Pointing Out
Pointing something out is a common, basic act. I might quite literally point at a fox and say “Look, a fox!”, but I could also just catch your eyes and glance in the direction of someone wearing neo-nazi insignia to alert you to them, or I might mention the funding a candidate received from the fossil fuel industry to express my views on their climate policies. These acts depend on us having a shared social context: Following the direction of my finger to notice the fox will almost always work, but if you happen to not be familiar with those particular insignia, you won’t notice the nazi, and if we do not share a view on the corrupting effect of political donations, you will not see how that candidate’s fundraising is at all relevant to their proposals for energy regulation.
Thinking about pointing out is interesting when contrasting with the act of asserting something. An assertion usually takes the form “A is X”, for example “This board has no women on it.”. In contrast to pointing out something, we do not judge an assertion based on whether it is successful in some way, but whether it is true. For that, we look at what was said and try to figure out if it accurately describes the world.
It can be helpful to see assertions as a special form of pointing out. They then no longer need to be judged on the internals of the statement (“Is this an accurate and objective way of saying this?"), but on whether they succeed in making the right thing distinct for the listener.
The success of pointing out also depends on whether it changes the behavior of the person. Think about your own past acts of pointing out, for example in highlighting the lack of women on a panel or a board. It is not enough for the other person to agree to the statement that yes, there are no women there. The pointing out will only have been successful if they change their attitude towards this situation in some way.
This has two upshots. First, when concerned with building a shared position in a group about political issues, do not worry so much about the content of what you’re saying or doing. If a presentation on the history of wealth distribution works, great, but if you can achieve the same effect with a video of someone eating a sizzling songbird, don’t question whether that really contains all the complexity of the situation any more than you’d worry whether a raised eyebrow can contain the complexity of whatever it’s pointing out.
Second, it gives a way of understanding how something that was pointed out to someone can be lost again in a retelling, when the original moment of distinguishing gets lost and its mere words that get repeated. When considered as an assertion, it seems odd how “The richest 10% own 67% of the wealth” could over time lose its meaning, given that the words repeated stay and the same and the content of the assertion as well. When considered as an act of pointing out, it loses meaning at precisely the point when it is no longer the inequity of wealth distribution that gets communicated with the phrase, but mere statistics.