Aesthetics beat Arguments

No one has ever been convinced by an argument

Why is it almost impossible to convince other people in political debates? And how is it that all these other people believe such stupid things? Is it because most people are just dumb while you are super smart? Most people think so, but in this essay, I will argue that we do not believe what we do because of our intelligence or any rational arguments at all, but that our beliefs come from the irrational way that each one of us looks at the world; in short, from our Aesthetics.

Debate club

I would like to begin this essay by giving some context for how my own experiences have shaped the way that I thought of arguments. The most important of these is my participation in several debate clubs where we practiced British parliamentary debate. The interesting thing about this type of debates was that you did not get to pick your own positions, as a result, very often you would have to create convincing arguments for opinions that you personally find repulsive. Sometimes I had to play the communist, other times the hippie and so on.

This experience led me to the realization that one can argue effectively for, and against, anything and everything. Indeed, once you have a position to defend, it is possible to rationalize and justify just about anything in your favor, to build an impenetrable defensive network of arguments around it.

But at the same time, I never became confused as to what my real opinions were when I was making up fake arguments to win debates. I could make some excellent arguments for things that I disagreed with, but at a fundamental level these arguments never resonated with me. But why? Why do the other side’s arguments always seem to have such little effect? Is this because one side has achieved the truth through reason and logic? And if so, which side?

The idea that one can get down to the truth through reason and “critical thinking“ is the main idea of the tradition of the enlightenment and most people, including myself, agree with it at some level or another. We believe that, if a person has enough critical thinking (is intelligent), then this person will sooner or later come to the correct conclusion by looking at the arguments and basing his beliefs on the best one.

The idea that Reason (intelligence) will always find the truth through free argumentation leads to the conclusion that if someone believes in something incorrect, then it must be that they lack critical thinking (are dumb) or just ignorant. Therefore, a smart fanatic should be an impossibility, in theory all that would be needed to turn a smart person away from any wrong idea is the perfect argument that they could neither refute nor ignore.

The smart fanatic

However, my own experience has proven that there is, indeed, such a thing as a smart fanatic. In my case, this guy was a PolySci major that was the most dedicated communist that I have ever met (He defended everything from the gulag to North Korea, but interestingly stopped short of Pol Pot). He had read the theory and had very good knowledge of history, this guy could churn text walls like nothing. Clearly, he was no idiot, but yet he was impenetrable, it was like talking to a wall. I had internalized the belief that if only I could come up with the perfect argument, then he would have to give in, even if just a little.

I pointed out that Stalin had tortured and shot Bukharin and Tukhachevsky, his own comrades, but he just avoided giving a straight answer and said that “Stalin was not perfect“. When I argued that every year there are thousands of people who escape North Korea and tell of their experiences, he dismissed them as liars that were paid by the CIA. When I asked how one can have a democracy in a one-party state, he essentially took a thousand words to explain that since the party represents the people’s real interests, the dictatorship of the party is inherently democratic.

All my beautiful arguments got mowed down like the British at the Somme, it was quite obvious that this was not even a conversation, not for a second did I ever get close to making him question his own ideology. But how could this be? He was clearly a smart individual who must obviously see that there were some issues with his dogmatic views and his mental gymnastics, but he stuck to the party line to the end.

But the issue was not that he lacked intelligence or “critical thinking“, but the real issue was my belief that an intelligent person must always end up agreeing with me because of facts and logic™. Everyone believes at some level that their opinions are the result of intelligent analysis, thus anyone that disagrees with them is either stupid, naive, or just incomprehensibly evil. But I really do not believe that political polarization is just the result of difference in intelligence, but something much deeper and my experience with my communist… acquaintance proved it to me.

The fact is that some people are convinced by some arguments while other people appear to be immune to the same ones. But why is a certain type of person predisposed to a certain type of argument? To answer this, I think that we must ask ourselves; what makes a convincing argument? 

A convincing argument is convincing not because it has flawless logic, one can certainly make a persuasive argument for a very stupid idea. This is because persuasion is not rational, instead it is driven by feelings, a persuasive argument is an argument that has an emotional effect. As a result, an argument can never be persuasive to everyone. But what does this depend on, what makes a person vulnerable to some arguments and susceptible to others?

Aesthetics

I would argue that an individual’s taste in arguments is very much like his taste in cinema and music, it is fundamentally an aesthetic choice. All arguments have the same fundamental structure; they all try to convince you that something is either desirable or undesirable.

Let's take an example, a very easy one, “drugs are bad you shouldn't do them”, this argument we'll be very effective with a conscientious Christian but very ineffective with a dude who's like chill you know… just wants to like… enjoy life dude.

An argument can only resonate with a person that agrees with the argument’s definition of “desirable”. Your nice Christian neighbor will think that it is undesirable to smoke the devil’s grass and therefore will readily agree with our argument, but the person who just wants to enjoy the moment will disagree with you, since what is desirable to him is to take a hit like right now.

Our concept of what is “desirable” is not a definition in our heads, it is a sensation that attracts us and it is impervious to any rational argument; I could not convince a junkie to get off his stuff anymore than you can convince me to stop enjoying a nice medium rare steak. So, in a very real sense political communication is almost impossible because the political left and right have completely different Aesthetics, totally different ideas of what is desirable, and by extension each other's arguments are incomprehensible and repugnant.

I believe that the only way to truly understand the aesthetics of a political movement is to look at their art. To illustrate the aesthetics of the left and the right I will play 2 clips from 2 different songs, one from the left and another from the right.

The Left Aesthetic

There are many left-wing songs that embody their vision, such as “imagine” or “the internationale”, but I decided on an old Yiddish bundist song written in 1938 during the great depression in Poland. The name of the song is the “Arbetlose Marsch“ or the “March of the jobless“. Listen to it while reading the translation:

One, two, three, four, we are the workless,
For years we have been working hard
And created more and more:
House, castles, cities and countries,
For the wealthy few.
What is our reward? 
Hunger, misery and unemployment
Hunger, misery and unemployment

One, two, three, four, 
therefore, we are marching,
Unemployed, step by step,
And we are singing a song
Of a country, a new world,
Where free people live in joy,
Over there, there is work for all
In the new free land
In the new free land!

The message of the song and the aesthetic that it conveys is that first of temporary injustice; the workers don't have enough bread even though they have worked hard for years, because the markets crashed in Wall Street. What do they care about New York? They care about feeding their families, about having the possibility to work. 

And so, in the last stanza of the song they sing about marching towards a new land, where they will be free and there will be enough for everyone. This “new land” is what moves them and what has moved the left wing for over 200 years. There have been many other descriptions of this world-to-be, both socialist and religious, but the core message is that things are bad now, but we will make them better, and that together we will make the world a paradise.

The yearing for paradise is, as far as I can tell, what stands in the heart of every leftist. John Lennon's “imagine”, and the Socialist “Internationale” might have different lyrics but their core message is the same and they all appeal to the same type of person. As right-wingers, this is a side of leftism that we rarely see, because they usually see us as the obstacle towards a beautiful new world. But behind their anger and smugness there is a deep yearning and a very human desire to live in a place free of suffering.

The Right Aesthetic

The right-wing aesthetic is, I think, best represented in a Russian song by the name of “Regiments are Marching” it was written by white russian exiles in Yugoslavia after their defeat in the Russian Civil war.

The spirits of our fathers call us,
The memory of the old fighters,
Spirit of Moscow and the fortress of Poltava!
Spirits of our fathers call us,
Memory of the old fighters,
Spirit of Moscow and the fortress of Poltava!"
 
"Who is your enemy?"
Anyone, who forges shackles for us!
Anyone, who encroaches on our holy relics!
We will go, as one, doesn't matter whether we win or die,
It has always been like this.
We will go, as one, doesn't matter whether we win or die,
It has always been like this!

The first thing to notice about this song is that it talks about conflict and specifically conflict between groups of people; there is a clearly defined “us” and “them”. This is characteristic of the right-wing aesthetic which looks at the world from a lens of competition between peoples, a Darwinian reality full of conflict.

The core message is that things are tough now and they have always been this way, but that through bravery and strength one can overcome all difficulties and defeat all enemies, as your ancestors have done in the past. Indeed, it is my belief that the thing that defines right-wing beliefs is the search for strength and a hatred of weakness.

Another thing to mention is that this song is quite unconcerned about the idea of Justice, specifically with the line “it doesn't matter whether we win or die, it has always been like this”. I interpret this to mean that defeat is not unjust because it means that you were weaker than the enemy, therefore “Justice”, what is fair, is not important given that the options are to win or to die. The left-wing aesthetic is based specifically upon the idea of Justice and calls for a fight against Injustice, the right-wing aesthetic is far less moralistic, accepting reality as it is and boldly facing it.

When one looks at the left-wing aesthetic there is barely any mention of the past but only mentions of the beautiful future to come. The right-wing aesthetic, on the other hand, has a strong emphasis on the veneration of one's ancestors and their deeds, however, it's also interesting to notice how little the right wing talks about a better future, since they are more concerned with living up to their own past.

Which side are you on?

Now that we describe these two main political Aesthetics the most interesting question is; what attracts people to either one of them? Perhaps it is that I come from a family of psychologists, but I tend to think that it is a person's psychology first and foremost that predefines their politics, second only to their own life experiences that push them towards one political side or another.

For example, let's go back to this communist that I used to debate, the guy himself studied political science, now the market doesn't really treat people with Humanities degrees kindly. So, when he gets shafted by the employment market, he will have two choices, either he accepts that he wasted his entire professional life into a useless dicipline (objectively true) or maybe it's just the capitalism is cruel and mean.

I think it is no coincidence that the people from fields with bad economic prospects tend to gravitate to socialism. But on the other hand, other professions are inherently right wing, such as the military, but there is no question that material conditions and resentment play an important role in our choice of aesthetic.

However, personal experiences affect one’s aesthetics at an even deeper level. To give a personal example, I think that one of the bigger reasons why I became right wing was my parents’ divorce. I love both of my parents; however, they had relationship issues. So, who is to blame for all my pain and suffering during the divorce, for the dismemberment of my family? Of course, something like that can't be right, there had to be some problem somewhere, some reason why my family broke apart.

Many people of course blame one of their parents, but I never thought one of my parents was somehow a bad person or directly guilty for the divorce. However, it was obvious that my parents’ actions lead to catastrophe, so my teenage self concluded that it was not the fault of my parents but of the ideas in their heads. The ideas that our culture accepts about men and women, about relationships and love. Since then, I have had a propensity towards thinking that our culture is rotten and full of decadent ideas, leading me towards a more pessimistic outlook on politics.

Of course, analyzing how a person's experience and material conditions can and do impact their political ideas is very interesting and I could go on for hours ruminating about this, but that is not the purpose of this essay. Instead, my purpose today is to counter this idea that we get our ideas and political opinions from our rational mind.

One can certainly rationalize their own prejudices very well with intelligence, facts and logic, but these arguments cannot be the source of a person's political and ethical beliefs because arguments always must appeal to a person’s emotions, the true source of their beliefs.

I believe that the idea that we are “rational beings” that get all their ideas from their big brains is so popular because it is very self-serving, the idea that everyone except us is irrational is very rewarding because we can act all smug and sure of ourselves in difficult political arguments. We can comfortably avoid facing our own irrational parts and beliefs while having the luxury of pointing them out in others.

But if we take the perspective that we are all full of political prejudice and that our arguments are just a long series of rationalizations, then the reality that political discourse is rare to find and hard to have makes complete sense.

I do very much enjoy political discourse but as an exercise and nothing else, because in reality I am as closed-minded as that old communist in the debate club, I have my ideas, I like my ideas, and they are grounded on my aesthetic preferences and my life experiences. No libtard is going to shake them with some dollar-store argument, and neither am I capable of strangling their naive idealism.

Effective propaganda

So, is that it? Everybody lives in their own heads with their aestheitics and any interaction between ideas is impossible? I don't think so, but I certainly think that effective political persuation is not done through arguments. Instead, I think that it can only be done through art.

An idea communicated through film, music or literature is far more powerful than any argument can ever hope to be. That is because it skips the trench networks that we have built up in our minds to resist enemy arguments and goes straight to the source, to our emotions, our hopes and fears.

If you want to understand the Ideas of your political enemy you need you need to watch their movies, admire their paintings, and sing their songs. If you want to convince others of your beliefs, you need to do it through aesthetic means. One old example of this is the success of Lenni Riefenstahl, best known for her 1936 Olympics film where she overlaid the aesthetics of national socialism over the beautiful bodies of the Olympic athletes. The film has no overt political messaging and yet I think it is the most powerful propaganda that the nazis ever created.

Of course, a more relevant example is that of the 1960s counterculture, there were no real geopolitical arguments being made against the Vietnam war, but the youth opposed the war because they opposed “the man“ and being “square“. The victory of the counterculture was the result of their music, fashion, and hedonistic lifestyle. Their aesthetic vision completely won over the young boomers who grew up under the conservative aesthetics of the 50s.

But of course, in terms of political art creation the right wing is as outgunned by the left wing as a Sardinian fishing boat was outgunned by the Royal Navy. The left has almost complete control of Hollywood, the music industry, and all the humanities faculties, perhaps the most important reason why conservatives fail to conserve anything is that modern culture is aesthetically left wing.

Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Marvel Universe, et cetera are all products of a liberal weltanschauung and could not exist without it. Same thing in the music industry and even more so in the arts. The result is that everyone has the left-liberal aesthetic worldview as the default option, therefore all right-wing movements have an uphill battle where they must tread carefully not to set off the Voldemort alarm.

I would go ahead and even argue that most of today's “conservatives” operate under the left’s aesthetics. The type of “conservative” that rails against the “woke” status quo, not because they are truly hardened reactionaries, but because they wish to return to the normality of the 90s.

Right wing aesthetics have a presence in media only insofar as they leak into new stories from older ones with intrinsically right-wing narratives. Ideals of heroism and redemption, of sin and tragedy are almost universally against the aesthetics of the modern left, but they are present under the surface of almost all modern stories and will reveal themselves upon closer inspection.

Even though the left has an almost complete hegemony on aesthetics, I remain optimistic because they are making one huge mistake. They have thrown out almost all great art made by the past; from the sculpture of the Greeks, the paintings of the renaissance, the classics of literature, et cetera. To them they are all the creations of old white men and have been since replaced, with predictable results.

Hollywood isn't what it used to be, today's music cannot hold a candle to the music that Libs used to make in the 60s and let's not even talk about the state of modern art and the atrocities that come out of the faculty. So, on the aesthetic front there is much to be done, a right wing that can embody the aesthetics of the past is going to attract more and better people than a thousand Ben Shapiros with their “facts and logic“.

No one had ever been seduced by an argument.