"You're mentally ill. You should be instituted."

[Freetounged]

This past Sunday I had a conversation with a sibling at a family dinner. This conversation started with me commenting on how in the recent Red Dawn film the villains were changed from Chinese to North Korean because of political reasons. I wanted to use this to talk about how government has its hands in the movie industry. This got one of my siblings defensive, they began to extol the virtues of the Chinese government and how they would never invade the US. Some of the virtues given where: only the police and military are armed, the government knows when you check in to a hotel, and where you are at all times in the cities due to cameras and facial recognizing software.

 

At the end of their praises I commented something along the lines of “that sounds a lot like 1984.” They responded by saying it was a good thing since that is what they are doing here in the US. I responded “so the US is just as communistic as China.” I brought up how the people are not treated very well over there. This was strongly rebuked as nonsense and stated that they have had first hand knowledge that the lives of the Chinese and their work condition were great and even better than in the US. I didn't agree and talked about the poor conditions I heard about from investigators. They denied each point without any room for discussion with the comment "That isn't true. I don't know were you would have hear that.” I cited my sources to which they said “You're mentally ill. You should be instituted." I tried talking to them further about the subject but the same phrase was repeated over and over. "You're mentally ill. You should be instituted."

 

Later in the day I called my father about some things and told him about the talk I had with my sibling. The same sibling had already called him about the conversation to which he sided despite my references or words. My mother has become distant since the debate.

 

What bothers me the most is that no one from my family has contacted me to ask how I came to this understanding and why I feel the way I do about it. It comes across to me that none of them seems to care.

 

I have an idea on how to address the situation with my family but am writing this becuase I feel stuck for some reason.

[Wesley]

Couple quick thoughts. First, him saying "You're mentally ill. You should be instituted." means that he doesn't think you are mentally ill. You would never say something like this to someone who you actually thought was crazy, so it was certainly just manipulative to get you to question yourself without good argument.

 

I am also very sorry that your parents had an uninterested response from what you were thinking.

 

I also would say that you should start to realize that very few debates are actually about the facts. If you are interested, you should look at Stef's Bomb in the Brain series. The have done studies where they take an individual who is partisan (in the 2004 election) and gave them evidence against their candidate. Their brain feels fear or anxiety, they resolve that fear or anxiety, they then "choose" the response to reject the evidence, and then they get high which reinforces the original position.

 

Scientifically, with many people, contrary evidence to a held partisan position just leads to reinforcing the original position.

 

This is why it is not about facts. There is a psychological reason why China and government control seems better to them.

 

Just as an aside, I think if you want others to be curious about your positions and why you acquired them a good place to start would be to be curious about the person you are debating with. Maybe it happened and wasn't recorded, but it seems you didn't ask your sibling about why these ideas were important to them, yet hoped they would ask you.

 

The part with your parents was less excusable as they weren't there and had no idea what happened, so you would think they may ask what happened rather than listening only to your sibling's side.

[Freetounged]

 but it seems you didn't ask your sibling about why these ideas were important to them, yet hoped they would ask you.

 

Good point. I never thought to. I always thought truth was the highest on the priority, not emoition. I rarely get into heated discusions. This is all new.

 

The part with your parents was less excusable as they weren't there and had no idea what happened

 

The mother was. It was a family dinner.

[Pepin]

Sounds rather frustrating. I would recommend not having these sorts of conversations with these people. From your description, it seems like early on you could have come to the conclusion that furthering the discussion would have been pointless. Also, continuing to talk to them when they already demonstrated that they don't want to listen to reason and evidence is a bit crazy, but I mean this in a in lighthearted way of course.

 

I think a good comeback to the mentally ill line would be "you're projecting".