On Being Overly Convinced

What is it that makes humans so convinced that their view on the world is the right one?  Whether it is religion, politics, economics, science, or some other esoteric subject, it is fairly obvious to each and every person, on any side of any issue, that their opinion on the issue is correct.  I don’t wonder that there are multiple opinions on an issue.  What I wonder at is that we are so convinced that our opinion is the right one.

Protestants are convinced that the Catholic church is in error.  Americans are convinced that Muslims are violent.  Republicans are convinced that Democrats know nothing.  Democrats are convinced that Republicans know nothing.  Atheists are convinced that there is no God.  Christians are convinced that evolution is ridiculous.

The problem, as I see it, seems to lie in the fact that

1. We can’t all be right.
2. There are very smart people advocating most major positions.

It’s hard for me to get past the difficulty that this presents.  In fact, I think it’s hard for most people to get past this difficulty, which leads to a set of rationalizing behaviors which tend to only make the situation worse.  There are several possible forms these take:

First is denying the first statement of the dilemma .  This is a particularly weak solution, as the fact remains that in many situations there are only two possible options.  There was evolution, or there wasn’t.  God is or isn’t.  Both cannot be true at the same time.  (At least, not that I know of.  Philosophers feel free to correct me.)

The second solution is to admit that we may be wrong.  Humans do not like to do this.  In fact, humans will go so far as to do damage to their material wealth before admitting they are wrong.  Such stubbornness renders this option particularly unappealing.

The third, and by far the most common, option is to deny the second statement of the dilemma.  Obviously other people are not “very smart” if they do not hold the same positions we do.  It is far easier to deny the intelligence of other people than to admit that we may be wrong ourselves (and even unintelligent sometimes).

This has led to a disturbing rise of ideologues in our society, especially within pop culture.  Take politics, for example.  The Conservatives seem to dominate in the traditional media, with such inspired models as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Ann Coulter.  The Liberals, on the other hand, are to be found on the internet, with the likes of the Huffington Post, Digg, and Reddit.  While the medium may be different, the style is the same: dismissing opponents as unintellegent or uneducated, refusal to acknowledge alternative viewpoints, and a desire for attention.

Sadly our culture seems to buy into this.  People love to watch ideologues, to glory in their self-righteous destruction of all that is so evidently false.  They repeat the talking points they learn from the TV shows or the internet, with little research or thought of their own.  Ask most ardent creationists why evolution is wrong and the response won’t have anything to do with science.  Or ask most Liberals why we should hate big business, and you won’t hear any nuanced response acknowledging the usefulness of market oriented corporations.

I fall into this pattern of thinking more often than I care to admit.  Too frequently I dismiss someone else as hopeless because they don’t agree with me.  “But it’s so obvious,” I think to myself, “why can’t they just understand?”  At this point I am saved from either offending someone or making a fool of myself only by a resolution I came to a number of years ago.

When I first arrived at college I was somewhat taken aback by the number of arguments I witnessed in which neither party seemed to have a full grasp of the issue at hand.  Too often people stuck to their own position without listening to the other person’s arguments.  It reminded me of something my brother told me when I was a freshman in high school: “If you’ll just shut up and listen, you’ll learn a lot more.”  Thus I subconsciously resolved not to become involved in an argument until I felt that I could make an excellent case for my opinions.

Of course, I have been less than perfect in staying out of arguments.  It’s far too easy to fall into them, as you probably know.  Yet perhaps we should all stop and think a while before becoming too convinced of our own position on an issue.  Are there otherwise intelligent people who take an opposite view from us?  Have we actually read and researched enough to consider ourselves knowledgeable?  Are we prepared to be wrong?  Unless we can answer yes to all three, and especially to the last, maybe we’re a little more convinced of our position than is good for us.

Tags: argument, debate, ideologues, wrong