Despite All Evidence to the Contrary… posted 10/5/2008 3:20:00 PM | 3 kudos what's this?     report abuse tagged: politics, beliefs, relationships, religion

observed50

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life". - Leo Tolstoy - What is Art?

"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him." – Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God is Within You

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate..." - Sir Francis Bacon


In other words…despite all evidence to the contrary, I will continue to believe what I have believed and want to believe.

How do we test our ideas of the world? Deep inquiry demands we look where things point us. But how often do we do that? How often, instead, do we look where our desired answer would have us go to find it?

One of the things that makes such inquiry so challenging is a human error in information processing, ‘confirmatory bias’ - the tendency for us to seek out, attend to, and sometimes embellish experiences that support or "confirm" our beliefs. As expressed in the quotes above, confirmatory experiences/information are selectively accepted and granted quick and easy credibility. Meanwhile, disconfirmatory experiences are often ignored, discredited, or treated with obvious defensiveness

There are two major phenomena that orient us to action in the world that are grounded in what we believe…religion and politics. Both are arenas in which people organize themselves by subgroups that by their nature, are competitive and exclusive – i.e, if you’re a Christian, you can’t be a Buddhist, or if you’re a Republican, you can’t be a Socialist. As such, the dynamics of these two arenas are to create a sense in subgroup members of an ‘us and ‘them’. “Us” is always good, and righteous, and better than “them.” “Us” always has a god that smiles and blesses them, while ‘them” are some form of lost souls.

And because “us” is both righteous, and god-blessed, then it is patently clear that the other side is evil, lacking in moral action and authority, and is probably worthy of elimination in some form…be it physically (isn’t a god always on a group’s side when it goes to war?), or politically (“you know who is to blame for this mess dontcha?”) and socially (“No! You cannot marry that shiksta!”).

Rather than question our membership in such groups, rather than question the nature of our beliefs and whether or not it is helpful to hold any of them, and promote them, we simply keep thinking we’re right, righteous, and god-blessed, and everyone else is, defacto, a loser.

How do we protect the mind from the disconfirming evidence that does not match reality and the images encompassed in our beliefs, and then the consequential mental discomfort (cognitive dissonance) felt when the mind holds strong contradictory information? We simply dig in and seek to disconfirm that which doesn’t match our desired belief outcome. We simply listen and seek for confirming evidence.

There are a number of bloggers on MD who, when they blog on politics, refuse to post reader comments that show how their assertions are false, misleading (accidentally or purposeful), while providing the links to make possible for all readers, the factual check on the false assertions. Not only do they refuse comments to correct the falsehoods, but they go on commenting on the responses from their usual back-slappers who congratulate the blogger on another good piece of information that backs up their reality-defying beliefs. They provide false quotes, false data, misrepresented news stories and clips, and when it is pointed out to them, they don’t hesitate in acting as if the lie is real regardless of disconfirming evidence…i.e., they exercise massive confirmatory bias.

Confirmatory bias kicks in further for them as they discredit all sources of ‘real’ information. How can one misquote an author, and when given the real quote and source, act as if there is nothing at all wrong with the disinformation they are pedaling? How can they act as if standing up and misleading people is somehow a good thing to do?

We can do this, because we are ‘us’ and they are ‘them.’ By all and any means necessary must ‘us’ defeat ‘them’ and if purposeful misleading is a tactic to deploy for that, then that is what “us” must do.

Open and real inquiry demands a mind without boundaries, capable of letting go all beliefs such that it may encounter what is real. One need not believe in reality…one experiences it. Belief is a filter keeping me from fully seeing, hearing, experiencing, what simply ‘is’. Politics keeps me from seeing “them”, and if I cannot really see them – though of course, in my righteousness, I am strongly confident that I do – I cannot understand them, empathize or show compassion for them. All I can do is find justification for how “us” should treat “them.”

Within all such groups, the seeds of genocide. Give the subgroup the right historical conditions, and even 'good' Christians will stand guard at the oven doors of Auschwitz.

And why? Because beneath all beliefs is fear, fear of a world we cannot know in full, and cannot control but in a most minimal manner. A mind in fear cannot allow truth because truth is always self-annihilative – it destroys the self we have learned to believe we are. “Us” is simply a larger ‘me’ that is afraid of a world it does not and cannot understand, but must assert it does, because it fears so much being seen as smaller, less than, lost, and ultimately... powerless before reality.

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