Telika: But that's not such a bad description. And it's not paradoxical once you dig up the implicit premises of these stances (ideas on the complexity and plasticity of all lives, the definition of a 'person' and the role of society and experience in its construction, ideas on magical eternal souls, conceptions of innocence and purity, etc).
Hunter65536: I do see what you're trying to say. However they often lead to a us vs them mindset where both sides see other as indoctrinated, hateful, etc. while both of them get into cliques where their viewpoints are reinforced. I agree with what Enebias said above, you've got to let group identity go and think on your own which won't happen as long as you have that us vs them mindset.
Even if you jump out of the "you vs them", you'll see -maybe all the more clearly- that it stays "them vs them". For all the reasons above. The reinforcing circles are part of it, and analysing their mechanisms doesn't show how to break them (on the opposite it shows how solid, how entrenched in the human cognitive abilities, they are). But even if you analyse them, you become an "us" to "them". Partly because of the labels (the fact that ideological families are not only about reinforcing their own collective representation, but above all about disqualifying the others), and partly because of the philosophical realities of these "opinion packs", how they coherently stem from a "rational" system of thought (and I put "rational" in brackets, because it can be valid or invalid yet logically cohesive in both cases).
Take just the fact of analysing the implicit values and representations of a given subculture, of deconstructing their local
common sense and show all the untold reasons to hold a belief (be it a valid or invalid belief, as both can sustained by bad reasons). This simple position, this simple mindset and ideology, puts you in a specific category. Because it is inherently subvertive towards the "common sense" (the goes-without-saying, and the rationalizations) of the group you study. It's, for instance, a straightfoward threat to traditionalism (and its unquestionned, self-evident, value) because the very vantage point relativises it (think of how strong christian believers react to their mythologies and rituals being analysed the same way as greek or dogon mythologies - being "reduced" to that). Analyse how genders are performed (what representations lie beneath the local forms of belonging to the "male" and "female" categories), and you clash with the people who consider these categories and their contents to be obvious, wysiwyg, 100% natural and universal. And you become one of "them" to them. And, de facto, you are.
Plus, very few groups are explicit about their conformism. Most people see themselves as super independant, conforming to one line just by accident, because it happens to be correct (and show marginal fluctuations as proof of that). Heck, the most sectarian movements are built around "we are the only ones thinking by ourselves" discourses, be it early nazism (Hitler describing himself as some courageous free-thinking victim of oppressive political correctness), mystical ufo cults (daring to face the "evidences" that only them and their guru are independant enough to percieve), or conspirationnist networks. So, do also beware of enthousiastic nods to ideological independance. I think that seeing clearly the "how" and "why" of group worldviews (and recognising its mechanisms in others and oneself) is more important than hopping into an easy and commonplace independance fantasy (which I've seen fueled by hilariously transparent propaganda outlets).
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Unrelatedly : I keep reading the thread title as "death penalty for car dealers" and it probably says a lot about me.
