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David McElroy

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We all love stories, but principles should trump anecdotes in debate

By David McElroy · April 9, 2013

Assault knifeThere’s nothing like a good old fashioned tragedy on the news to make a political point. Whether we admit it or not, most of us unconsciously feel this way. An anecdote is a cheap and easy way to score a point, but is it really good in the long run for public discourse? Maybe not.

You might have heard about the knife attack at a Houston college campus Tuesday that injured at least 15 people, sending 12 of them to hospitals. As soon as I saw the news, I thought about what gun-control advocates would be saying about the story if the assailant had used a gun. So I posted a sarcastic comment about it on Facebook.

“Police in Houston say 15 people were stabbed on a college campus there today,” I wrote. “This is proof that it’s time to get serious about banning assault knives — since they clearly have no purpose other than stabbing innocent people.”

A number of other people who agree with me on the issue of gun rights agreed and chimed in with their own comments. It felt good, because there was a story that illustrated very clearly what we believed. We felt that it made our point and that felt emotionally good.

I’ve been thinking about this tendency to use “anecdote as argument” a lot lately, and I’m not really happy with it, even though I do it as much as anybody else does.

In 1984, Neil Postman published the influential book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.” You can say that it dealt with the philosophy of media, but it’s more applicable than that sounds. Postman was a social critic who made a career of questioning things that other people took for granted. He could seem a bit of a Luddite at times, because he questioned things that seemed clearly good to everyone else, such as television and technology in general.

Postman said that television was dumbing down public discourse, and things have gotten far worse since 1984. On Facebook, graphic “memes” have become a substitute for rational argument and thinking. There’s no room for nuance. There’s no room for anything except an oversimplified graphical representation of a position, accompanied by a few crude words to further oversimplify the issue. The various political sides don’t really discuss their positions. They merely lob these graphics at one another. Whoever has the funniest or hardest-hitting graphic wins.

In “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Postman looks at different ages of media and shows how the dominant medium of an age drives the shape of public discourse for the time. When print was dominant, words and ideas were very important. Those who wanted to participate in public debate learned about ideas by reading and by listening to long lectures that mirrored the format of books. It was during this age that abstract ideas became more and more important, changing the world as more and more people learned to read and were convinced of certain ideas.

But Postman says the age of television is very different. As a medium, it’s not capable of the same sort of abstract depth that print is. It can show what physical objects look like better than any medium we’ve ever had. It can show the here and now. It loves action and color. But it is forced to dumb down abstract ideas, because ideas are boring as television. As a result, people watch televised “news” thinking they’re getting the equivalent of an old-fashioned newspaper, but they’re getting a dumbed down version that merely makes them feel that they’ve been educated about issues.

Television loves stories. There’s no better medium today than video or film when it comes to telling stories in emotional ways. So we all become accustomed to life and ideas and issues being presented as a series of stories rather than as underlying principles.

Humans have always loved stories. The last few hundred years has been about the slow triumph of abstract ideas as people came to think more and put aside prejudices based on mere anecdote. We’ve continued to love stories as entertainment, but principles have driven more of our public policies.

That’s been changing since the advent of television, though. We’re back to ordering societies based on anecdotes rather than principle. And as news has changed to fit the strengths of the medium of television, it’s become more and more about stories again. This has been reinforced by the fact that everybody using social media today (such as Facebook and Twitter) has been trained by television to look to anecdotes to make points.

So instead of discussing the principles underlying an issue such as gun rights, we throw stories at each other, just as my friends and I were happy to embrace the Tuesday Houston stabbings as a way to make our points. And it’s everywhere around us.

Those who favor restrictions on guns were quick to spread the story from Tennessee about a 4-year-old boy who accidentally used a deputy sheriff’s gun to shoot and kill the deputy’s wife in her home. For those who want more government control of guns, it was a clear case of the danger of having guns around. It was an anecdote that supported their world view, so they shared it and felt that they were making their case.

Burger King shootingThose who favor gun rights were just as quick to share a story from Miami about a man using a gun last Friday to protect himself and his family when an armed robber came into a Burger King at lunch to rob everyone. One of the victims pulled out his own gun and shot the robber in the leg. For those who favor the right of individuals to carry their own guns to protect themselves, the story proved their point, so they shared it far and wide and felt that they were making their case.

The problem is that both of the stories are simply anecdotes. They don’t address the underlying principles. They don’t deal with anyone’s rights. They simply deal with the stories of specific individuals in specific circumstances. They don’t prove anything.

Before the age of television, I’m not sure such isolated stories would have been accepted as proving points, but in the age of television — supported by social media — such stories are everything.

We owe it to ourselves and to our opponents to make cases that are clear and honest, based on solid principles and facts instead of just random anecdotes. Unfortunately, that’s not what works in the court of public opinion now. Everybody wants a story. Everybody wants emotions.

I consider myself far more likely to be interested in the underlying principles behind the things I believe than most people today are. If you’re reading this, you’re probably the same way. But we’re influenced by the television and Internet culture that we’re a part of. Stories and emotions win. Facts and principles generally lose.

It’s a depressing state for public discourse. I have no idea how to change it. For starters, I suggest avoiding what passes for “television news” — which is an oxymoron, as far as I’m concerned — but that’s not enough. The problem is so big that a few of us kicking the TV habit isn’t enough.

I have no idea how to change this (because I don’t know how to fight a dominant medium such as television), but the subject at least needs to be discussed.

In the meantime, I’ll probably keep right on doing the same thing myself sometimes — and then realizing that I’m just falling into the bad habits of the rest of society.

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It was too cloudy last night for me to take a phot It was too cloudy last night for me to take a photo of the lunar eclipse, so I missed the beautiful red image that I saw from others. But the sky overhead tonight is crystal clear — and the moon seemed especially bright — so I snapped a shot anyway. I don’t really have the right lens for this since I have to blow it up massively when I shoot at 240mm. Surprisingly, this image was made at 1/250th of a second at f/6.3 and ISO 250. I’d like to have a longer lens for such a shot, but it’s not worth the money since I’d rather use it. #nature #naturephotography #sky #moon
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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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