Exit the Echo Chamber. It’s Time to Persuade by BRETT MCCRACKEN for The Gospel Coalition
A key dynamic in our present epistemological crisis is the way truth has moved from being a matter of reason to a matter of feeling. Rather than something discovered through logical discourse in community, truth is now—to many people—discovered primarily through felt experience as individuals. What matters most is whether I feel something to be true for me, and this only has implications for others insofar as they must respect the viability of “my truth” and not threaten it with “their truth.”
It used to be that if another’s understanding of truth conflicted with yours, you could engage with and entertain their view, potentially letting it challenge and adjust your own view (and vice versa). Not anymore. Now, if another’s understanding of truth challenges yours, you mute them, cancel them, accuse them of bigotry, or—as President Trump is prone to do—resort to childish name-calling on Twitter.
Spend any amount of time on social media and you’ll see this in action. Recently, for example, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling shared a few tweets that asserted the biological reality of sex (male and female) and made the modest argument that, “Erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.” She added, “It isn’t hate to speak the truth,” and “My life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.” But the social media mob disagreed, finding Rowling’s grasp of truth hateful and “transphobic.” Rather than engage the substance of Rowling’s reasoning, critics demonized the author or simply replied with their own assertion that “trans women are women,” as if saying it enough times made it true and automatically refuted Rowling’s logic.
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