Scolding together is not a point of view

Every technology has its disadvantages. vaccinations save lives, but they can cause unpleasant side effects. mowing machine are practical but noisy. Feuer is pleasantly bright, but our ancestors certainly grumbled hundreds of thousands of years ago about the fact that you sometimes get bad burn blisters from it.

It is the same with political ideologies. From Anarchokapitalismus until communismof the Theocracy to the grassroots Municipality: The coexistence of people is always complicated. Everything has disadvantages. We will probably never find a perfect way of living together that makes everyone happy.

But if objectively there are disadvantages everywhere, then that also means: It is much easier to complain about the disadvantages of something together than to gather together behind an idea that everyone thinks is positive and worth striving for. It’s easy to badmouth something. It’s damn hard to get one new, better, constructive thesis to imagine.

Destructive theses: be against it together

This explains why we are currently experiencing a glut of ideological currents that are primarily defined by being against something. One often doesn’t even bother to present a logical, coherent alternative model – because of course that would have its disadvantages, which could be attacked by other people. But if you just limit yourself to portraying the thoughts of others as evil, you have an easy time and quickly earn approval. One could of “destructive theses” speak.

You know that conspiracy theorist circles: Flat earth believers ally with young earth creationists and with UFO researchers who tell of aliens from inside the hollow globe. These groups could never agree on anything constructive. They completely contradict each other. The only unifying element is a rejection of the “mainstream,” a deep-seated distrust of “the science,” of the NASA elites who want to dictate to us what the universe looks like. And apparently that’s enough.

Constructive ideas always have disadvantages

It is similar in the Politics: Some ideologies limit themselves to being against something: against welfare payments for foreigners, against rights for transsexuals, or quite abstractly against “they up there”. Also in the environmental movement you can see that: being against environmental destruction is easy. Developing a constructive counter-concept is much more difficult. Founding a citizens’ initiative against an infrastructure project is quick. Founding a citizens’ initiative that wants to implement an infrastructure project at a specific location is hardly successful. Because no matter which suggestion you work out: as soon as it becomes concrete, it is guaranteed to have disadvantages.

Two camps often oppose each other, one arguing constructively, the other destructively. The call for a courageous energy transition for example is constructive. There are well thought-out, elaborate concepts that could be implemented, but of course they all have disadvantages. The other side argues rather destructively: against restrictions on car traffic, against eco-taxes, against the need to change habits – but without presenting a coherent counter-concept

Illusion of unity through common opposition

In such a situation, it is very easy to tap the CasesTo confuse mutual rejection of something with agreement on content – one could call it the “fallacy of being opposed”: Because it is much easier to point out disadvantages than constructive solutions, we can emotionally agree with the disadvantage-pointers much more easily than with the solution developers. But that doesn’t mean that the disadvantage pointers are aiming for something that’s good for us. So we are drawn to one camp that may represent our needs worse than the other. If I can agree with someone on the disadvantages of something, that doesn’t make us allies.

Therefore we must always try to compare constructive theses with constructive theses. Being against something together is a pretty bad reason to join a club or vote for a political party. That one sometimes feels differently in political discussions is completely human and normal. But in the end it’s about achieving something constructive together. In doing so, one should not be distracted by common aversions to anything.