#49 Let splinter groups splinter.

Today I am following up on the theme of divisiveness, which has had the online skeptical and atheist communities all abuzz following the announcement of a woman blogger who has gone on indefinite hiatus (story here) as well as the formation of a group called Atheism+, real-life examples of how communities divide, and why, and who draws boundary lines and who gets pushed out, and what happens when small groups of people leave larger groups in order to pursue their own specific goals.

Seemingly large and very vocal groups of atheists and skeptics who do not want to splinter away from the main groups are quite unhappy that the splinter groups have been formed, and are spending a lot of time arguing about it, for a variety of reasons like these:

1. It divides the movement.
2. The new group is off topic.
3. It makes everyone in the old group look bad.
4. It drives away potential new members.
5. What the new group wants is stupid and/or pointless (and they’ve cut themselves off from criticism).
6. We need to let them know what we think.

Let’s briefly address these concerns.

1. It divides the movement.
Guess what? The movement was already divided. Just because the majority of your group fails to see a problem of inclusion doesn’t mean there wasn’t a group of people feeling marginalized. And these marginalized people–these ones you weren’t really aware of already–are likely the ones leaving. And here’s the thing: People you don’t notice in their presence certainly won’t be noticed in their absence. Your status quo will keep on status quoing even after they’re gone. The net effect is the same.

2. The new group is off-topic.
Yes! They are off-topic! The message they want to deliver is different from the message you want to deliver, so they went somewhere else to do it. It was annoying how they kept trying to change your mind about what message to send, wasn’t it? And your goals for skepticism and atheism were totally different than theirs, weren’t they? They are doing you a favor by walking out. They got the hint you didn’t want to spend time away from delivering your message to deliver their own. You should be thanking them for going, not lambasting them. They’ve left you alone without distractions to do what you’ve been wanting to do all along.

3. It makes everyone in the old group look bad.
It might, that’s true. But probably only to the people in the new group, who are people you don’t care about, right? Because if you cared about them, you would have taken more steps to accommodate them, and you didn’t. And you didn’t because you didn’t think what they had to say was important or because what they had to say was harmful to atheism or skepticism somehow, and would turn away the kind of atheists and skeptics you were hoping to attract to your old group. And there’s not the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell that anyone cares what they have to say in the grand scheme of society because they are all just insular and arguing semantics and clusterfucking around, right? So the kind of people that they could make you look bad to aren’t the kind of people you consider valuable anyway. I mean, you don’t care if you look bad to creationists, do you? And you’re trying your darnedest to make the splinter group look bad, too, aren’t you? By criticizing them? No big deal. It’s part of the process.

4. It drives away potential new members.
It might, that’s true. But if those potential new members are more attracted to the splinter group than to the old group, then they weren’t going to stay members for long anyway. And if the other potential members think what the splinter group is doing is not what they have any interest in, they’ll find their way to you easily enough. It’s like having a sushi place and a pizza place in the same strip mall. People who set out to have pizza might change their mind and go for sushi at the last minute, and the pizza place lost their business. But it works in reverse, too. And then the strip mall gets the reputation for having lots of choices, and attracts even more people in the end than each restaurant separately would have attracted in two disparate locations.

5. What the new group wants is stupid and/or pointless (and they’ve cut themselves off from criticism).
Perhaps. You may be right. It could be a huge waste of time what they are doing, and you might all be better off staying far away from it. Time will tell. But what better way to teach them a lesson about how stupid and pointless their goals and efforts are than to let them pursue said goals without interference or help? Let them fall on their own swords. Set them free–completely free–and don’t join their forums or make comments on blogs or offer advice and they’ll run themselves into the ground faster and this fad will burn itself out. Or not, but you won’t know until you let them go run the experiment. Then you can use whatever data is generated as you wish to prove whatever point you need to make about the splinter group. Until then, until you let them run their splinter group experiment, you’re just making unfounded assumptions about what’s going to happen, and that doesn’t make you look like very good skeptics.

But they haven’t cut themselves off from criticism, no, no. Criticize them away! Write articles, make videos, speechify at conferences, lobby against them one-on-one at local meet-ups… you’ve got lots of opportunities to make your points, even if they tightly control access to their own spaces and delete and ban dissent on comments and blogs and with restricted real-life meetings.

6. We need to let them know what we think.
You do not need to let members of a splinter group know what the members of the dominant group think about them, their plans, and their abilities. First of all, they already know. They’ve become experts on what the dominant group thinks of them, because there are far more members of the dominant group than the splinter group, and wherever they go within the group odds are they are hearing from members of the dominant group. Repeating it just wastes your time. Second, they don’t care what you think. If members of the splinter group cared what members of the dominant group think, they would have made an effort to assimilate into the dominant group instead of fighting back and trying to change it. And they didn’t. Your opinions and ideas are not valuable to them. Third, it is not necessary to keep updating them on your thoughts after they are gone. They are gone. It no longer concerns you. You didn’t care about them while they were there, so it makes no sense that you care about them more when they are gone. And pretending it is “concern” fools no one.

Instead, it looks suspicious, like perhaps you have some ulterior motive, like ego or power trip or need to prove you are right or to put subordinates in their place, instead of actually trying to promote their well-being. Seriously, it does.

So there’s this group of marginalized people you gave no thought of or consideration to while they were hanging around–even when they were asking for your attention–who decided they got tired of waiting and went out to do their own thing and now you care so much about them you have to chase them? Pretend you are kids on a playground for a minute. There’s a kid who wants to play ball with you, and you don’t give her the time of day, so she eventually says never mind, I’ll go find some other friends and we’ll play our own game, and when you see that happen you leave off what you were happily doing to go bust up her game and accuse her of causing problems for you way over there on the other side of the field? And you keep hounding her and hounding her about it, and calling her stupid and off-topic and accusing her of making you look bad to the other kids?

There are names for kids like that (and the nicest one is hypocrite), and you warn your own kids against them, and you get teachers and parents involved when it happens, and you make yourselves look bad without anyone else’s help. Don’t chase people who run away from you. It’s aggressive and thuggish and, dare I say it, the behavior of a bully. The most dignified response to people who decide to hang out with other people is to ignore them. And to succeed achieving your own goals, and bask in your own glory. And then this splinter group will look back at you longingly, and want to be a part of you again, and make amends, and admit defeat, and won’t it be worth it? Or maybe they won’t, but you’ll at least have successfully met your own goals, which is all you wanted in the first place, isn’t it? And which the splinter group pre-splinter was keeping you from being able to do?

Embrace the distance. Don’t fight it. The world is wide; there is room for everyone. And if more marginalized people are joining the splinter group than yours, it’s still a net gain for skepticism and/or atheism, isn’t it? This is not a zero-sum game, and the splinter groups are not your enemies. Don’t become theirs.

This went long, but there was a lot of crap to address. I’ve been socialized to say sorry, but it’s not crap of my own creation, so I won’t. It’s the people who won’t let splinter groups go who are causing the trouble.