My Response to Reactionaries

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We live in the age of amplification. Egos, Opinions and Reactions (EOR) are louder than they have ever been, because they have been given a megaphone through social media where once those shrill voices would have been largely ignored. It is true that healthy and positive information has also been amplified, but I will leave that aside for now. This amplification of EOR serves to increase the labeling of people in a group, especially when a small segment of bad apples in that group are being reacted to. For example, if someone posts a disparaging comment about someone in the LBGTQ+ community, citing their Christianity as the reason for their comment, and this creates a loud reactionary movement, it is much more likely that all Christians will be grouped together by those reactionaries as holding the same viewpoint as that Christian who made the comment. This grouping is entirely due to the reader's decision to engage in categorical thinking. It also means that Christians who hold to the teaching of Matthew 22:36-40 will have to dig themselves out of a hole when trying to have a conversation with someone who has read these disparaging comments, and has concluded that all Christians think this way. If you are one who struggles with being reactive to emotionally charged topics, please know that you are exactly the target audience for those who make money off of your lack of emotional control. Advertisements are targeted at you because you react to things that are emotionally charged. More importantly though, it damages your ability to have reasoned conversation when you already have a pre-conceived notion about the way that someone thinks because of your inability to discern bad apples from good. I find it much more enjoyable to have conversations with reasonable people than reactive people, and at the risk of engaging in categorical thinking myself, I suspect that other reasonable people feel the same way. It is likely that the reasonable people who enjoy talking with each other will congregate together, leaving the reactionaries to marginalize themselves with explosive chatter. Now go post a reactive comment to what you have just read.

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