Best behaviour
He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
For a while recently I pursued, for the first time in my life, a policy of deliberate ignorance on a subject. The issue in question seemed so crushingly disappointing in terms of the standard of debate around it that investigating it properly would lead to nothing but further depression and disillusionment.
But eventually they make you do it. I have a crippling addiction to Twitter, for instance, and it becomes impossible to escape the latest round of what is increasingly known as “skeptidrama”. It’s visited The Heresy Club, as well; there’s no shortage of posts of late contributing to the continuing spat(s) between Rebecca Watson of Skepchick and “Coffee Loving Skeptic”, Tony Ryan. I gather it involves whether or not a particular ribald term for the female genitalia was used or not, and each camp has lined up to launch their well-prepared salvos of priggish self-righteousness over this phantom fanny. Then I heard Paula Kirby got involved and Freethought Blogs took some flak and Thunderf00t threw in a broken bottle and then I got bored and went to watch QI on YouTube again.
Don’t even pretend you wouldn’t prefer it.
Then again, summarising it with such brevity would be like discussing the founding of Protestantism without mentioning Jesus Christ. Remember DJ Grothe’s comments about harassment at JREF? Remember Elevatorgate? Remember “faitheism” and the casting-out of the “accomodationists”? I certainly do and I’m sure lots of others do too, besides other spats on issues of tone and presentation.
What’s become increasingly clear to me is not that these disagreements are in any way unimportant – quite the opposite, especially over feminist issues – but that the strong sense of superiority that a lot of skeptics have over non-skeptics is horribly misplaced. We’re just as bad as they are. There’s just as much nasty tribalism and unthinking condemnation and lionisation in what I laughably call this “community” as there is in any small-town church. Personal loyalties are winning out over the rationality we so pride ourselves on almost every single time. Bitter personal attacks take the place of the sanity and refulgence that the “movement”, such as it is, is supposed to promote.
It’s gotten so bad that here we’ve had to introduce a new comments policy (if you hadn’t heard, consider this your four-minute warning before the atomic banhammers arrive). I know it’s usually a terrible idea to venture below the line, and I’m lucky (?) enough that my three previous posts for this site have been relatively unremarkable and unremarked upon, and I haven’t said anything especially controversial to trigger the rage of the internet skeptics. But there’s an extreme sort of nihilistic unpleasantness that Hayley so affectingly laid out in her last post that seems reserved for intra-group arguments.
The disagreements between a conservative and a liberal, for example, are probably far less explosive and offensive than the disagreements between a socialist and a social democrat. And because the aggregated differences are so small between most skeptics, the language used becomes ludicrously extreme to compensate. Women who’d prefer not to be called bitches and cunts become “feminazis”, while men who aren’t necessarily convinced of certain problems become shrieking, Hitlerian misogynists. People who think differently are “splitters”; people who don’t are cowards and quislings. Make a mistake, you’re a liar; press for correction, you’re juvenile and pernickety.
Please.
Anything but this horrible style of debate. I hesitate even to call it debate – it’s more like Klingon feuding than Socratic dialogue. And it’s no good saying one side is maybe more unpleasant than the other, that isn’t the point. With grim irony, criticism has become anathema in skepticism, replaced by a ferocious devotion to the generally accepted viewpoint or division into two sharply opposed camps. When I was a lot younger and a lot less forgiving, I spent a lot of time on PZ Myers’ Pharyngula blog. I still have memories of how badly dissenting voices were treated by the commenters there. Liberal Christians or even atheists with a fondness for religion who showed up with earnest, gentle viewpoints were savaged for not agreeing with Myers’s every syllable. And heaven help you if you were a Republican – like pitting Christians against lions, except the lions are really hungry and have been given assault rifles for the day. I haven’t been back in a long time and I’ve no reason to expect the comments are any better or any less nauseatingly uniform – it’s a shame, too, because Myers himself is one of the most eloquent, fair-minded and combative voices on the side of sanity. (I quite like Ed Sheeran, but his fans…)
This kind of foaming-at-the-mouth, over-the-top reduction to goodthink and badthink is too far into the skeptical mainstream for healthy debate to take place. If the tone doesn’t shift down a few semitones from its unsustainably high pitch, we’ll be left with even more damaging personal rifts and even more jaded, disillusioned bloggers like your humble servant spewing out well-intentioned drivel to the baying commenter mob. It’s not nice. It’s not constructive. It just turns people into caricatures and demagogues and cynics.
Also, it just kind of makes us all look like dicks.
There’s that too.
You’ve quite neatly summed up why I haven’t waded into this debate much. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion, it’s that no opinion I could offer would be worth getting involved. Undoubtedly, whatever happened would involve someone i like saying something I disagreed with in such a way that would force me to be put on a side.
I don’t want this to be taken for a false equivalence argument. I have an opinion over who was right and who was wrong in this shitfight, I just don’t think that expressing it will do any good at all.
My new policy, WWNdGTD? I write something and then read it and ask myself if Neil deGrasse Tyson would approve of the way I wrote it. If not, I delete. It is my goal to be an effective science communicator and slamming people on the internet, even if they’re WRONG WRONG WRONG is not helpful. I understand that there are different styles of communication and we need all different types of personalities to reach different people, but I don’t think the skeptic/atheist community at large has been attracting many new members lately.
Fantastic article, Richard, thanks for posting this! Totally sums up what I’ve been thinking about this whole sorry situation. I like and respect almost everyone who’s been wading into the mire, on both sides – personally I’m too much of a coward to post anything more than vague comments like this. I don’t want to think badly of anyone. There’s far too much of that on the internet already.
I’ve been reading and enjoying PZ’s Pharyngula for years and became a fan of his after he got expelled from Expelled. I’ve liked Rebecca Watson since I first started listening to podcasts with the SGU. I’d never heard of Coffee Loving Skeptic until I read his great blog entry on http://shatteringthestigma.wordpress.com and I thought he was a decent chap. Trystan and Hayley introduced me to the term “King Of Bullshit”, for which I will be eternally grateful.
My problem with all of this is that I’m not a blogger, Twitter only gives brief snapshots of conversations and I have the attention span of a middle-aged gnat. The main reason I can’t get involved in this drama is I just can’t follow it – there just aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with every blogpost. I don’t know how anyone does it! I can’t keep track of who’s said what about who, who’s called who what name. It’s just a big amorphous mass of internet names piling on another amorphous mass of internet names, they get offended and start hurling names back. Someone writes an incendiary blog, someone writes a rambling essay, hashtags are created and explode. (The thing is – the original reason for it all, sexism and harassment, is probably something everybody agrees is horrible and should be gotten rid of…)
I went through a huge bout of depression years ago (still am if I’m honest) and it was the fine people of the online skeptical community that helped me realise I wasn’t alone in my beliefs (or lack thereof.) I felt there were people out there I had something in common with, even if we didn’t always agree on everything. Only just recently did I pluck up the courage to start meeting real skeptics at a real SITP.
I still feel that the community is there and I’m still happy to call myself a skeptic. But this whole internet shit-storm is just… sad.
Thanks again Richard, nice one.
@Amber – I go through something similar every time I write the smallest comment, it can take me hours to come up with something just because I don’t want to come across as an idiot! It would be quicker if I just imagined WWNdGTD.
Haha, yeah, I have no idea how people have the time to really get a grip on the situation, much less care about it, inside the awful miasma of egotism. It’s just a bit pathetic, really.
(Funny, I really started following skepticism around the time of the Expelled fiasco. Those were the days…)
Really nice post, Richard, thanks.
I wasn’t going to comment though, because I only had that little bit to say, until I saw this above:
“I have the attention span of a middle-aged gnat.”
Love it
A wonderful post. Sums up the issue perfectly. I hope all involved read it and are shamed that so called “adults” couldn’t see the blindingly obvious from the start.
At the risk of sounding patronising, which is not my intent, you have a wise head on those young shoulders.
Wiser than many intellectuals, academics, skeptics and atheists who have entered the arena on this one. Myself possibly included.
I salute you sir and I shall return to read more of your writings.
Keir
Well said.
I love the part where when you don’t cling to either group and you say something reasonable, first they both try and claim you, and then they throw rocks at you for associating with the “enemy.”
Which is nothing compared to the hate you get when you point out that the groupthink is actually a small number of loud asshats that try to brand everyone who has even heard of either group as “theirs” or “ours,” and who (as you put it so well) make it about personalities and cliques rather than issues.
Y’all here are a breath of fresh air. ^.^
“It’s visited The Heresy Club, as well; there’s no shortage of posts of late contributing to the continuing spat(s) between Rebecca Watson of Skepchick and “Coffee Loving Skeptic”, Tony Ryan. I gather it involves whether or not a particular ribald term for the female genitalia was used or not,”
I and several other people were recently accused of calling Rebecca Watson this in a twitter sent to her. It is of course a complete falsehood, of course. Not appreciated, and a real schoolyard-level tactic to boot.
“What’s become increasingly clear to me is not that these disagreements are in any way unimportant – quite the opposite, especially over feminist issues – but that the strong sense of superiority that a lot of skeptics have over non-skeptics is horribly misplaced. We’re just as bad as they are. “
We’re just as bad? Fuck me, we’re WORSE. We’re the people who are supposed to know better.
I have posted a link to this on twitter. Already 3 people have said they disagree with this post and I need to do more research. Some people will never be satisfied unless one agrees with them 100%.
I can’t do that even with myself from day to day, so I guess they are out of luck with me.
Cue predictable ‘Whoever wrote this should be burnt at the stake’ quip.
Burn the witch!
whoever wrote this should be served a medium rare steak!
Whoever wrote this has earned a nice cake!
I actually prefer mine well done.
Spot on. I wrote something similar last year in my blog entitled “Your karma ran over my dogma – a suggestion to skeptics” and this piece really resonates with me because it hits the nail on the head; disagreements happen. People say things others may find insensitive. But witchhunts, flaming and shrieking are things which skeptics should be about. Yes, we are human – but we must be mindful others are too.
It got to a point that even though I am a sceptic, I’m more likely to refer to myself as a scientist as I feel somewhat ashamed at times of the behaviour of my self identified peers, on all sides.
Bravo for this.
*above even, not about!
Freudian slip
Very good article, I do hope the vitriol is toned down soon, as it will probably only be destructive in the long run.
I agree; good article.
I’m not sure if it’s unfair to suggest that a difference between British and US sensibilties is evident in these dramas?
Either way, I think more and more these days, of the person (I wish I could remember who it was) that said that: because we are the first animal to have become aware of itself (as far as we know) and the inevitability of our demise, the question of “identity” has been behind everything from fashion through politics, sports to blogging networks.
It seems we are still mammals asking “who am I”, attaching ourselves all to readily to ‘movements’ that will give us an answer.
I’m starting to notice this as well – American skeptics do tend to be a bit more prone to the sort of manic drama we’ve seen lately. The sample size is pretty small though so I can’t say that with any real conviction.
What the hell do we do about Irish, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander skeptics though? Clearly wildcards.
I think atheists in America (or “skeptics” as some of them prefer to be called) might be a bit more defensive/touchy because it’s still a big deal, being an atheist in America. I have a lot of American “friends” on Facebook and I have to tune out of most of their posts and memes because they’re either too aggressive or they just aren’t relevant to the British situation.
Having said all that, there have been plenty of rows and fallings-out in the British atheist movement over the years, but they were pre-blogging and pre-social networking, thank god.
Personally, I see atheism as one consequence of skepticism I choose to emphasise. And I think it’s oversimplistic to assume ‘the British situation’ for atheists is out and out better than the U.S. one, so we should all pipe down and count our blessings.
Good post. More of this sort of thing.
Well said. It’s fantastic to see a new group of bloggers speaking up for a more reasonable internal discourse. And Alex’s recent post responding to Paula Kirby was a great example of closely-reasoned civil discourse. Bravo.