I’ve been involved in quite a few conversations lately, both online and in real life (did you realize you can actually speak to real people?). A common thread in these conversations is politics or particular views on events. One thing I try to do when composing arguments is to frame them from a different perspective so that the other party must defend something they’ve not thought out completely, thus exposing the weaknesses in their logic.
For example, racism. When I speak of racism or bigotry, I always use a minority as the offender. The reason I do so is because of the stereotype of the white man. Whitey is always the antagonist when it comes to racial issues. Listen to people when they construct their arguments regarding racism. It usually has the white man denying the black man something. When I frame the argument as an Asian denying a white man his pork fried rice, the most interesting things tend to happen. Either the person will reword my argument to have Mr. Whiteskin as the antagonist or they’ll simply dismiss my statement as irrelevant to the argument at hand (I assume because it doesn’t fit their logic). This is the point where I usually can pick apart their logic*.
Another point is bigotry, real or perceived. When I talk about gay issues I always talk about a gay person refusing to assist a straight person. Or sexism – I make a woman the bad person in the scenario. And the same thing happens. The person I’m chatting with will rephrase the situation so that their preconceived stereotypes can be used or they’ll claim I’m peddling sophistry.
It’s just something interesting I’ve done for a while, and surprisingly have had the same results from people. Any psychologists out there wanna show me where I’m wrong or right?
*Quite often, the opposite happens. By reframing the argument from a different perspective, I force myself to reconsider my premise!