I could find you anywhere, straw man

The age of the life-changing idea, 'the method', the metaphorical “bible” to live by. As we’ve entered the age of abundance, with more than we could ever need, the idea of restriction has become ever so chic. That despite all possible temptations, one can maintain a set of core directional beliefs that influence the choices they make—the keto diet, meditation, 75 hard, party alignment, or conceptual nostalgia. In many ways, we’ve seen this commitment to restriction in beliefs emerge most permeably in personal ideology. That it’s not enough to agree with something, one must live by it. With the touch of opinion and information at our fingertips, becoming devoted to one set of core beliefs is almost as desirable as it’s ever been. “I identify as left, right, up, down, roundabout, an extension of the market”, the list goes on. In a world of abundance, the idea of having the capacity to restrict oneself to faithful absolutism becomes the desirable end of the scarcity principle. That to have less of something and endure is more respectable than to have everything and do the same thing. One can then rationalise that absolutism is essential to effectiveness; being distracted by too many goals is ineffective. In philosophy, the 'straw man' fallacy is the concept of oversimplifying an argument. With ancient roots to Aristotle, the straw man argument refers to the misrepresentation or oversimplification of a position to criticise it. For example, one person could say, “I love getting up early and doing my work first thing in the morning”, and the other could reply by saying, “So you think people who stay up late are lazy then?”. Now the first person has to argue against an irrelevant point: that she doesn’t think people who stay up late are lazy, instead of explaining why she likes it as a lifestyle for her personally, or what other aspects of her life led her to make that lifestyle choice. Instead, to make the second person feel like they have won the now self-inflicted argument, they have 'grasped at straws' and created a straw man argument that is difficult to argue against. The problem with the straw man is that it kills nuance, debate, and refined decision-making. It leads with emotion instead of rationalisation. Whenever I come across an online presence that promotes a lifestyle decision using the straw man fallacy to make its point against the status quo, I can’t help but look away. As we enter the online world, the straw man follows us around everywhere we click. It can easily convince you on a subject that you’re unfamiliar with, because it sounds so easy, so smooth, so comforting to know that life is so easy with the straw man by your side! Nuance to ideas and theory, finding inevitable loopholes and brainstorming with each other is what makes each other great. When we were young, would we have got our homework right on the first try without our parents consistently marking it? As adults, would the parties in each country vehemently serve the interests of freedom and morality of the greater good without the pressure of competing for respectability against the other? Reasoning is the basis of morality, not absolutism. But it's uncanny that with the turn of the century, as we innovate at unprecedented levels, we simultaneously romanticise the age-old decision to restrict. With innovation, prosperity, and growth come a lot of room for hypotheses; there is born an opportunity for a “what if…” mentality. And in a lot of ways, this was the goal: for everybody to have so much room and time in their lives to think about ideas freely. As we do so, it’s essential to properly consider the different variations of specific ideas and lifestyles that could serve our individuality, because we are nuanced as individuals, not just the ideas themselves.