 AM to 3 PM with no alternatives. For example, a nighttime high school might be a great option for those who have to provide elder or baby care in their families when the parents are out working their two or three jobs.
I digress, but the point is that to engage those who really need engagement in democracy the task is tiring. One has to reorient the virtues associated with endless doubt back toward critical questioning while often simultaneously trying to get them to articulate a principle or virtue that they would use as a ruler, rubric, or measuring stick as to the good and appropriate. These conversations are hardly ever had these days, and the roots of these principles come from identification with literature, theater, art, or music – all programs that are the first to go in the public schools.
To preserve democracy, we cannot exclude these people as being too ignorant to participate. This will just encourage the further practice of doubt. Without a literature base, we also do not have unlimited time to help establish shared values and principles. The best thing we can do if we don’t want to take Socrates' approach and stand in public all day instigating conversations is to publish more thoughtful, long-form content on the internet and share the links via social media. Social media as a form rewards the “clap back,” the snooty, snarky quick response that is always in a dismissive style since we assume our audience is either an idiot or someone who totally agrees with us about the disposition of the “idiots” out there. Instead of seeking a cheer from the loyal fans, we need to seek camaraderie in the difficult task ahead, which is the practice and art of good writing for audiences we dis-prefer. The salvation of democracy is a rhetorical problem, yet again. Focusing on the art as a practice that is a massive group project – complete with all the frustrations and exhaustion – is the way forward.