I was recently talking to someone about israel/gaza in the context of the new iran war. I couldn’t help but notice we were coming to much the same conclusions, but through totally different lines of thought. To summarize, like most lefties, he opposes israel for “what they’re doing to the locals” i.e. from the perspective of “anti-colonialism”. On the other hand, I oppose israel for what they’re doing to do us in the West.
What is your reaction to a situation like this? And more broadly speaking, what do you think about this notion of coming to the same conclusion as someone else, while following wildly different trains of thought? Try and convince them that their entire perception of the world is upside down? Take it as a win, in an “enemy of my enemy” kind of way? Can they be trusted to ever come to the “correct” conclusion again if their rationale is “wrong”? Or is the line of thought more important than the conclusion? If not in general, can it ever be?
I suppose this post is basically just turning that giancarlo esposito (“you dislike X because Y, I dislike X because Z, we are not the same.”) meme into a text post lmao, but I think there’s actually some kind of important discussion to be had, related to this idea
So if someone else comes to the same conclusion, but by a different path, that’s an incremental “win”. The correct thing to do, is to then “forum slide” them to the right incrementally by framing the Overton window relative to that conclusion. So, for example, if they are anti Israel because “my colonialism” don’t argue with them about the path to the conclusion. Instead, find the next closest agreeable point, and get consensus on that. For example, the war in Iran. And then repeat this incrementally to slide them to the right over an appropriate period of time.
This does not work with everybody but it works more often than you think. And if nothing else it can cause the subject to lose confidence in their core positions.