Dear reader, what would you think if I said my last columns were a farce, that they were wrong, that they did not represent the real me, and that you should pay all the more attention to what I say now?
I hope you think that I would be completely off my rocker, and I do not blame you in the slightest. Saying that I have been wrong is not exactly the best interlude to saying that now I am right.
And yet, I find a surprising number of people who believe otherwise, and, of course, they themselves have gone through such an experience (so they know how wrong I must be). I call these people snapbacks – for lack of a better term. Snapbacks spend years, sometimes decades, holding to a particular worldview or set of beliefs and overnight undergo some extraordinary conversion experience. Changes in opinion are nothing special, though; they happen all the time. What sets snapbacks apart is that they use this change as a reason why they must be right and why you must listen to them.
Of course, their most common tactic is the appeal to authority, and I really hate appeals to authority (Warning! Logical fallacies near mathematicians might be dangerously unstable). Even ignoring that, I have yet to see a snapback with any credibility. For starters, they claim that their conversion is a one-way street, but really snapbacks can go both ways – and often do. Some pundits are liberal today, conservative tomorrow, and liberal again after that in an effort to sell more books. And let us not forget the numerous cases of ex-gays who, quite unsurprisingly, still have relationships with people of the same sex. They might snap into one belief set in the morning and snap right back that afternoon.
Snapbacks would not even exist if their audience believed in the middle ground of bisexuals, political moderates, and religious syncretists, but part of the ritual teachings of the snapback is the “us versus them” mentality. Those few snapbacks who do recognize such middlers place them all firmly in the “them” category, which is funny, since most snapbacks still exist in the “them” category too – although they are loathe to admit it.
Core values and beliefs take time to change. They define one’s world because they define one’s mind, how one talks, how one acts, how one regards new information. So all the time that a snapback is lecturing about their new mindset, their mind itself is still thinking the way it used to. Missionaries of old (and some of present times) claimed great success in converting the heathen masses, but most of their flock still believed the way they always had, they just changed the names and the ceremonies.
This odd duality has created some very interesting viewpoints. I have met atheists who firmly believe in the God-based philosophy of Descartes or Aquinas. Just, you know, without the God bit. I have met liberals whose arguments match up line for line with Edmund Burke’s. They hate to admit it, but their conversion was superficial at best.
Truth be told, these snapbacks are created more from escaping the bad in one side than finding the good present in another. When an authority figure (a parent, a teacher, a personal hero or idol) espouses a certain point of view in a horribly bad way, one tends towards the opposite belief. Listen to one of the snapbacks created in such a manner and you will not hear admiration for their new opinions, only ire at their authority figure. They believe what they believe simply out of spite.
Snapbacks just cheapen the true changes. They turn critical thinking and the questioning of one’s own beliefs into prime-time specials and book bylines, surrounded by bright smiling faces and lots of exclamation marks. Bah! It is only zealotry.
If someone wants to change my mind, it takes more than platitudes and self-congratulation; it takes something with actual substance.
[email protected]
Flip-flopped recently? Don’t forget to snap back
Daily Emerald
October 17, 2007
0
More to Discover