Introducing Jeremiah Traeger, and Why Writing Is Important For Resistance
It comes with great pleasure to announce a new voice here, answering my call for help. This is an introduction to Jeremiah Traeger who will helping to get conversations going here. Please give him a warm welcome. Personally, I think he could offer some interesting and provocative pieces. I also look forward to introducing to the team a retired philosophy professor at some point. Over to Mr Traeger.
An Introduction, and Why Writing Is Important For Resistance
Hello, I am Jeremiah, and I’m happy that Jonathan has invited me to contribute to this blog. You may recognize me on the periphery of the atheosphere on the No Religion Required Podcast, where I have in the past primarily contributed pun-based humor and dropped some science knowledge. I’ve spent some time contributing to its decidedly less popular blog, mostly because I consider myself far more intelligible in print format than when I speak extemporaneously. I have made a great deal of friends in the atheist podcast community, where I have had some wonderful thought-provoking discussions. My primary media project is my other podcast with Ari of The Gaytheist Manifesto, and its title will likely tip off where my biases lie. I’m fine if we disagree politically, as long as you don’t make assumptions about my positions. I have yet to discover if I actually fit snugly into one political “camp”, and the fact that I have yet to find a good ideological label to describe myself has a comforting freedom to it. In meatspace, I am an engineering graduate student, a musician, and a person adept at receiving instructions from vegetarian cookbooks.
At the other blog, I’ve focused on areas where conversations and arguments tend to break down, and that’s where my contributions will tend to focus in future posts. They usually have a tie to religion or atheism, though broader politics and culture are not off the table, and my academic background will allow me to focus on science topics as well. These disagreements often focus on inter-atheist conversations, arguments between religious and non-religious folks, and even arguments against myself, as I’m often on the fence about many things.
I’d like to discuss why I like to write, but I think I should make the case more broadly about why it’s good for everyone to write. As a junkie of atheist and secular media, I think that we would benefit from more of us sharing our written perspectives. I say this, despite the fact that I already have far too many podcasts to listen to and too many blogs to read, and I am even contributing to some of that saturation. Keeping that in mind, I recognize that not everyone will have the time to care what I have to say, and nobody will have the time to care about what you have to say. It’s mildly discouraging sometimes spending hours on a post and only getting a dozen hits or so regularly. However, blogging has enriched my life and my perspective regardless of who cares to read.
When I post something publicly, I make certain that it’s something that I’m willing to stand by and defend. I’m not going to publish just anything, and I’m not going to propagate something that may be rumors or speculation. I will cite when I feel it is needed, and I feel like it is needed fairly often, probably due to my academic nature. I will tend not to cite an outlet that is widely seen as left-leaning as a source, even though I will often agree with that outlet’s perspective. The reason is mostly because I am usually not writing to pump up support from my own side. When I write, I imagine that I am addressing the other side, so I will often go so far as cite a right-wing leaning site to support my case.
When I write a piece addressing atheists, I am often writing towards atheists that I disagree with. When I write a piece on religion or Christianity, I am addressing Christians or others with faith. A significant amount of my writing inspiration is based on the ridiculous things I see across all the media I consume, and I see a lot of ridiculous things (among my extreme examples, I follow InfoWars, Fox News, Matt Walsh, Donald Trump, and Lifesitenews). Perhaps my intended audience is the comment section itself, as absurd as that might seem. The comment section can take anything that I say and turn it back around on me.
Sometimes, this is bothersome. On occasion, I will only have a single, mildly controversial position that will maybe take a paragraph or two to expand on. However, if something is worth dedicating a post to, then I will have usually seen many discussions on the idea. I know all the objections to my position, as well as many of the misconceptions and misrepresentations of it, as well as key places where my ideological opponents object. The rest of my two thousand words are spent addressing those people. It’s almost as if I write “on defense”, as if I have to cover all my bases ahead of time before my opponents bite back. While I enjoy writing, it’s somewhat exhausting looking through something that I have written, coming across a point I made, and remembering some tweet I saw from last week objecting to the exact thing I said. Maybe this is a fault of mine, but then I have an insatiable need to address that specific point before moving on.
However, this has benefitted me immensely. I have learned to take my opponent’s opinions seriously, and approach the best possible interpretation they have. I am a big fan of steelmanning, as long as I am not grossly misrepresenting an opponent or completely dismissing their original point. If I am going to spend a post addressing someone that I think is wrong, I’m not going to waste it on something easily dismissable. I don’t want someone to come across my point and think that I’m beating up on something easy to make myself look good. The idea that “the Universe is beautiful, therefore there is a god” is not a particularly good argument, and I wouldn’t be able to address it beyond simply stating that there’s no real link from the premise to the conclusion. However, I can look at a similar, much better claim. For example: “Humans are able to evaluate things as beautiful and experience awe, yet there appears to be no evolutionary purpose to it. Furthermore, many things that are beautiful are either pointless to our existence or dangerous like the depths of space or an erupting volcano, yet we still are in a universe with plenty of that type of beauty. There must be a purpose for it beyond mere natural means.” While I don’t find this reasoning particularly compelling either, there’s a lot more to chew on, and far more to address, and the reader will be far more satisfied after going through this argument than the first one. And in the process of writing it, I may have learned a lot more.
You should be encouraged to write about the things that you care about because it will help educate yourself. I’ve had multiple times where I’ve wanted to use a piece of evidence to support my case, and when I looked into that piece of evidence I found it wasn’t a very good piece of evidence at all. When I’ve looked into what the message behind the headline is, I’ve often found the content lacking, or that someone has said something that is taken out of context. This week I came across an article describing a scientific study that reaffirmed some of my previously-held beliefs. But when I clicked through the links to find the original study I found that it wasn’t tied to a published journal, and it was coming out of an advocacy group. I recognized that it wouldn’t be very compelling evidence for someone diametrically opposed to my position, after which I decided to discard that particular study from my toolbox.
At this point, even though I’ve only been writing for a short period of time, I’ve built my knowledge base a lot. After I’ve finished typing something up, the facts are fresh in my mind, and I’m ready to share my case with the world. I know that when someone accuses me, a STEM graduate student of being unscientific when I support trans rights, I have a few scientific articles to share with them based on a piece I wrote on the subject. In the future, I may come across a topic that I’ve already written about. While I may not remember the details of what I’ve already said, I can search through my archives and give myself a refresher. And if I don’t have the time to type out a full response to someone who deserves a thorough reply, I can respond with something I’ve already written. Writing is good for you because you build your own references for positions you find compelling, or at least used to find compelling in the past.
Finally, writing allows us to stay informed and develop our own stances. I’m writing this during a week where I’ve been exhausted seeing internet argument after internet argument break out over whether or not we should punch Nazis. What has disappointed me the most is that almost every one of these “discussions” has appeared to be a battle of memes, even if nobody ends up sharing an image. The whole debate has been one talking point yelling past another, with a complete failure to recognize what the other has been saying, and every statement seems to be pulled off a meme of words on top of Indiana Jones. In a world of fake news and alternative facts, we need to be better than this. Obviously, we can’t expect a thorough essay-level response from social media threads or in chunks of 140 characters or less, but it’s maddening to watch my fellow skeptics tear each other apart with what appear to be little more than reactionary talking points that don’t even address the other person. When you have time to sit back and reflect in a non-reactionary environment, you are able to put your own values and thoughts into words, and represent yourself and rebut others in a much more satisfactory manner.
We are in an era where people are increasingly reliant on utilizing their social media feeds as their primary news source, and this is terrifying. I’ll admit, as a millennial, that I have fallen guilty to this more often than I’d like. We have lost a (hopefully temporary) battle because certain segments of the population get their information in a bubble that doesn’t communicate with anyone else. In a hyperpartisan mass-misinformation age, merely keeping up to date and keeping others up to date with accurate, reliable information is in itself a form of resistance and activism. We need to actively put effort into elevating reasonable positions, critically evaluating the positions of those around us, and actively criticizing nonsense. Fortunately for us skeptics, we have the same easily-accessible access to spreading our message as everyone else. Along with other forms of staying active, writing is one way to spread positive and critical ideas at a grassroots level, and hopefully improving the lives around us a small bit at a time. That is why I write. Thank you for allowing me this long-winded introduction.