Ideology and truth

I enjoy debate and I like interacting with people I disagree with if the dialogue is thoughtful and intelligent. But the sad reality is that most debate that you will experience does not qualify as thoughtful or intelligent. There is little grounding in logic and truth even though the participants themselves may be thoughtful and intelligent.

I get annoyed by that. Very annoyed. And perplexed. How do intelligent people come to some of the conclusions they do? And when my blood really starts to boil, I remind myself of a very simple fact that I have observed over a lot of years:

Ideology trumps truth

Here is what that means: in general, people make judgments based not on truth but rather by how something aligns with what they already believe.

I am going to give two examples from current events but I could give a hundred others. DeflateGate is the first one. I am amused and bemused by my too-loyal Patriot fan friends who are willing to overlook mountains of real evidence that makes it quite clear that their team cheated. To them, it is all a witch-hunt and an unfair persecution of their team because of its success. The truth does not matter enough to those people; it is clear that their loyalty to their football team means more than truth.

On a more serious note, there is the Josh Duggar situation. As you watch people take sides on this, what you are seeing is a typical attempt to advance the agendas of two competing world views. The most loyal Duggar fans see it as a conspiracy against Christianity, a form of persecution, and a matter that has been way overblown. There is another side that hates Christianity that will use it to advance their viewpoint too. Both sides will obfuscate facts, cherry-pick evidence, and in general make a mockery of what is a very serious situation. Both positions are absurd and somewhere in all the rhetoric, truth is being stamped on.

So, in the end of the day, it is quite true that people are just going to believe what they want to believe. I hate that but it is what it is. One of the reasons I hate it is because I am one of those people too. I am not the rare exception. The same tendency to minimize truth I see in other people is in me too.

That being said, I refuse to believe that we have no choice in this and I refuse to believe that we can’t improve. So here are some thoughts on how I work on this in my life.

1) I test my consistency.

When situations arise, before I choose to support or oppose something, I ask myself if I would react the same way if things were a bit different. For example, regardless of how I view the Duggar situation, I should ask myself if I would really take the same position if this had happened in the Kardashian family.

If you are a Patriots fan, ask yourself if you would feel the same way if it had been the Jets caught deflating footballs. And how do you feel about Hillary Clinton and that email server? Ask yourself if you would be saying the same thing if it was a Republican candidate that had done that.

2) I check to see if I am guilty of discarding facts just because they conflict with my belief system.

I was in an interesting discussion the other day and brought up the verifiable statistic that in the history of the United States, the murder rate has sharply dropped over time. In fact, today, the murder rate has never been lower in the US.

Now, depending on one’s belief system, they might handle that statistic in different ways. If for example, they believe the US is going to the dogs in a big hurry, they might discard it as biased, insignificant, or just flat out wrong. Another person who thinks things are improving in the US might accept that statistic but refuse to acknowledge statistics about other crimes that are increasing.

From my past work in the alternative health industry, I saw this problem all the time. I saw the anti-drug crowd eagerly spread around every bit of news that might discredit pharmaceutical companies while conveniently ignoring the skeletons in the alternative health industry. They were quick to pass around conspiracy-theory based health quackery but would not even accept a solid scientific study that was negative toward alternative health.

3) I force myself to seriously read and consider the other side and intentionally look for points of agreement.

One of the real poisonous elements to our culture today is that we make enemies out of people that are not enemies just because we profoundly disagree with them. In general, those on the opposite side of issues (even important issues) share a lot of general principles and common ground.

It is becoming way too easy to surround ourselves with people that think just like we do. They will cheerlead us when we engage in online debates and convince us that we are always right, but the truth is that ignorance is spawned out of those situations. True knowledge comes from honestly looking at all sides.

4) I avoid being dogmatic about most things.

Dogmatism is almost always overrated. Dogmatism is the enemy of wisdom and understanding. I have said it here before that one of the best ways to identify how much a music “expert” knows about music is to gauge their dogmatism on it. Their knowledge and their dogmatism are practically always inversely related.

The truth is that most situations in life are more complex than we might initially think and dogmatism is simply not appropriate. Our postmodernism tendencies lead us to think that we have the right answers to things that we not qualified to even really pontificate on. An armchair quarterback is not equipped to solve the US budget deficit. A weekend theologian is not qualified to solve the Calvinism-Armenian debate.

As a side note, it is guaranteed that somebody is going to write me an email about this article gleefully pointing out that I am being dogmatic about not being dogmatic. For that person, feel free to write the email but you are missing the point.

5) I check to make sure that I am regularly changing my mind.

In politics, it has become a badge of dishonor to change your mind. A politician’s integrity is questioned because he has the audacity to hold to a different position from the one he held ten years ago.

That is absurd. Changing your mind is a healthy thing. Never changing your mind is a sign that you are simply not willing to allow yourself to be influenced by truth outside of your belief system. Make sure you can look back at a path of growth in your life where you rejected bad opinions for better ones.

The heavy irony of course is that this article in itself is going to go against the belief system of many who read it and will be summarily discarded. I know that up front. But hopefully, some of you will find it helpful. Don’t be agenda driven rather than driven by truth. Being open minded is not a bad thing; it is admirable thing.