I’m about to ask you a question that will literally change your life.
Ready?
Here it is:
What if you’re wrong?
Seriously.
Sit with it.
What if you’re wrong?
About… anything. Small things. Big things. Everything.
What if you’re wrong about your in-laws? The jerk at work? Abortion?
How would your life change if you were wrong about Religion? Politics? “Them”?
How would your life change? How would your relationships change? How would your approach change? Which doors would close to you and which would open?
Seriously.
Sit with it.
What if you’re wrong?
Recently a friend, having picked up on my masochistic love for nuance and Socratic Debate, recommended I check out a podcast replete with both: “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.”
In 7+ hours over 7 episodes, host Megan Phelps-Roper explores how, at different times and for different reasons, folks from across ideological spectrums have attempted to “cancel” the Harry Potter author.
And while their reasons and arguments for “cancellation” differ, each ideological “side” (There are 3 presented in the podcast: transgender rights advocates, Christian fundamentalists, and Rowling herself) claims they are acting in defense of a vulnerable population (vulnerable trans kids/adults, vulnerable children/Christian values, and vulnerable children/CIS women, respectively.)
In “Witch Trials,” Phelps-Roper dives deep, allowing all “sides” a platform to defend their stance: Trans rights advocates are adamant that Rowling’s statements on gender, hormone therapy for trans youth, and protections for CIS women are transphobic, hateful, and dangerous; Christian fundamentalists are adamant that Rowling’s writings glorify witchcraft and could lead impressionable children to dangerous paths and people; Rowling is adamant that these aforementioned groups, which claim to be moral movements, are actually authoritarian attempts to ensure and enforce group think, putting children at risk with hormone therapies and CIS women at risk by allowing biological males into all-female spaces like locker rooms, crisis centers, and women’s prisons.
Each “side” angrily shakes their fistfuls of evidence in the faces of the others, never noticing that each-and-every one of them have joined the unanimous chorus of animus: “How could you? You’re putting vulnerable lives at risk!”
The irony.
“Witch Trials” is a fascinating listen – one made even more so as the audience learns that Phelps-Roper was once a prominent face and voice of the Westboro Baptist Church.
For those unversed, Westboro Baptist is notorious (and newsworthy) for its controversial protests, including at military funerals, where they scream and hold signs that say U.S. military deaths are God’s punishment for homosexuality. The Church also pickets LGBTQ+ events, college campuses, and Jewish institutions, specifically to inform members of all those groups that they’re “Going to burn in Hell.”
Nice.
In “Witch Trials,” Phelps-Roper tearfully reflects on her upbringing, and how she was taught from an early age that these “You’re going to burn in Hell” demonstrations were not hateful – if anything, they were acts of love, as she, her family, and other Westboro members were warning the sinful of the consequences of their lifestyles before it was too late. And what could be more loving than saving a sinner from an eternity of torment?
Phelps-Roper believed this message, lived by it, and professed it proudly to anyone who would listen, including via national news outlets.
Until…she didn’t.
She was certain…until she wasn’t.
While active with Westboro, Phelps-Roper experienced bullying, doxxing, and credible threats to her life. An arsonist even burned down her house! But it wasn’t the bullies or attempted murders that changed her mind and heart. That honor, she says, belongs to the few people who stepped away from hate to treat her like a human being, worthy of respect; those one-in-a-million who offered her data, personal stories, patience, and kindness.
The data etc. helped, but the kindness, Phelps-Roper says, was key. The kindness allowed her enough space and enough grace to ask herself the question: “What if I’m wrong?” and really sit with it.
What she learned and experienced when she sat with that question led her to leave Westboro, and her experiences spawned a deep fascination with the narratives we build around our personal morality. This fascination became the impetus for “Witch Trials.
Phelps-Roper left Westboro largely because of the kindness afforded her by internet strangers, but, as “Witch Trials” clearly lays out, kindness in discourse, especially on the internet, is in short supply. Indeed, one of the experiences that unites every “side” in the podcast is the name-calling, dehumanization, and violent threats they’ve all received, many of them from people and organizations that they once considered friends and allies.
The trans rights advocates, the Christian fundamentalists, and Rowling – all have “receipts” of the abhorrent hate being thrown their way by people who openly and gleefully wish them harm.
And the trans advocates, Christian fundamentalists, and Rowling also share another experience:
They are all convinced that they are intellectually, morally, and ethically 100% “right.”
Over the course of the episodes, the ideological patterns of all “sides” echo each other: “My side is the side that’s right and righteous. ‘They’ are the real problem , as their stances and actions are threatening the lives of the vulnerable people I care about. I/we are therefore justified in our condemnations, and, sure, some may call those condemnations ‘bullying’ (or even ‘credible threats’ according to police), but it’s ‘them’ who are the actual dangerous ones! ‘They’ must be stopped!”
It’s an ideological pattern Phelps-Roper knows all-too-well, as it’s word-for-word what she thought as a member of Westboro.
But all of that changed with “What if I’m wrong?”
So let’s ask the question of the “Witch Trial” “sides”:
How would the lives and opinions and approaches of trans advocates change if they asked themselves “What if I’m wrong”? If they put aside their own hurt and fear to consider that hormone therapy can have lasting, detrimental, and irreversible effects on trans youth? That there are cases, however few, of regret and detransition ? And that there have already been documented cases of trans women entering all female spaces and causing real harm to the women there? What if the trans advocates are wrong – even if only in one out of a hundred or even a million cases? How would that change their approach?
How would the lives and opinions and approaches of Christian fundamentalists change if they asked themselves “What if I’m wrong”? If they put aside their own hurt and fear and consider that data shows that the Harry Potter series measurably improved child literacy rates ? That the books have been around for about two decades now, and, while data is sparse, there has not been a recorded, meteoric rise in Devil Worship ? What if the Christian fundamentalists are wrong – even if only in one out of a hundred or even a million cases? How would that change their approach?
How would the life and opinions and approach of J.K. Rowling change if she asked herself “What if I’m wrong”? If she put aside her own hurt and fear to consider that many trans youth claim that transitioning saved them from self-harm including drug abuse and thoughts of/attempts at suicide ? Or that her concerns about allowing biological men in CIS women’s spaces more often than not do not play out as worst-case-scenario in real life ? Or, when it comes to the Christian fundamentalists, what if maybe there was some child somewhere who abandoned their faith because of Harry Potter, and that decision was the first step of many down a dark, detrimental road? What if J.K. Rowling is wrong – even if only in one out of a hundred or even a million cases? How would that change her approach?
So many of us are so convinced we’re 100% right. About a bunch of things. We know we stand on the side of the angels. We know that, when the history books of the future are written, we will be counted among the righteous. And we therefore tut, scream at, belittle, and threaten those we know to be “wrong.” After all, their “wrongness” isn’t benign; it’s threatening the vulnerable! And, to quote Helen Lovejoy, “Won’t somebody please think of the children!”
But here’s the thing about being 100% right: it allows for no other valid viewpoints. It rejects contradictory data, no matter how sound, studied, and replicated. It permits no room for error. Or growth. It acknowledges no grey.
100% right requires 100% adherence, and makes anyone with a different “take” at best 100% wrong, and, at worst, an enemy. A threat. A monster to be vanquished at any-and-all costs.
100% right justifies violence.
100% right doesn’t sit with “What if I’m wrong?” because “What if I’m wrong?” allows room for error.
“What if I’m wrong?” opens the door for dialog.
“What if I’m wrong” acknowledges room for personal growth, humanizes the opposition, and relinquishes the requirement for 100%, lock-step adherence. It engages with dissent instead of running it out of town with torches and pitchforks.
“What if I’m wrong?” changed the entire trajectory of Phelps-Roper’s life, and it’s a question she asks herself any time she finds herself committing to a belief.
And she doesn’t stop there.
To avoid returning to the moral rigidity she once practiced religiously, Phelps-Roper has developed a series of questions she asks herself before taking moral stands. I’ll share those questions here, that you might choose to employ them, as I hope to, when assessing beliefs going forward:
1. Are you capable of entertaining real doubt about your beliefs, or are you operating from a position of certainty?
2. Can you articulate the evidence that you would need in order to change your position, or is your perspective unfalsifiable?
3. Can you articulate your opponent’s perspective in a way they would recognize, or are you “Straw-Manning”?
4. Are you attacking ideas or attacking the people who hold them?
5. Are you willing to cut off close relationships with people who disagree with you, particularly over relatively small points of contention?
6. Are you willing to use extraordinary means against people who disagree with you?
I won’t spoil how “Witch Trials” ends, as I hope you’ll take the time to explore for yourself what the podcast (and its participants) has/have to say.
I’m likewise interested in hearing your thoughts on the blind spots of 100% moral certainty.
For my own part, I will say that “Witch Trials” had me asking myself “What if I’m wrong?” at least once each episode. I found the process difficult, fascinating, revelatory, and necessary.
10/10 – Thanks to my friend for the recommend.
