I really appreciate you making this point. I hadn’t thought about this concept specially as “arrogance” before, but it fits. One of the dangers can be that when you write for a supportive ingroup they let you get away with this kind of thing if the mocked entity is so far outside the group that they don’t even seem real, like clearly the mocking is to the point of absurdity because no one could possibly be like that. But when you don’t have that cover you quickly discover that many strawman you try to create, even for rhetorical purposes, may actually hit close enough to home for a real person for them to be hurt by it.
Of course sometimes people need to see themselves held up to a mirror where they can see the absurdity in themselves, and as you note that’s often not to the purpose of an author. We luckily live in a world right now where you can get away with a lot of arrogance, even if you’re physically weak, without getting killed right away, but I take your point to mean we may lock ourselves from opportunities we will later need to be able to take else we perish.
I really appreciate you making this point. I hadn’t thought about this concept specially as “arrogance” before, but it fits. One of the dangers can be that when you write for a supportive ingroup they let you get away with this kind of thing if the mocked entity is so far outside the group that they don’t even seem real, like clearly the mocking is to the point of absurdity because no one could possibly be like that. But when you don’t have that cover you quickly discover that many strawman you try to create, even for rhetorical purposes, may actually hit close enough to home for a real person for them to be hurt by it.
Of course sometimes people need to see themselves held up to a mirror where they can see the absurdity in themselves, and as you note that’s often not to the purpose of an author. We luckily live in a world right now where you can get away with a lot of arrogance, even if you’re physically weak, without getting killed right away, but I take your point to mean we may lock ourselves from opportunities we will later need to be able to take else we perish.