Aesthetics beat Arguments

Why is it almost impossible to convince other people in political debates? How is it that all these other people believe such misguided ideas? Is it because most people are unintelligent while you are exceptionally smart? Many individuals think so. However, in this essay, I will argue that we do not hold our beliefs due to intelligence or rational arguments, but rather because our beliefs stem from the irrational ways in which each of us perceives the world.

In short, we are shaped by our aesthetics. I would like to begin this essay by providing some context about how my own experiences have influenced the way I think about arguments. The most important of these experiences is my participation in several debate clubs, where we practice British Parliamentary Debate. The interesting aspect of this type of debate is that you do not get to choose your own positions. As a result, you often have to create convincing arguments for opinions that you did not select yourself.

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 rationalization 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, building an impenetrable defensive network of arguments around it. However, at the same time, I never became confused about what my real opinions were when I was making up fake arguments to win. 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 it because one side has achieved the truth through reason and logic, and if so, which side? The idea that one can arrive at the truth through reason and critical thinking is the main idea of the Enlightenment tradition. Most people, including myself, agree with it at some level or another.

We believe that if a person has enough critical thinking skills and is intelligent enough, they will sooner or later come to the correct conclusion by examining the arguments and basing their beliefs on the best one. The idea that reason and intelligence will always lead to the truth through free argumentation suggests that if someone believes in something incorrect, it must be because they lack critical thinking, are uninformed, or are simply ignorant. Therefore, a smart fanatic should theoretically be an impossibility. All that would be needed to turn a smart person away from the wrong idea is the perfect argument that they could neither refute nor ignore. However, my own experience has proven that there is indeed such a thing as a smart fanatic. In my case, this person was a political science major, and he was the most dedicated communist I have ever met. He defended everything from the Gulag to North Korea, but he stopped short of defending Pol Pot. He read the theory and had a very good knowledge of history; this guy could produce lengthy arguments as if it were nothing. Clearly, he was no fool, yet he remained impenetrable. It felt 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 concede. I pointed out that Stalin had tortured and executed Bukharin and Tukashevsky, his own comrades.

But he just avoided giving a straight answer and said that, you know, the Soviet Union wasn't perfect. Yes, in order to build socialism, sometimes one makes mistakes. When I argued that every year there are thousands of people who escape from North Korea and tell their experiences, he just dismissed them as liars who 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, then 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 could most obviously see that there were some issues with his dogmatic views and with his mental gymnastics. Yet, he stuck to the party line until the end.

The issue was not that he lacked intelligence or critical thinking. The real issue here was my belief that an intelligent person must always end up agreeing with me because of my facts and logic. Everyone believes, at some level, that their opinions are the result of intelligent analysis. Thus, anyone who disagrees with them is either stupid, naïve, or incomprehensibly evil. I do not truly believe that political polarization is merely a result of a difference in intelligence; it is something much deeper. My experience with my communist acquaintance proved it to me.

The fact is that some people are convinced by certain arguments, while others 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 we must ask ourselves what makes an argument convincing. A convincing argument is not persuasive because it has flawless logic. One can certainly make a very persuasive argument for a very stupid idea.

This is because persuasion is not rational. Instead, it is driven by feelings. A persuasive argument is one that has an emotional effect. As a result, an argument can never be persuasive to everyone. But what does this depend on?

On what makes a person vulnerable to some arguments and immune to others, I would argue that an individual's taste in arguments is very much like their 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 a very easy example: drugs are bad, and you shouldn't do them. This argument will be very difficult for you to accept.

Effective with a conscientious Christian but very ineffective with a dude who's just chill and wants to enjoy life. An argument can only resonate with a person who agrees with the argument's definition of what is desirable. Your nice Christian neighbor will think that it is undesirable to smoke the devil's grass, and therefore, he will readily agree with you and your argument. However, the person who just wants to enjoy the moment will disagree with you since, for him, what is desirable is to take a hit right now. Our concept of what is desirable is not merely a definition in our heads; it is a sensation that attracts us and is impervious to any rational argument.

I cannot convince a junkie to get off his stuff any more 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 the political 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 understand the aesthetics of a political movement is to look at their art. To illustrate the aesthetics of the left and the right wing, I will play two different clips from two different songs. There are many left-wing songs that embody their aesthetic: Städtenländer, Fahrer, Heifele, Verschwender, unser Leute, Fahres, was?

Hunger, naked and unemployed! Hunger, naked and unemployed! One, two, three, four, we march, unemployed, step by step, and we surely sing of the land where there are people living free, unemployed, human beings, in the nearby free land, in the nearby land. The message of the song and the aesthetic it conveys is initially one of temporary injustice. The workers do not have enough bread, even though they have worked hard for years, because the markets crashed and lost it, whether they care about New York.

They care about feeding their families and having the opportunity to work. In the last stanza of the song, they sing about marching toward a new land, where they will be free and where there will be enough for everyone. This new land is what inspires them and has motivated the left wing for over 200 years. There have been many descriptions of this future world, both socialist and religious, but the core message is that things are bad now, but we will make them better, and together we will create a paradise. The yearning for paradise is, as far as I can tell, at the heart of every leftist.

John Lennon's "Imagine" and the Socialist Internationale might have different lyrics, but their core messages are the same, appealing to the same type of person. As right-wingers, this is a side of leftism that we rarely see, as they usually view us as the obstacle to this beautiful new world. However, behind their anger and smugness, I believe there is a deep yearning and a very human desire to live in a place free of suffering. The song touches upon our sacred aspirations: "We will all go, overcome, and love, as always." The first thing to notice about the song is that it addresses conflict, specifically the conflict between groups of people.

There is a clearly defined "us" and "them." This is characteristic of the right-wing aesthetic, which views the world through 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 through bravery and strength, one can overcome all difficulties and defeat all enemies, as your ancestors have done in the past. Indeed, I believe that what defines right-wing beliefs is the search for strength and the hatred of weakness.

Another thing to mention is that this song is quite unconcerned with 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 your enemy. Therefore, justice—what is fair—is not important, given that the options are either victory or death. The left-wing aesthetic is based specifically on the idea of justice and calls for a fight against injustice.

The right-wing aesthetic is far less moralistic. It accepts reality as it is and places more emphasis on facing reality. When one examines the left-wing aesthetic, there is little mention of the past, with most focus on a beautiful future to come. The right-wing aesthetic, on the other hand, strongly emphasizes the veneration of one's ancestors and their deeds. However, it is also interesting to note how little the right-wing aesthetic discusses a better future, as they are much more concerned with living up to their own past.

Now that we have described these two main political aesthetics, the most interesting question becomes: what attracts people to either one of them? Perhaps it is because I come from a family of psychologists, but I tend to think that a person's psychology is, first and foremost, what pre-defines their politics, second only to their own life experiences that push them toward one side of the political spectrum or another. For example, let's go back to the communist 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 on a useless discipline, which is objectively true, or he may believe that capitalism is the problem. I think it is no coincidence that people from fields with poor economic prospects tend to gravitate toward socialism. On the other hand, other professions are inherently right-wing, such as, for example, the military.

But there is no question that material conditions and resentment play an important role in our choice of aesthetics. However, personal experiences affect one's aesthetics at an even deeper level. For a personal example, I believe that one of the bigger reasons why I became right-wing was my parents' divorce. I love both of my parents; however, they did have 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 just be normal; it can't just be right. There has to be some problem somewhere, some reason that my family broke apart. Many people, of course, blame one of their parents. I never thought that one of my parents was somehow a bad person or directly guilty for the divorce. However, it was obvious that my parents' actions led to catastrophe. So my teenage self concluded that it was not the fault of either one of my parents, but of the ideas in their heads.

The ideas that our culture accepts about men and women, about relationships and love, are deeply ingrained. These ideas are often responsible for problems like divorce. Since then, I have developed a tendency to think that our culture is rotten and full of decadent ideas, which has led me to adopt a more pessimistic outlook on politics. Of course, analyzing how a person's experiences and material conditions can impact their political beliefs is fascinating, and I could spend hours ruminating on this topic. However, that is not the purpose of this essay. Instead, my goal today is to counter the notion that we derive our ideas and political opinions solely from our rational minds.

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. These arguments must always appeal to something else: a person's emotions, which are the true source of their beliefs. I believe that the idea that we are rational beings who derive all our ideas from our intellect is popular precisely because it is self-serving. The notion that everyone else, except for oneself, is irrational is very rewarding, as it allows us to act smugly and feel certain of ourselves in difficult political discussions. We can comfortably avoid confronting our own irrational parts and beliefs while enjoying the luxury of pointing them out in others.

If we take the perspective that we are full of political prejudice and that our arguments are just a long series of rationalizations, then the reality of political discourse being real makes complete sense. I do very much enjoy political discourse, but as an exercise and nothing more. Because in reality, I am as close-minded as that old communist in the debate club. I have my ideas.

I like my ideas. They are grounded in my own aesthetic preferences and my life experiences. No liberal is going to shake them with some dollar store argument, and neither am I going to be capable of straining against their own naive idealism. So is that it? Does everyone live in their own heads with their aesthetics, making any interaction between ideas impossible?

I don't think so, but I certainly believe that effective political persuasion cannot be achieved through arguments. Instead, I think that it can only be accomplished through art. An idea communicated through film, music, or literature is far more powerful than any argument could ever hope to be. This is because it bypasses the mental defenses we have built up to resist opposing arguments and goes straight to the source: our emotions, hopes, and fears. If you want to understand the ideas of your political opponent, 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 Leni 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 of this is 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 1950s. However, in terms of political art creation, the right wing is outgunned by the left wing, much like a Sardinian fishing boat would be outmatched by the Royal Navy. The left has almost complete control of Hollywood, the music industry, and nearly all humanities faculties. In fact, all of them. Perhaps the most important reason why conservatives fail to conserve anything is that modern culture is aesthetically left-wing, as seen in popular franchises like "Star Wars," "Harry Potter," the Marvel Universe, and more.

All products are a result of a liberal weltanschauung and could not exist without it. The same applies to the music industry and, even more so, to the arts. The result is that everyone has a left-liberal aesthetic worldview as the default option. Therefore, all right-wing movements face an uphill battle, where they must tread carefully not to set off the Voldemort alarm. I would 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 does so not because they are truly hardened reactionaries, but because they wish to return to the liberal normality of the 1990s, where everything made sense and people were not crazed by wokeness. 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 the redemption of sin and tragedy are almost universally at odds with the aesthetics of the modern left. However, these ideals are present beneath the surface of almost all modern stories and will reveal themselves upon closer inspection, even though the left has an almost complete hegemony over aesthetics. I remain optimistic because they are making one huge mistake: they have thrown out almost all the great art created in the past, from the sculptures of the Greeks to the paintings of the Renaissance and the classics of literature.

To them, these creations are all products of old white men, which have since been replaced with predictable results. Hollywood isn't what it used to be. Today's music cannot hold a candle to the songs produced in the '60s, and let's not even discuss the state of modern art and the atrocities that emerge from the faculty. So, on the aesthetic front, there is much to be done. A right-wing movement that can embody the aesthetics of the past and bring them to the present will attract more and better people than a thousand Ben Shapiro's with their facts and logic. No one has ever been seduced by an argument. Thank you.