stories

lately I've been thinking and writing about the strange situation that has developed where two ideologies or groups that are fundamentally opposed to each other (humanism and Christianity) are, nevertheless, united in their opposition to a third ideological approach (critical theory). I didn't understand how that could be the case - how they could so strongly agree about their opposition to this other ideology when their own ideologies are so fundamentally in disagreement. And their criticism of critical theory has a lot of overlap. 

but then I watched a youtube video and read an article that shed some light on the situation. they were talking about how the internet and the way we use it and interact on it - the way we produce and consume content - has brought about a much more complex environment with regard to news/media/ideology than existed before, say, 30 years ago

disagreements that used to be bilateral - atheist vs Christian, Left vs Right, liberal vs labour (in Australia), democrat vs republican (in US), etc - have been replaced by multilateral disagreements, and a kind of tribalism in which opposition to groups that traditionally would be in your camp is as strident as your opposition to groups that have traditionally been opposed to your group. 

So, instead of large, homogenous ideological groups that are directly opposed to each other, at least in terms of their views, not necessarily in terms of animosity or forceful opposition, there are now a multiplicity of subgroups that are all opposing pretty much every other group. 

The internet facilitates a kind of bubble effect as well. groups only engage with their own content, so they become more and more sure of their own views and more dismissive of the views of other groups.

the article I read actually had a link to a spreadsheet that was a taxonomy of all the different groups, or at least a lot of them. It was kind of surprising and interesting. 

I didn't agree with everything in the article (or the youtube video) and that's why I'm not referencing them, but I found both very interesting. For the sake of making our argument, we all represent ourselves as being objective and fair. Like - not to be critical of the writer(s) of the article, but here is someone or a couple of people, analysing the ideological landscape and presenting their findings, and by making a virtually exhaustive list of all the different idealogical groups, but of course not claiming allegiance to any of them, they are representing themselves as being, in a way, ideology free. They are able to 'see' all of these other ways of seeing, and describe them, but you can only see if you have a way of seeing

we all have stories we believe - narratives to which we subscribe.