Why everyone thinks they're rational and everyone else is irrational
One thing I have learned from years of talking to people about politics, both online and offline, is that everyone thinks that they are the only person being rational. Everyone from the far-left to the far-right via the centre thinks: “if you just look rationally at the facts you’ll see that I’m right”. Most people think that political disagreements are caused by an outbreak of irrationality amongst the people they disagree with.
If you’re reading this, and thinking: “but I am right that if you look at the facts you’ll see they support my arguments” and “everyone else is only selectively interpreting the facts” then everyone else also thinks that. The one thing that we can all agree on is that everyone else is being irrational.
Incidentally, this is one reason why everyone who has ideas about politics reaches for the metaphor of The Matrix. It’s because everyone thinks that they’re the one who sees the underlying base code of how the world really is, and everyone else is just distracted by the woman in the red dress to the point that they can’t see that everything they believe in is a fiction.
Facts and stories
I’m here to tell you that everyone is actually irrational. Facts or evidence are just pieces of information that we include in the stories we tell. Stories are what we connect with emotionally; they are the essence of our political arguments. We tell stories about how the country would be better if we voted to leave the EU or to put Labour in power to win over others.
Almost everyone thinks that stories are the enemy of facts. Stories use emotion to distract people from the truth. Facts are the truth. Generally, I hear this argument more from people on the left than the right, which might go some way to explaining the poor performance of the left recently when faced with opponents who are much better at storytelling. To win we need both together. Facts and story united make the strongest argument possible.
Facts don’t care about your feelings
Ben Shapiro - a man some people look up to because he has a talent for the performative rudeness that passes for political debate online - has a catch phrase: “facts don’t care about your feelings”. It’s effective because this is how most people think of themselves when debating: calmly laying out the way things are whilst their opponent has an irrational emotional tantrum.
There’s no denying Shapiro is good at debating. He has said some dumb things and his hyper-confrontational approach to debate is part of the reason that American political discourse is so toxic. He’s also a grade-A right-wing shit muncher. He is good at the faeces throwing, no compromise, public humiliation contest that is our political discourse. However, and this is crucial, he is not good at debating because he uses facts - he’s good at it because he uses narrative.
Aisling McCrea argues that despite Shapiro’s catch phrase, his arguments are mainly full of insults, tropes and highly emotional statements. This is a great tactic: say I only speak facts and then pass off your emotional bluster as facts. It also works because his whole “I’m on the side of facts and the left only care about feeling” shtick is a narrative, not a fact. His approach to debating is based on a story. A story that says: “my side controls truth and the other side is trying to suppress truth with adolescent emotional outbursts.” It’s a great story.
Left-wing resistance to storytelling
The lesson of Shapiro’s success (if you define success as climbing to the top of the flaming trash pile that is right-wing American political punditry, or winning the admiration of millions of people whose Twitter profile picture is them wearing shades in their car, who like to send angry tweets to anyone calling themselves a feminist) is not to use facts, but to tell a compelling story.
On the left, we are more resistant to storytelling than the right. There is a deep seated belief that rationally stating the facts is all that’s needed to win a political argument. Alina Siegfried, an expert on storytelling, narrative and a spoken word artist, has written on this topic.
She interviewed Alex Evans, author of The Myth Gap, who said: “the left places undue value on rationality and reductionist scientific reason above other ways of knowing, as if that’s the only way to win an argument and change behaviour. We forget how crucial a role story, narrative and myth play in our lives and our psyches. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump alike crafted a mighty compelling myth. Just think of the slogan, Make American Great Again. Taken at face value, what American wouldn’t want that?”
Stories not lies
Looking at the success of the right globally, we can see the need for telling a story that resonates with the electorate. Storytelling isn’t a magic bullet; the left is faced with a wide range of challenges from declining class solidarity to ageing populations. However, our reliance on facts over storytelling is part of the problem. Just look at climate change: as the world hurtles towards an environmental disaster and all the evidence points towards the desperate need to act, serious work to avoid a climate catastrophe is further away than ever.
This is not an argument for post-truth politics. I’m not saying that we abandoned facts and rationality completely to pursue storytelling above all else. I’m also not advocating for bare faced lying, even if it helps us tell stories that can win elections. Lies from politicians matter. They degrade trust in politics, even if the lie helps you tell a more convincing story.
There have been many high profile lies in politics in the last five years. Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Vladimir Putin and Boris Johnson all have a casual attitude to the truth. Let’s take one big recent example, the bus that claimed that we sent £350 million a week to the EU. This claim is, at best, very inaccurate. Although the impact of the stat has been exaggerated by bitter Remainers desperate to prove that Leave cheated, it was both an effective campaigning slogan and not true.
Tory lies and left-wing facts
When fellow travellers on the left talk about being the only ones making a rational argument or preferring facts to stories, the Brexit bus is what they mean. We think: “their side lies, but they dress it up in a good story so people believe it. Whereas, we tell the truth using facts, which makes us better.”
A closer look at the “facts” of the EU referendum will reveal that both sides had a relaxed attitude to the truth in the campaign. Then Chancellor George Osborne’s statement that if the UK voted to leave, a punishment budget would be necessary turned out to be completely not true. As did talk of the pound crashing and all business fleeing the UK. This is not to justify all the economic mismanagement that has been done in the name of Brexit, of which there is a lot, but it has been a slow bleeding away and not the sudden cardiac arrest that was promised by the Tory Remain campaign.
You can argue that the EU referendum was different types of Tories lying to get what they want, and that the left tried to inject some facts into the campaign that were ignored, and there’s some truth to that. What’s more important is that an effective campaign exposes the lies that the other side tells. You can wrap a lie in a story, but that doesn’t make it invulnerable. A truth wrapped in a story can defeat it, if delivered by a skilful politician. It’s a shame that all the politicians pushing the Remain argument were about as effective as a damp piece of tissue in stopping a speeding train.
Stop being so rational
Some people will always believe that facts, plainly stated, will always defeat stories and/or lies. If you think that then I wish you all the best in your political campaigning. You should choose the approach you think is best. However, if this doesn’t work, it’s not because of a grand conspiracy involving Michel Foucault and social media companies to destroy the idea of objective truth. It’s because facts without story are boring. And that’s a fact. If you are angered by that fact, maybe you’re being irrational?
The left needs to get over this idea that the plain facts will win out against a good story. This isn’t an argument for tall tales and highly emotional exaggerations. It’s an argument to combine facts with good storytelling to be most effective in our campaigning. This is something we’d do well to learn from the right.
When you’re next discussing politics with someone you think is being irrational or overly emotional, it’s worth reminding yourself that the other person most likely thinks the same. Especially if their supposed irrationality is making you angry. Isn’t that an emotional reaction?
