Lichtenberg
I’m always interested in what people think they are doing when they argue about politics with people who are not their collaborators, comrades, etc - that is, people with whom they are engaged in a shared political effort. This goes double for the internet: what could one possibly believe will happen when they argue in the comments of an instagram reel?
If they want to convince others of their view can it be said that they think their view matters? Can that be said of most views and holders of views? Would the world be any different, at all, if you believed the opposite of what you believe about X, or caused someone else to? Are most such claims of the form “if I thought this were attainable, and I don’t, then I’d treat it as fact and with greater urgency”? At the same time, many other belief-havers can be called ‘worshippers of established fact’ - that is, their belief revolves primarily around political acts accomplished long ago, and their political activity is simply the routine management of an already hegemonic political or ideological tendency - having nothing to do with politics, in any substantive way, at all. All these people have to their name is that their view happens to be the dominant one, though largely not due to their own activity. In either case, the relevant thing is one’s actual position in the world (in fact, one’s action is the surest expression of one’s actual belief - in the sense of Hegel), one’s actual ability to enact one’s beliefs (or at least to have some established, hegemonic political quasi-deity do it for you), or the actual state of affairs.
I generally am respectful of seriousness - including in those who I disagree with. This is not to say I respect the content of their views, and I usually consider it a disingenuous lie when people pretend they respect the contents of other views that differ extremely from theirs, especially on matters of virtue, simply so that they can be a good pluralist (I don’t think good pluralism requires this lie). After all, do you hold your views because they’re just as good as some other ones and you flipped a coin? I do not respect transphobia or consider it a viable competing perspective or alternative research programme, in adults I consider it a failure of character, and I am hostile to the treatment of others that position very clearly entails.
I have a similar attitude toward phrases like “I think…”. Do you really merely think X? I am guilty of this myself at times, when I do not want to pick a fight (rather, when I think someone else would unless I preemptively backed down rhetorically in this way by distancing myself from myself). For example, I do not merely think that human beings ought to strive for a society free from coersion. This is a very vague statement that needs a lot of elaboration and delicacy, but it’s not something that is up in the air for me - I don’t think it (that is, I don’t speak about it as something “I think”), it is a knowledge claim, and it corresponds to my character and how I (try to) live my life. It would be hard for you to disprove that I think it, which is why people hide behind such “I think” language all the time on matters that they know they have no uncertainty about. Whether you can disprove the claim itself is the substantive challenge it should pose to you - and to me, to elaborate it carefully.
At the same time, the only good philosophy of science out there tells us that people we disagree with might make progress in defense of their views later, and there isn’t going to be a formulaic way to determine who that is. So if you’re serious about something, you treat it as knowledge and this also entails certain behavior from you: you are obligated to defend these knowledge claims in the way a “mere thinker” isn’t. You will meet equally stubborn people. Sometimes your differences will matter and they will make your blood boil. Sometimes you can all laugh at your shared impotence to change the world in the ways you want to. You rarely need to hem-and-haw over it. Most people will treat you with respect or, often, are only disrespectful out of the insecurity of their own impotence.
I came across this quote not too long ago, and I like it very much:
I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us. (Georg Lichtenberg)