Look at the climate change debate
Yes I have been, I've broken my rule about keeping out of the AWF water cooler! I stepped in because I just couldn't understand how people could speak about other people with so much vitriol.
I'm currently doing a Blog about it. Well, I'm writing it, whether I publish it or not, well I suppose I will! But anyway it's the writing of it which helps me think about it. I'm seeing there are two very polarised sides, but it occurred to me I'm in the middle, I don't swallow either sides bull...
Vocalising it...
(what's the correct term?) That made me think, there's probably a lot of people in the Middle. I mean what choice do you have, you either choose one ideology or the other, and once you've chosen an ideology, you are trapped by it, you can't back out, otherwise you lose face.
I learnt from Jordan B Peterson that ideology gives you a nice comfort zone, access to ready-made answers to anything the other side throws at you. Which seems nice, comfortable and easy way to get involved in a debate! But!!!
YOU ARE NOT in a debate, you're not thinking, you're not challenging someone with something new, something you have thought of, you are challenging them with something which is already in existence and already has a battery of rebukes.
It seems to me the only sensible approach is to take the middle ground, call out both sides on their abuse of the statistics, and just try and remain neutral. I thought this was a weakness in me, the tendency to sit on the fence. However now I understand more about ideologies, I understand that it's not my sitting on the fence that's the issue, it's the draw, the attraction, the easiness and the laziness of an ideology that's attractive to people.
Sitting on the fence is quite good fun, but it does tend to annoy the ideologues. I've not joined your gang and I've not joined the other gang, they don't know what to make of it! So then I become a target for both sides, so I'm not going to make any friends! But hold on a minute, just look at the thread, there's no one there who are friends, not that I can see anyway!