Avoiding people because of what you suspect they might think

My next-door neighbor has been pretty friendly to me. He chats on the street in a nice way, his kids seem nice, he’s been happy to take in my trash bins when I can’t because I’m away, he trims my half of the mutual hedge between our place and picks up the clippings, and is generally nice. Nothing very special, but nice. It’s a good contrast to the aggressive unpleasant ass-hole who lives directly across the street from me, or the generally semi-unnpleasant types up and down the road who do things like drive not street legal dirt-bike motorcycles up and down the road much too fast all the time. So, a person I want to stay friendly with. He also has “Exit the WHO”, “Exit the WEF”, and “Exit the WTO” painted and his trash bin and what I think may be some sort of Q-anon sticker on his truck. I do my best to just ignore this and try to be friendly because, well, who needs the grief, or another aggressive neighbor, especially when I’m not going to make a dent in the world-view in any direct way in any case. That’s not quite the same thing as the friend issue, of course, but I think the point generalizes, at least to some degree.

I don’t think I tend to feel this way or act on it (possibly a result of spending much of my life in environments where nobody was remotely close to me politically, and a love of arguing) but I suspect I’ve been on the receiving end: maybe I should have got in first.

How often does this feed back into moderating one’s original view?

I think that people who disagree with me about abortion/trans issues/ I-P etc. must have barbaric views.
But this person disagrees with me, and certainly does not seem like a barbarian.
So, maybe their view is not barbaric?

I suspect this happens very, very seldom. Instead of our moderating the vehemence with which we reject the opposing view, we simply chalk it up to what we take to be an inconsistency in the other’s moral outlook.

Which shows something interesting about the piece-meal nature of personal morality, and about our own assumptions about its non-systematicity. People are patchworks of good and bad, empathetic and cold-blooded, enlightened and benighted, and we expect nothing else.

Except from our allies, from whom we demand complete agreement on the full list of acceptable positions, any deviance to be punished by public shaming.

I’ve come to the conclusion that almost all our beliefs about other people’s attitudes and opinions are severely underdetermined (underdetermined empirically I guess, and overdetermined ideologically in terms of our beliefs about human nature and society).

The big split seems to be between people who assume everybody’s alike and has to keep confronting discoveries that individual people don’t match that expectation, and people who assume only people who are like themselves in some way are fully comprehensible as humans.

But this is orthogonal to prejudice to some extent. I can expect bad, or at least strange, treatment both from men who think I’m not behaving according to correct norms for women and are upset by that, and also from men who think I am behaving according to correct norms for women and are upset by that. “Everybody is alike” could mean “men and women are alike in essentials” or it could mean “everybody sane realizes that men and women are deeply different.”

As for the rest, I suppose it comes down to degree of willingness to endure future discomfort.

” Brexit, trans rights and Israel/Palestine”

These seem to be all issues with a high risk of making you look like you’re completely round the twist, a moral monster or both.

In the case of trans people, its kind of clear their deal is they wanna be treated as the opposire gender to theior agab (or non-binary).

The anti-trans obsessive .on the pther hand .. looks like they have have serious “issues” of some sort, even if its not entirely clear exactly what.

It has been a long standing convention on the UK labour left that criticiseing Israel is fine, but actual anti-semitism is out of line. And I gotta admit, these days at least some of these protesters are looking like actual anti-semites. The whole sort of Protocols of the Elders of Zion related conspiracism has a really bad rep. for very good reasons. Can make you look like a total lunatic.

And brexit was a bit odd, too.

None of the issues mentioned in the OP are likely to raise those problems in Australia. Brexit obviously, trans rights because the issue is settled (speaking tours by UK transphobes have been fiascos), Israel-Palestine because Australia isn’t involved in the way the US is now, and the UK has been historically.

The big problem for us is that of recognition of Aboriginal/indigenous/First Nations. We just had a referendum on this, which failed mostly because referendums usually fial and this one was handled very badly, turning initially strong majority support into a thumping loss.

On issues like this, I have lots of rural relatives and generally make the kind of assumptions mentioned in the OP, particularly for those of my age and older. But I wouldn’t stay friends with someone of my own (urban, educated) social background who shared those views.

Is Brexit really still an issue in the UK? I think the majority (a) think it was mistake and would vote to rejoin and (b) don’t want there to be another vote. Which somehow seems quintessentially British.

A key element, which a couple of commenters have touched on, is whether (you think that) it would ever be possible to have a reasoned and friendly discussion with a believer in X or an opponent of Y. In other words, whether you see the beliefs as lying within some sort of bounds of reasonableness is much less important than whether you see believers as legitimate political actors – or, indeed, whether believers are likely to treat non-believers as legitimate actors. If my neighbour believes he was Robespierre in a past life and Boris Johnson was Danton, so what – he may be crazy, but we can still get along. If my neighbour believes that Keir Starmer has reformed the Labour Party and that anyone who thinks otherwise should be beaten up, we’ll have more of a problem.

I’m not sure Brexit belongs on the list of impossible topics (any more). Brexit isn’t associated with violence (after Jo Cox’s assassination it probably should have been, but that’s not how it played out); it does have connotations of racism, though. Class is never far away, either – from a pro-Brexit point of view it’s very much a divide between “ordinary working people” and “people who take European city breaks and go on marches with home-made signs (and have no idea what ordinary working people are up against)”. The actual topic is discussable, although – as engels said – that’s probably on the shared assumption that it (a) was probably a mistake and (b) isn’t going to be reversed.

I/P isn’t an intractable topic so much as a very, very upsetting one. Or maybe that’s just me – if one believed that everyone who said “from the river to the sea” was advocating genocide against Jews, or that everyone who said “Israel’s right to self-defence” was advocating genocide against Palestinians, conversations with the other side would be over before they began. I’ve never come across anyone advocating either, which leaves us with a disagreement between “what’s happening is terrible, and” and “what’s happening is terrible, but”.

Trans rights, though – that’s a really divisive issue, either because (a) only one side are legitimate political actors – one side simply wants trans people to have the same rights as everyone else, while the other side are reactionary bigots or because (b) one side believes that the other side are reactionary bigots and refuses to recognise them as legitimate political actors. I tend to think it’s the latter. Which is why I’m commenting anonymously – I almost laughed when I read the comment from “someone who remembers…” @9, to the effect that “transphobes” are so obsessed with their particular ideology that they’ll always out themselves. There certainly are people – IRL and especially online – who talk about nothing else, and they’re best avoided if only on the grounds of tedium (and yes, what’s happened to G Linehan is an awful warning). But I know I haven’t said a word on the subject, in public settings IRL or (under my name) online, for quite a few years – because I know that if I did some people would infer motivations I don’t hold, and I would cause upset to people I care about and probably lose friends.

Having said all of that, it’s not entirely a matter of how intolerant true believers are, and/or how intolerant you are of true believers; there are belief systems that make you want to cross to the other side of the road, figuratively or literally. I dropped someone cold once because they’d become a 9/11 Truther; I just didn’t want that craziness anywhere near my head.

I’ve found I dont engage in debate with friends who hold what i see as awful opinions/values, less because I find them objectionable and more I find them dumb. Most peoples opinions on most things are stupid and half thought through and most of what counts for arguments is merely regurgitating memes. I find that aspect more off putting than what it says about their character, which is often hard to they know due to their aforementioned thoughtlessness

Mostly OT, but I agree with Moz on voting rights, except that I think a restriction to citizens is justified. If you are genuinely a permanent resident, you should become a citizen at the earliest opportunity (4 years). If you have PR status, but don’t wish to become a citizen, you shouldn’t vote either. Otherwise, everyone (including children, prisoners, people with mental disabilities) should be entitled to vote, though it ought not to be compulsory for the currently excluded categories.

Going back to the OP, I tend to assume people my age or older are more likely to have ill-informed and reactionary opinions and limited capacity to respond to new evidence. That informs my view that children should be able to vote, and also affects the way I interact.

SusanC@10

It has been a long standing convention on the UK labour left that criticiseing Israel is fine, but actual anti-semitism is out of line.

I thought at first read that this was surely particularly dry humour, but I then realised that this is the very sort of claim that illustrates some of the very points being made by other commenters.

It’s been a long-standing convention on the Labour right that criticising Israel essentially is anti-semitism (it’s fortunate for them, legally at least, that they cancelled Diane Abbott and Faiza Shaheen for things they said rather than “characteristics”).

Q5 @ #16 – Well with that attitude, you ain’t ever gonna get that six figgie check from substack! dont worry. some eager 47 year old will burn their family relations instead of you. the supply is endless

Is it me or seems to be a global tendence to avoid dialogs and keep people ‘in their square meter’?

I think Twitter had a similar effect on dialectics that Tinder did on dating.

In deciding to avoid people given indicator they give off;
On one hand, one might be missing an interesting conversation and learning new things.
On the other hand, the conversation might be duller than bowling ball and raise your blood pressure hearing already debunked information.
On the gripping hand as conversations imply two-way exchanges, you may find yourself trapped in the receiving role, not in a conversation.

OP was not about choosing to avoid people with opinions you find repellent, but rather about choosing to avoid people because you think (perhaps on the basis of some other characteristic they have) that they might

That’s in a lot of ways harder to talk about because for me at least a lot of the people I avoid I know little about. For example I’m perplexed that JQ still hangs out in the nazi bar even though I don’t have any real experience of how bad “X” is these days… because I avoid it. The reported comments of the owner are enough to justify that IMO.

I don’t think there’s just two axes of difference, and there are definitely degrees of adherence, but there are definitely clusters of belief. When I see someone express the polite edge of a cluster I’m cautious, and there are definitely things that will cause me to avoid someonejust from a hint. Someone wearing a MAGA hat is enough (yes, people do that in Australia). I’m also profoundly skeptical of visibly religious people, any kind of right wing insignia, or whatever the opposite of environmentalism is (brown vs green?).

This also ties into the abovementioned “vegans can’t stop talking about being vegan” syndrome. Often just being different triggers disquieting conversations. And as someone who is visibly different I’ve experienced enough of that to last a lifetime. Turning up on a bicycle gets me far too many comments on the spectrum from “all cyclists are bad” to “I would like to murder you with my motor vehicle”. Being queer, or tweaking the people who can detect autism, or wearing a ‘greenie’ T shirt or at times being white and male, also set some people off.

I’d rather avoid those people. I’ve dealt with them enough. Think of it as spoon theory, or avoiding microagressions (in the sense that “I want to kill you” is a microagression {urk})

The aim of socialism is to build a movement of the whole working class (in all its diversity) to fight capital. Middle class leftism otoh is primarily concerned with lifestyle, ethics and personal distinction and feels most comfortable retreating into self-affirming affinity groups, the smaller the better. Overlaying that today is the way that online platforms offer a consumerist approach to human relationships where anyone can choose from thousands of discursive, social or romantic partners as if buying a mail order T-shirt: this encourages impatience, superficiality and viewing people as brands rather than humans.

@34

I have questions.

Is the left a movement for the working class or of the working class? If it’s of the working class, how is that defined? Traditionally, in Marx, the working class is assumed to be by far the majority, and the middle class is defined as very small and consisting only of holders of large capital and a small number of professionals born initially into the capitalist class. How does a movement of the working class win power if that’s no longer the case, and the working class as defined consists only of a diminishing minority? Is the moral imperative for non-workers to support the left something that comes from the majority status of the working class, or from its especial virtue?

Is the left a movement for what the working class wants now, or a movement for what intellectuals think the working class should want?

Is there any place for a left that consists of a movement of society and the economy in a more democratic, fairer, more equal direction in which everybody has enough to eat and so on, by people who don’t happen to be workers? Is there any place for a left that supports equal rights for women, trans people, Black people, and Muslims, whether or not the working class as a class doesn’t like those groups?

Or is the answer to go read Capital again? Where are the pages where Marx says everybody has the same interests and only the rich people emphasize personal uniqueness and authenticity?

I am finding the OP and discussion a bit confusing, because they both seem to take for granted the idea that “you,” the individual, are the only relevant consideration, and that “you” are not personally implicated by any of these positions. It’s as if this is about high-school debate topics, and not our daily lives.

For myself, if I avoid inviting someone to a dinner party because I suspect (but do not know) that they are transphobic, it is in large measure because I want my other guests to feel safe and comfortable in my home. Obviously this is most directly relevant if I have a trans guest coming to dinner, but it matters for my cis guests too E.g., I just found out that a colleague has a trans sibling. Would I want to subject that colleague to bigotry in my own home on what is supposed to be a relaxing social occasion? Certainly it’s nothing they haven’t heard before, but why should they be subjected to it on friendly turf, so to speak?

Or take climate denialism. It’s less personal than transphobia in certain respects, clearly, but I have friends and colleagues who work professionally to combat the worst of climate change’s effects. Two years ago I went to a birthday party at which I unwillingly spent the better hour trying to deflect and reframe the climate denialism of another guest’s spouse. He certainly felt entitled to spew his odious views all over the room, without regard or inquiry as to whether others wanted to hear them. Had he been preemptively excluded from the party on the basis of being a straight, white, old, male Republican who worked for an oil company (all of which he was), even if we didn’t know his views on climate in advance, it would have made for a far more pleasant evening for the rest of the guests, including me.

There are many moments in daily life when I don’t have a choice about who to interact with, and I flatter myself that I navigate those as smoothly as the next person. I’m not interested in randomly picking fights with a Home Depot cashier or my fellow train rider on the basis of simply suspecting that they are politically objectionable. There is a dude at my yoga class who has some really upsetting tattoos that read as Christian nationalist to me; my sole conversation with him consists of innocuous phrases like “Hey, can you slide your mat over a little?”

But in circumstances where there are starkly unequal potential consequences — a false positive means that I miss out on an otherwise lovely dinner guest, a false negative means that I subject my other guests to a spontaneous eruptions of bigotry — I’m OK with erring on the side of more false positives.

choosing to avoid people because you think (perhaps on the basis of some other characteristic they have) that they might have opinions you find repellent.

Generally speaking, not really? I suppose it depends the degree to which one extends “avoid people” and “might have” – e.g. would it be unreasonable to avoid members of the Westboro Baptist Church on the basis they may have views I find repellent (even though some may not in fact hold those views); is it unreasonable to not join the social media site formerly known as twitter even if we know there are a non-zero number of reasonable people there too? I feel these are points where it comes down a lot to one’s personal tolerance, and the time one has to spend in such pursuits. I suppose I could be said to be avoiding, in the sense that I generally don’t spend a lot of my life actively seeking out people with whom I am likely to find little common ground – but I feel it is (at least from my perspective) more the prioritising of how I spend my free time (and with the thought in mind that perhaps there may be more productive approaches to effect change in society).

For people I am likely to meet and interact with, I try to adopt a position of “reasonable respect” (that is to say, assuming a certain degree of good faith, allowing for people having differing opinions, and offering a degree of charity for mistakes or rushed remarks – as I would hope would generally be reciprocated). Where people act in ways that I feel are worth respecting (e.g. offering sound and valid arguments for their position, approaching with good faith, avoiding the urge to insult and provoke), then I try to reciprocate. Where people act in ways that seem unworthy of respect (sneering contempt, malicious insinuations about my motivations, and outright abuse and lies rather than addressing my arguments) then I see little reason to bother engaging, and generally just ignore them. While perhaps it would be more admirable if I exercised infinite patience and continued gently explaining my actual position over and over to people continually asserting that it isn’t my position, regardless of my words and deeds over many decades, but I do feel at a certain point that it is impossible to convince someone if they are not going to act in good faith (and if someone is engaging in such behaviours, I feel it says a lot more about them than it does me). I’m not sure that I would count that as avoidance, so much as merely disinterest in wasting my life on fruitless pursuits!

Certainly there are limits to positions I would engage with (some world views are so alien that I doubt that I would ever be able to engage in fruitful dialogue – and vice versa, of course), but I do try to engage with a certain degree of reasonableness wherever possible. In my defense, I will note that I try to apply the same standards as evenly as I can (allowing for being a fallible human, of course), and am happy to ignore people from “my side” if I find them boorish, incompetent, disingenuous, or tedious too – so I think (perhaps flattering myself) that I more-or-less don’t avoid people purely on the basis of supposing that they might have repellent opinions but rather on their words and actions. But I suppose I would think that, wouldn’t I?

There’s certainly an irony if, like Witt, you disinvite people from your dinner party on the basis of their race, creed, etc, because you’re worried that those sorts of people might be bigots.

Personally, I’m with Matt in #2. I don’t really mind if you have repellent views, as long as we don’t have to talk about them. And even there, it’s not so much the view, as the (likely) monomania. Someone obsessed with debunking Q-Anon would be nearly as tedious as the Q-Anon obsessive. But as long as you can control yourself, I don’t care who you think killed Kennedy, because it’s not the basis of our friendship.

Also “I’ll invite everyone, however they present themselves or what are their political opinions, and at the worse let them kill each other” is a take.

Most people are capable of being interested in something without talking monomaniacally about it. Rather, most people understand that it is polite to converse on a subject of mutual interest, to speak in roughly equal proportions, to show curiosity in the other person, and so on. If you are so enthralled by (say) bees that you cannot help yourself from talking about apiculture at all times, no matter the level of interest from everyone else, then you are not welcome with me – regardless of whether you believe in bee-related conspiracy theories. And this should not be surprising to anyone.

As a practical example, I see a fair number of the pro-police, anti-Black Lives Matter “thin blue line” flags when I drive around near here (not quite as many as “Black Lives Matter” or “In this house we believe” or trans pride flags), and I occasionally meet someone at a PTA meeting or whatever who has a patch on their clothes that suggests they might support that. I certainly wouldn’t be in a hurry to hang out with them or even to trust them. On the other hand I have friends who are (LGBT-friendly) churchgoers and who likely have positions I dislike on various live political questions that we don’t talk about. Then again those are never going to be close friendships, for a variety of reasons.