Ouija politics: Difference between revisions

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 Now every opinionated windbag knows the experience of trying in vain to dismantle a transparently fatuous “political” argument.
-“Political” in the sense of being a generalised disposition attributable to a generalised class of people. These often ''are'' political dispositions, but need not be: “born-again Christians”, “conservatives” (with big or little “c”), socialists, [[bitcoin]] maximalists, Guardianistas, [[snowflake]]s, [[gammon]], libertarians — any kind of group to whom one might attribute a membership by reference to generalized set of beliefs.
+“Political” in the sense of being a generalised disposition attributable to a generalised class of people. These often ''are'' political dispositions, but need not be: “born-again Christians”, “conservatives” (with big or little “c”), socialists, [[bitcoin]] maximalists, Guardianistas, [[snowflake]]s, [[gammon]], libertarians, football fans — any kind of group to whom one might attribute a membership by reference to generalised set of beliefs or values.
-Of course, the group is a [[narrative]], as is its agenda and its catalogue of values: unless someone has published manifesto, no two individuals in the group will share identical set of beliefs, and it may be that no single individual holds exactly the set of core beliefs ascribed to the group. Most struggle to hold values internally consistent with their own other views, let alone with random others apparently part of the same in-group.
+Of course, any such group label is a [[narrative]] — a convenient shorthand for describing a general thrust without getting stuck [[in the weeds]] of peripheral. It is the impulse to say “Yeah, but ''you know what I mean''”.
-As with all narratives, it is meant to filter out the [[noise]] of [[diversity]] to help render a meaningful [[signal]].
+The same is true for the putative group’s agenda and its catalogue of values: unless someone has published manifesto, members of the group will not share identical beliefs. It may be that no single individual holds exactly the set of core beliefs you ascribed to the group.
+Given that most of us struggle to hold values internally consistent with our own other views, let alone with those of other randoms apparently part of the same in-group, this shouldn’t be a surprise. But: it feels like a quibble: “yes, yes, I realise not all football fans are cultural Philistines, but ''you know what I mean''”.
+As with all narratives, we label things to filter out the [[noise]] of irrelevant [[diversity]] to help render a meaningful [[signal]] of germane commonality.
 The signal is often a phantom. In the same way that, in a group of 1000 people no individual will necessarily conform to the group’s average for height, weight, hand-size, inside seam, waist ''and'' chest measurement: the more dimensions you measure, the less likely that golden mean becomes.<ref>Hence [[A. P. Herbert]]’s magical essay on the [[reasonable man]] in {{casenote|Fardell|Potts}} refers.</ref>
 Hence your struggle to mount an intellectual assault: your argument deconstructs the general average of a group to which no single member necessarily subscribes. Your intricate syllogisms resonate in the abstract; in the particular they snatch at thin air.
+The converse is also true. What each of us thinks of our common labels — our respective articulations of the necessary and sufficient conditions for group membership — ''differ''. We think each other know what we mean, but we ''don’t''.
 Hence, atheists and Christians shout themselves hoarse, rather enjoying the experience, making perfect sense to themselves and none at all to each other.