Ding, Dong, The Witch is a Red Herring

In the last couple days, United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. If you don't know who that is, then feel free to look up who he is. You might be reading this post on a date later than the date it was published, when I share it again, in the wake of the death of another public figure. It doesn't matter to the point I'm about to make that it was Antonin Scalia who just died.

Anyway, there are many Americans who don't like Antonin Scalia because he was one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court while he served, and voted on many cases in many ways they didn't like. Apparently, lots of people on social media and across the blogosphere are celebrating his death because they didn't like him, and others still are chiding them for celebrating someone's death when that is never appropriate. Others still might be using this opportunity as a bully pulpit to push another agenda. I'm seeing the second-order effects of the debate in my own Facebook news feed, as I currently live in Canada rather than the United States, and am thus removed from most of the hubbub. I don't want to one-up anyone. I just want a record of my thoughts to exist so I don't have to think this through or explain it in full again the next time it comes up.

In the wake of the death of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, many self-identified liberals or progressives were glad at the news of her death. Maybe most people didn't display this sort of gauche, but a proportion of Internet users did. In his essay "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup", Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex made the following observation about this phenomenon:

The worst reaction I’ve ever gotten to a blog post was when I wrote about the death of Osama bin Laden. I’ve written all sorts of stuff about race and gender and politics and whatever, but that was the worst.

I didn’t come out and say I was happy he was dead. But some people interpreted it that way, and there followed a bunch of comments and emails and Facebook messages about how could I possibly be happy about the death of another human being, even if he was a bad person? Everyone, even Osama, is a human being, and we should never rejoice in the death of a fellow man. One commenter came out and said:

I’m surprised at your reaction. As far as people I casually stalk on the internet (ie, LJ and Facebook), you are the first out of the “intelligent, reasoned and thoughtful” group to be uncomplicatedly happy about this development and not to be, say, disgusted at the reactions of the other 90% or so.

This commenter was right. Of the “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful” people I knew, the overwhelming emotion was conspicuous disgust that other people could be happy about his death. I hastily backtracked and said I wasn’t happy per se, just surprised and relieved that all of this was finally behind us.

And I genuinely believed that day that I had found some unexpected good in people – that everyone I knew was so humane and compassionate that they were unable to rejoice even in the death of someone who hated them and everything they stood for.

Then a few years later, Margaret Thatcher died. And on my Facebook wall – made of these same “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful” people – the most common response was to quote some portion of the song “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”. Another popular response was to link the videos of British people spontaneously throwing parties in the street, with comments like “I wish I was there so I could join in”. From this exact same group of people, not a single expression of disgust or a “c’mon, guys, we’re all human beings here.”

I gently pointed this out at the time, and mostly got a bunch of “yeah, so what?”, combined with links to an article claiming that “the demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure’s death is not just misguided but dangerous”.

And that was when something clicked for me.

You can talk all you want about Islamophobia, but my friend’s “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful people” – her name for the Blue Tribe – can’t get together enough energy to really hate Osama, let alone Muslims in general. We understand that what he did was bad, but it didn’t anger us personally. When he died, we were able to very rationally apply our better nature and our Far Mode beliefs about how it’s never right to be happy about anyone else’s death.

On the other hand, that same group absolutely loathed Thatcher. Most of us (though not all) can agree, if the question is posed explicitly, that Osama was a worse person than Thatcher. But in terms of actual gut feeling? Osama provokes a snap judgment of “flawed human being”, Thatcher a snap judgment of “scum”.

Apparently what others took from this is when someone is celebrating the death of a public figure in ways which are hypocritical, it's appropriate to point out their hypocrisy. What I took from this is to conclude in resignation that people won't stop celebrating the death of public figures outside their political tribe, and I can't stop them, so I choose not to fight that battle. People are just going to celebrate the deaths of public figures in their hated outrgoup no matter what I do. I can't stop them. Rather than trying to force everyone to cooperate towards solemnly respecting the deaths of public figures, I figure we just have to let everyone in opposing groups take the occasional potshots at each other's heroes. While this hurts rather than helps the easing of intergroup conflict, it's hardly the most egregious escalation of rhetorical warfare. It's not my priority to quell every insignificant battle, especially when I think most typical strategies don't work.

This may be an unpopular opinion. I'm not standing up for what I think is right. I am not standing up for what is just or true. I'm not a coward so much as I'm cynical my efforts will be worth much when I expect I'm no less liable than anyone else to provoke a local flame war, while failing to prevent or change the behaviour of thousands of others across the Internet with whom I'll never interact. However, in a week, this instance of hypocrisy will subside, and the news and social media will grasp onto whatever new flavour of outrage is in vogue. There will be hundreds more skirmishes over who is the most righteous, and who is the most hypocritical, in yet another culture war. There are more and more culture wars all the time these days. Why I opt out of these wars is because I don't think preventing the local Nash equilibrium of two sides insulting one another is worth my time when there isn't also an opportunity to teach someone the only way to win these signaling games is not to play.  I'm saving my effort for those opportunities, which seem to be rare but I really wish in my everyday life were more common. I would if I could manufacture them, but I don't know how to. If you do, please let me know.

"Celebrating the deaths of public figures belonging to the nearest outgroup" is part of the broader trend of displaying some sort of outrage as a way to signal loyalty or as a badge of membership in some favoured ingroup. On the Internet, at least, this is in turn a way of getting infected by competing thought-germs:



These pernicious and insidious memes are using each of us, and each of our minds, as vectors to fight their battles for them. Just as much as they make us their soldiers, they make us their weapons as we become more mindless in our verbal violence. There will be times too when I am a hypocrite, as I'll unwittingly fall into the trap of entering this sort of debate, without being aware of it. I might even be the most offending part who is the first to fire a shot in the newest skirmish. However, whenever I gain the self-awareness to notice when my mind is hijacked, I will try to notice the pattern, and then I will stop participating in that particular instance of doomed debate entirely. I will not be a soldier in these wars if I can afford it. I am a conscientious objector. I hope you will be too.

 I will opt out of either side of these types of wars, because the true generals are ideas that will never die unless we stop paying attention to them. I am angling for world peace. I won't wade in as a peacekeeper in every skirmish to teach in one particular case how two belligerents are acting mindlessly. I would match rather teach people the broader trend of how politics can be a mind-killer, or at least to think about politics is to think in hard mode. Scott himself of Slate Star Codex might see the proxy war among humans between dueling thought-germs as one aspect of the monster known as Moloch. I have some friends who would call my strategy an attempt to avoid becoming the pawn of an egregore, wherever it came from. Egregores are an interesting concept I have much to learn about and I may introduce at greater length at a future time. I can't do them justice without a proper intro, and I won't do this here as my post winds down.

I'm not trying to one-up anyone by saying I'll tolerate anybody, including the outgroup, and also hypocritical members of the ingroup. Even if it seems like I'm trying to do that, I don't mean to come across that way. However, all it might take to express tolerance it to not stop people from being themselves, including when they're celebrating the death of a public enemy who in other circles is a venerated figure. This is my last commentary on the topic, and I will say nothing else regardless.