Before thinking of how to present this idea, I would study carefully whether it’s true.
I’m probably referring to the idea in a much narrower context, specifically our inclination to express outrage (or even just mild disapproval) as a form of low-cost, low-risk social punishment, and for that inclination to apply just as well to people who appear insufficiently disapproving or outraged.
The targets of this inclination may vary culturally, and it might be an artifact or side-effect of the hardware, but I’d be surprised if there were societies where nothing was ever a subject that people disapproved of other people not being disapproving of. Disapproving of the same things is a big part of what draws societies together in the first place, so failing to disapprove of the common enemy seems like something that automatically makes you “probably the enemy”.
(But my reasons and evidence for thinking this way will probably be clearer in the actual article, as it’s about patterns of motivated reasoning that seem to reliably pop up in certain circumstances… but then again my examples are not terribly diverse, culturally speaking.)
I’m probably referring to the idea in a much narrower context, specifically our inclination to express outrage (or even just mild disapproval) as a form of low-cost, low-risk social punishment, and for that inclination to apply just as well to people who appear insufficiently disapproving or outraged.
The targets of this inclination may vary culturally, and it might be an artifact or side-effect of the hardware, but I’d be surprised if there were societies where nothing was ever a subject that people disapproved of other people not being disapproving of. Disapproving of the same things is a big part of what draws societies together in the first place, so failing to disapprove of the common enemy seems like something that automatically makes you “probably the enemy”.
(But my reasons and evidence for thinking this way will probably be clearer in the actual article, as it’s about patterns of motivated reasoning that seem to reliably pop up in certain circumstances… but then again my examples are not terribly diverse, culturally speaking.)