Rhetorical Traps (aka Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?)


Here is something we all should be saying:
  • Black Lives Matter (BLM)
Should I post this on Facebook, I'd expect an immediate reply.
  • All Lives Matter (ALM)
Followed by someone else weighing in:
  • ALM is a racist slogan, it means you are a racist by disavowing bad things happening to blacks.
Followed by again, someone else:
  • BLM is a racist slogan, it means you are a racist by thinking that White Lives Don't Matter 
There are various ways of trying to avoiding this catch-22:


Pretty clear, right?  Logical, disarming, all the right things.  Guess what, it didn't work.  Here is part of the resulting conversation on a friend's Facebook page after he posted this picture:


This is a classic rhetorical trap.  There really is no way out of it (that I can see).  

Sadly, it is going to take a very long time for everyone to realize that black lives really do matter, and that they should be given more attention at this point in time.

Analysis
There are three elements that make this setup especially pernicious:
  • This scenario has been enabled and amplified by each of these terms being semantically overloaded, with each side ascribing additional implied meanings (e.g. "racist"), each of which are inconsistent and well beyond the original intent of the terms.
  • Further, these terms have been embraced by each side as costly signals, which are signals / cues / indications that have been adopted (in this case) to indicate that a person aligns themself to the right or the left.  The more costly (read "more extreme" in this context) the signal is, the more loyalty is demonstrated to the other members of the group, and the more skin in the game the signaler ends up having (making it even more difficult to retract).  Costly signaling is a fascinating subject in behavioral psychology and evolutionary biology and, perhaps, I'll explore this in a future blog post.
  • Finally, the logic involved sets up a vicious cycle that will cause things to escalate and push the parties further apart. (Vicious cycles feedback onto themselves, increasing amplitude with each trip around the cycle.)
These three elements (semantic overloading, costly signaling and vicious cycles) are present in many other situations we encounter daily in the news and on Facebook.  My request is that before you post, or react to a post, give some thought as to whether any of these elements exist before you pour gasoline on the fire.

And, BTW, black lives really do matter.  Especially right now.

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