askchapo

Furthermore, ask yourself: what do I have to gain from this? If you're in it to just win an argument, save yourself and everyone involved the wasted effort. People rarely change their minds when they have been proven wrong, especially if it's in public and especially if it is the result of a more confrontational debate.

Arguing for arguing's sake is peak redditor and obnoxious nerd behavior, and unless someone is willing to spar with you for fun and dialectics, it rarely does anything. Right wingers want people to debate them all the time because they understand this and they don't believe in the power of words and ideas, they're just playthings and tools they use to inspire libidinal responses and to look cool

Tim Ingold, a Scottish anthropologist once wrote that there is a huge difference between education and instruction. Education is a relational process, where even if there is a knowledge or power differential, people collaborate to reach an answer that's satisfying and makes the bond between the people participating in stronger. Instruction is the process through which you seek to implant your knowledge into someone's head, where that same differential becomes the basis for an unequal and abusive relationship. The former is way more effective at staying with people and activating them for action. I think he was referencing someone else, but I don't remember who.

For more on how to use your time to help people develop the tools to liberate themselves using your knowledge you can maybe read Pedagogy of the Opressed.

To be clear my current course of action in such a scenario is to remain quiet.

Starting to think the idea that i could reach a point where my knowledge overcomes my privilege is a brainworm that needs extracting