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The internet is amazing, isn't it? When I first began to explore the internet more than
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20 years ago, I was blown away by the possibilities. I thought, wow, this is going to do so much
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to help people express themselves and to help people communicate with each other. The internet
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put the tools of publishing into the hands of every individual. Anyone with a little
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effort could start a web page of their own. With even less effort, one could start a blog.
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And as time went by, with almost no effort at all, we could write posts about our lives
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that all our friends could read. We could broadcast our thoughts to the world, 140 characters
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at a time. We could post pictures and videos and comment on the pictures and videos of
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others and discover ourselves and the world around us as distinctions of geography and
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race and class and even language would cease to matter. At the least, because of the internet,
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human beings would talk to each other much more than they ever did before. That's what
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I thought then. But alas, it hasn't quite worked out that way. One of the big lessons
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of our modern age is this. We may all talk a lot at the same time, but no one really
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Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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science. Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen. This is episode 49 of this weekly podcast
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and the first one in which I will have no guest. I'll be on my own. Just for this one
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episode, my intention was to try and go solo and sort of freewheel my way through it. Just
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me and my thoughts. I figured that as this releases on January 1, 2018, I'll talk about
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the year that just passed by. But having started this episode by talking about how we don't
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listen to each other anymore, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that and what
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is done to our political discourse. And I guess it's kind of ironic then that I don't
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have a guest on this episode because that makes it the first episode where I won't
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Three weeks ago, in episode 46 of The Scene and The Unseen, I spoke to my good friend
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Prem Panikkar about the state of the media. What I was trying to wrap my head around was
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this. Back in the 80s and 90s when I grew up, before the internet was ubiquitous, we
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got all our news and information from certain mainstream media sources. We'd get one or
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more newspapers at home. In my case, I've been a captive audience of The Times of India
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among others. We'd have a handful of TV stations to choose from. And just by dint of inertia,
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we were a captive audience for them. We were passive consumers of information. And most
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of us, when we had things to say, would communicate that to individuals or at best small groups
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of people. The internet changed all that and thank goodness for that. The internet put
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the tools of publishing in the hands of individuals and reduced the cost dramatically. You no
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longer had a gatekeeper, like a newspaper editor, who would look at your thoughts before
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they were published. You were not tied down to the news cycle. You weren't tied down
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to standard formats of content like the 800 word op-ed for example. When I started my
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blog in 2003, India Uncut, I found it liberating that I could post straight thoughts when I
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wanted to. A post could be one sentence if I felt like it, or a 7000 word essay. And
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I didn't have to worry about what anyone other than me thought of it. So many people I knew
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started writing blogs and blogs tended to find their own audiences. There was a greater
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diversity of voices out there now. And more diversity is always, always a good thing.
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I was already a journalist, but the success of India Uncut got me invitations to write
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columns for newspapers and many other bloggers also made similar transitions. But of course
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that's history now as blogs are more or less dead. Social media democratized this process
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even further. Blogs were an outlet for those who liked to write. Social media gave an outlet
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to everybody. Anybody could post a Facebook update about what they did that day or how
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they were feeling. They could post their vacation pictures. They could see the vacation pictures
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of others. On Twitter, they could reach out to like-minded people or expand their own
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world views by engaging with people from outside their narrow geographical circles. Technology
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enabled this and smartphones allowed us to do so much more, including make feature films
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if we wanted to. This was the empowerment of the individual, the great libertarian dream.
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But that's not all that happened. Let me take a detour for a moment to a social science
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experiment carried out in 2005 by Cass Sunstein, David Shkade and Reed Hasty. I read about
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this in an excellent short book by Sunstein called On Rumors. The study itself is titled
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What Happened on Deliberation Day? You can find it on Google if you search for it. So
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in this study, Sunstein and his colleagues gathered together 60 people and divided them
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into 10 groups of 6 people each. Now this grouping was not random. It was done so that
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each group was more or less homogenous and all 6 members in it fit the same kind of profile
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in terms of political ideology. And broadly speaking, half of these groups were liberal
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in the American sense and half were conservative. At the start of the experiment, each participant
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was asked a series of hot button questions. Their anonymous answers were noted down. Then
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they went into a room with their group of like-minded people and discussed those issues.
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Fifteen minutes after the group discussion ended, they were again asked the same set
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of questions, anonymously and one by one. Here's how Sunstein summarized the results.
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Start quote. In almost every other group, members ended up holding more extreme positions
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after they spoke with one another. Aside from increasing extremism, the experiment
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had an independent effect. It made both liberal and conservative groups significantly more
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homogenous and thus squelched diversity. Moreover, the rift between liberals and conservatives
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widened as a result of discussing. End quote. Sunstein called this effect group polarization.
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He defined it thus. Start quote. When like-minded people deliberate, they typically end up adopting
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a more extreme position in line with their pre-deliberation inclinations. End quote.
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You can see where I'm going with this. This is pretty much how discourse on the internet
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proceeds. First, we find like-minded people. This is
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not always easy in the real world, where our social circles are small. But online, no matter
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what our beliefs are, the earth is flat, ancient Indians invented plastic surgery, Barack Obama
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is a Muslim, no matter what we believe, we will find others who believe the same thing.
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Feeling validated and thus empowered, we will then form an echo chamber with these new fellows
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of ours. And mind you, we could be part of multiple echo chambers at the same time encompassing
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different beliefs. We would find comfort in belonging to this group and our beliefs would
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be strengthened and thus grow more extreme. What Sunstein called group polarization. We
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would then become impervious to facts. We would ignore all facts that did not fit our
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beliefs and accept only those that did. Behavioral economists call this the confirmation bias.
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And this is exactly why our political discourse today is so polarized. On the internet, most
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arguments consist not of people talking to each other, but talking past each other. This
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affects not just content, but also tone. We have become so shrill and contemptuous of
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each other. I had written a column a few months ago titled,
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What we talk about when we talk about politics. A sly nod to Raymond Carver, obviously. My
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lament in that piece is that there is no argument in our political discourse anymore. Whenever
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someone says something that we disagree with, we shift the focus from the argument to the
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person. We attack the person making the argument. We have no appetite for discussion because
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we have already made up our minds and opposing views are a threat to us, which is why we
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react so viscerally. So instead of refuting the argument, we attack the person. There
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are a number of ways in which this happens. Let me lay out the common ones, and I'm sure
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you'll find them all familiar. The number one way of personalizing an argument
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is what aboutery. For example, if you mention the Gujarat riots of 2002, an Arendra Modi
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fan might well ask, but what about the anti-seek riots of 1984? Why don't you speak about that?
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What aboutery is basically two things. One, it is an attack on the person who made the
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original statement. So if I say the 2002 riots were bad, by asking me what about 1984, you
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are implying that I am a hypocrite and I don't really care about human life at all. And two,
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besides being a personal attack, it is implicitly an admission of guilt. All what aboutery basically
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says, yeah, guilty as charged, but what about those other guys? They're also guilty. What
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aboutery poisons the discourse by shifting the focus from the argument to the person.
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And it's pointless to engage with the what about error. Often when I speak out for free
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speech, when some fringe Hindutva group does something or the other, I'll get asked, but
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what about the Charlie Hebdo murders? What about the Danish cartoonists? Why were you
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silent about that? Now, the truth is I wasn't silent then. I wrote columns arguing in support
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of the Danish cartoonists and the murdered employees of Charlie Hebdo. And I am a free
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speech absolutist regardless of context. But it's a waste of time to point this out because
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your attacker will then just move on to method number two of personalizing an argument. Before
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I get to that though, let me point out that what aboutery is not something that just trolls
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on Twitter do. Politicians do it all the time. For example, when Arvind Kejriwal was asked
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about the tens of crores of taxpayers' money, our money coerced from us, that he spent on
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running ads for his government, he asked the reporter, why are you asking me? What about
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Modi? The BJP spends much more on advertising. End quote. That's a classic admission of
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guilt, but no one sees it that way. Okay, onto method number two. The second way of
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personalizing an argument is to question your intent. So, if I criticize something that
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you agree with, you could, for example, call me a prostitute. Now, the label baffles me
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because I don't view prostitute as a pejorative at all. Sex workers are no different morally
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from workers of any kind. Even I sell my labor for money. Nothing wrong with that. But the
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implication behind calling someone a prostitute is that he or she is getting money for criticizing.
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They have an agenda. And therefore, the focus conveniently shifts from the argument to the
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person. A prostitute is just one version. You could be a CIA agent. You could be acting
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on behalf of China. You could be funded by a Christian or Jihadi group that wants to
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spread their religion, and so on. So, if someone is cooking biryani for a party, and you enter
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the kitchen and see that they are putting rotting dog meat in the biryani, and you point
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that out, imagine them saying, oh, of course you would say that. You are from the mutton
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lobby. And then everyone at the party surrounds you and they chant mutton lobby, mutton lobby,
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mutton lobby. And then they all eat the biryani and die, which is probably what's going to
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happen to our democracy. You get my point? On now to method number three. Method number
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three is identity politics. Your argument is ignored because of who you are. For example,
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if you are Muslim or Christian and argue with the BJP, your argument is irrelevant. They
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will invoke your identity and that's the end of that. And it isn't just a right wing that
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does this. The left also does this, especially woke millennials who like to talk about privilege.
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Now, privilege exists. It's an excellent analytical tool, and we should all introspect about the
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different kinds of privilege we have benefited from. But invoking it an argument is toxic
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for our discourse. If someone makes an argument about, say, reservations, saying that reservations
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don't work as intended, shutting him down just because he is Savarna kills a discourse
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right there. If a man makes a comment about feminism, to say that he needs to check his
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privilege and therefore his argument should be ignored just because he is a man is like
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poison to the free and open expression that a democracy needs. Now, don't get me wrong.
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Someone may make a poor argument because of their privilege, but the thing to do there
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is to point out the flaw in their argument rather than to invoke their identity. To refuse
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to engage with someone's argument just because of a person's identity, usually something
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they have no control over. It's just toxic. Again, thinking of privilege is useful in
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terms of analysis of how opinions get formed and so on. But invoking it in conversation
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just ends the conversation right there. What's the point of this? Method number four is actually
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an extension of method number three, labeling. So someone makes an argument and you call
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them a libtard or a bhakth or an aptard or a pinko or a commie and then refuse to engage.
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The label is meant as a pejorative and you use it not only to dismiss a person, but by
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extension to also dismiss their argument. There are many ways of ending an argument
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other than personalizing it, which are also intellectually dishonest. Arthur Schopenhauer
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had once written a great essay called 38 Ways to End an Argument. I reposted this on India
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uncut, so if you head there, you can search for it over there. These include time-honored
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methods like shifting gold posts, attacking straw men and so on. Schopenhauer intended
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his piece to be cautionary, but I'm sure it's used as an instruction manual by some people.
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Now some of you might say, given how things are, why even bother to engage with people
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in social media? On Twitter, for example, the main rhetorical tool employed is snark.
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It's much easier to make fun of someone, thereby feeling superior yourself, than to actually
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engage with humility. If you can do this in a clever way, you will get many arties and
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thalis from others in your echo chamber. Isn't that gratifying? And indeed, most conversation,
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at least most political conversation on Twitter, is equal parts preaching to the choir and
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being gratuitously derogatory to opponents. On the one hand, if someone disagrees with
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you, you stick a label on them, hypocrite, prostitute, fool, whatever, and dismiss them.
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And too much of what I see on Twitter also is virtue signaling, people saying, look,
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I am so noble, or compassionate, or woke, and so on. Indeed, I suggested before we post
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anything on Twitter, we should ask ourselves two questions, and I'll call this the Amit
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Varma test for social media posting. Question number one, am I being derogatory about someone?
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Question number two, am I trying to show myself in a good light? If the answer to either of
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these questions is yes, don't make that post. Just watch a cat video on YouTube or something.
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There are better ways to waste your time. I'll end this episode here. Thanks for listening
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so far. If you have any feedback, either negative or positive, about this first attempt of mine
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to record a solo episode, do let me know on Twitter or elsewhere. My Twitter handle is
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amitvarma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. You can listen to past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen
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at sceneunseen.in. And if you go to the podcast page on ThinkPragati or on sceneunseen.in,
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I also have some links to pieces I have written in the past tackling the sort of topics I
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have examined in this episode. Have a great year, and hey, this year, listen more than
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your talk. Goodbye for now.
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If you enjoyed listening to The Scene and the Unseen, check out another show by IVM
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podcast, Simplified, which is hosted by my good friends Naren, Chuck and Shriketh. You
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can download it on any podcasting network.
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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. Sorry to say, but there's
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been a slight delay due to the apocalypse having suddenly begun. As you can see, there's
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death, destruction and chaos taking place all around us. But don't you worry, food and
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drinks will be served shortly. And I would recommend checking out IVM Podcasts to get
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some of your favorite Indian podcasts. We'll keep you going till this whole thing blows
