Julie Borowski posted an interesting opinion piece on Facebook the other day. She has given up on trying to change the world through politics. Instead, she's focusing on things closer to home. She found her political activism exhausting and draining to the point of being maddening. Focusing on home and family instead, she found sanity and a sense of control.
This is an insight that most people discover at some point. Politics is poison to the mind, and the antidote is to focus on the near and the dear. Instead of trying to change the opinions of others, we focus on bettering ourselves and our circumstances. The results of this are pretty much immediate. Anger and irritation with others disappear, and we find instead joys related to everyday achievements.
However, the opinions of others do matter, so we shouldn't completely give up on our ambitions to change people's minds. But this must be done intelligently so that we avoid maddening irritation.
The key lies in a recognition that politics is all about opinion, and that opinions are pretty much impossible to change except through facts. However, if facts are delivered together with opinions, the focus will always be on our opinions rather than the facts presented. The solution is therefore to present facts without any opinion attached to them.
This may seem simple. However, we are all inclined to confuse our opinions with facts. This is especially true for emotionally laden subjects, such as abortion.
Many will say that abortion is murder. The fetus is a separate individual from the mother. Killing it is therefore murder. But this is not a fact. It's a fact mixed with an opinion.
The fetus is killed. That's a fact. The fetus is a separate individual with its own heart and proto-brain. That too is a fact. But it does not follow from this that killing it is murder. There are plenty of instances where killing someone isn't murder, and abortion advocates can point this out and present their own opinions.
However, if we leave out our opinions. Facts will stand unchallenged. Abortion advocates must either construct a straw man that fills in the opinion part of our argument, or they must explain to themselves why the facts don't matter.
Once we let go of the opinion part of our arguments, we move beyond politics. It's no longer one team against another. We no longer aspire to change anyone's mind. We simply inform people about facts, and it becomes the job of the recipients to either ignore it or incorporate it into their arguments.
Ignoring facts over time is tiresome. It's also pretty much impossible. Most people are by now reluctant to take the booster in the fall. Not because of anti-vaccine opinions, but because of excess deaths.
The connection between the Quran and Islamist violence is also becoming increasingly clear. Not because of anti-Islam opinions, but because more and more people realize that the Quran is a book filled with violence and hate.
Similarly for abortions. Those with strong feelings against the practice need only present facts in order to turn public opinion against it.
The goal of any anarchist is not to change the laws of the land, but to change the opinions of people. Once opinions lean one way or the other, laws don't matter.
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| Jesus |
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