This year I wrote a lot about the polarizing nature of social media. Every time we log onto Facebook or Twitter it seems like there’s another political argument for which there are only two sides. This post grew out of some of those thoughts. I was fairly proud of this post and I’m glad that it was the fourth most popular post at The Christian Nerd this year.
Apples and oranges.
These are the two fruits we’ve immortalized when comparing two unlike objects. Apples and oranges are so dissimilar that we can’t even hope to compare them. They’re both fruits, they’re both natural, but apparently they’re so unlike that we use them to discuss to objects that can’t be compared to each other.
I’ve been thinking a lot about apples and oranges lately. Not just because it’s summer and I enjoy a fruit salad as much as the next person, but because I’ve seen a lot of bad comparisons lately.
Facebook is the epicenter for specious arguments and uncivil discussions. As I’ve written about before, it’s the place we go for polarized discourse. There is no room on Facebook for conversation and living in the tension of gray areas. Instead we run to our sides, which are defined by political and social ideologies, and refuse to engage with those on the other side.
A new wrinkle has been added to this discourse.
Recently people have been posting about Cecil the lion being hunted and illegally killed. I’m not into hunting anyway, but it seems like a shame to kill such a regal animal, especially illegally. People took to Facebook to attack the American dentist who had killed Cecil and show their support for conservation efforts around the world.
A few days later, though, I started to notice posts on Facebook intended to shame those who had posted about Cecil. These posts basically said, “How can people care so much about one lion being killed when thousands of babies are aborted every year.”
Now I believe abortion is wrong and we should do everything that we can to limit its use. However, comparing Cecil the lion’s death to abortion is a lot like comparing apples to oranges.
This comparison is a fallacy of false equivalence. Just because people post about Cecil and abortion, doesn’t mean they’re of equivalent importance. Obviously one aborted life has immensely more value than the life of an animal, even one as majestic as Cecil. Just because someone posts about one thing, doesn’t mean he or she is utterly devaluing something else.
Imagine if we applied that same principle to our everyday lives.
“I had to wake up pretty early today.”
“Well Christians in other parts of the world didn’t go to sleep last night because they were scared of militants kicking in their doors and killing them. So they’re probably pretty tired too.”
“There’s nothing to eat in the fridge!”
“Well think about one sixth of the world’s population who goes undernourished every day. They’d probably be happy to have the leftovers that you’re too good for.”
“Man, my boss was really riding me today.”
“You have it good compared to those still trapped in modern-day slavery. They’d probably give their right arm to sit in your office and put up with your boss.”
How terrible would that be? We can’t live life like that and we shouldn’t live life like that online.
We can’t spend our lives living in fear of the Apples and Oranges Police Department, people just going around making us feel badly about ourselves because we didn’t acknowledge every other issue on the planet bigger than our own. I know that me running out of peanut butter isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of life, but at 7:30 in the morning it’s pretty upsetting to me.
Social media give us the opportunity to share our views and engage in discussion about important topics like abortion. We can’t allow those discussions, though, to be sidetracked by false comparisons. Comparing a discussion about the sanctity of life to a discussion about an illegally hunted lion does a disservice to the lives of those unborn children we so desperately need to protect.
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