Only the Truth can Deradicalize the Culture Warriors

Therefore, the question should be, what will bring people back to the truth

Welcome back to my series of Ideas to End the Culture Wars. Last time, I discussed how the two main tribes in the culture wars, the 'left' and the 'right', are ultimately meaningless and incoherent social constructs, and when we see through them, we are a step closer to ending the culture wars. Today, I want to turn to why so many people can't see this at the moment. I believe it's because they have lost sight of the objective truth. As it's commonly described, people on both sides of the culture wars have lost all common ground because they have lost a shared understanding of the reality that is rooted in the objective facts. Therefore, the only way to deradicalize them would be by bringing them back to objectivity. To do this, we have to identify things which are the enemy of objectivity, and oppose these things consistently.

The first enemy of objectivity is emotion. During the 2010s, a new style of left-wing activists, often associated with identity politics, tried to teach us that it is wrong to 'tone police'. I respectfully but strongly disagreed then, and I stand by my words to this day. The reason why we need a calm and rational discourse is because an emotionally charged discourse can't get us to the objective truth. We can't really discuss things rationally and get closer to the truth if one or both sides are emotionally worked up, because it would just descend into an emotional shouting match, with both sides reflexively rejecting all that the other side has to say. While the identity left has openly encouraged a politics of grievance in the past decade, the right are no better when it comes to being rational and avoiding getting emotional. The organized political right has been promoting moral panic after moral panic in recent years, and right-aligned culture warriors have become just as angry and irrational as their counterparts on the left.

The other important enemy of objectivity is tribalism. People are social animals, and we love to make friends. More importantly, we are evolutionary adapted to trust those we are familiar with more. However, when it comes to ideas and facts in the modern world, this kind of bias is actually counterproductive to getting us to the truth. Therefore, we have to actively work to overcome it, by trying to listen to all sides of a story, and think for ourselves independently. In particular, we should be very wary of talking heads on TV and influencers in the new media trying to sell us a particular worldview. They often have a particular political agenda, and it is usually not a very nice agenda.

Finally, if we are to embrace objectivity, we need to be brave enough to demand evidence for the things people claim, especially if those claims could have a significant effect on politics. Postmodernism has normalized the subjective, philosophy over fact method of argumentation, but the right isn't immune from this either, with fact-free conspiracy theories increasingly being entertained. To counter both the postmodern left and the conspiracy theory right, we need to consistently demand solid evidence from people making unusual claims, especially if the claim is likely to have an impact on our politics. This is the only way we can push back on the trend away from arguments being rooted in the objective truth.