What a Fool Believes
What seems to be is always better than nothing. Or so people think.
[Last Edit: 4/19/24]
I’ve come to appreciate the poignant lyrics of the famous song behind this post’s title. They apply broadly to the human condition — not simply to a deluded man attempting to resurrect what “never really was”.
I recently posted this on Facebook:
So it turns out that humans prefer stories and fantasies to reality. Who knew... JK.
Hey, everyone needs a good fable to get him or herself through the day -- life is difficult to manage without the comfort of such things, whether they're buried in spreadsheets, ancient myths, modern myths, or cynical conspiracy theories invented and spewed by mercantile interests. We all see the regularities that we want to see, and assume truths that give us acceptance. And when people challenge those truths, the human instinct is always to circle the wagons rather than re-evaluate.
Of course, evangelizing one's favorite myths and conspiracy theories is a separate question. A lot of people don't seem to understand the damage that regurgitating falsehoods and half-truths does. It would be nice if "doing your own research" involved doing some actual research.
For a number of years I regularly asked the question "When was the last time you changed your mind about something substantive based on a broader review of the evidence?" I stopped asking because pretty much nobody ever responds directly (maybe one or two exceptions? -- I can't remember). It's really a dumb question. Humans aren't wired to change their minds about substantive things. We develop complex mental frameworks that give us a sense of foundation -- intellectual, tribal, familial (and sometimes financial) security. Those are difficult to give up. It's understandable. We are who we are.
In the end, we have to accept people for who they are and what they believe, no matter how objectively wrong and disproven it might be. It's what makes them tick, so be it. But when people want to evangelize foundations built on sand, or worse, it raises difficult choices. Per Solzhenitsyn, "The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie." I'm down with that, certainly. But that doesn't mean one is obligated to correct every falsehood that passes through one's viewfinder. I am increasingly resigned to allowing people [to] find joy in their own delusions. They have that right, and it is what helps them make sense of a complex world. Whether others are influenced by them really is not my problem -- or, in some cases, any of my business. And, in the end, I have my own delusions to manage.
I wrote that post, sans any editing, as a kind of personal reflection. I typed it quickly, after a recent attempt to show that a particular group of people should stop spreading discredited misinformation. In this case, it was someone who professes fealty to current theories of biological evolution, but clearly is not informed about the red flags in more recent research. A few days earlier I had done something similar, with a group of right-wing conspiracy enthusiasts who had rallied around — and insisted on spreading — yet another easily-debunked lie. I’ve done the same with extreme progressives, who like to rally around their own destructive mythologies about gender and race, typically distorting the language itself, Orwellian style, to suit their ideological needs. And I’ve done it from time to time with fellow Christians, many of whom only care to see a subset of the complex and well-documented person of Jesus Christ (the specific subset varies by denomination, sometimes with disturbingly little overlap).
It’s never a fun task. The common theme of these interactions is that I accomplish nothing. The conversation often devolves into defensive and angry accusations, often laced with derision and scorn. Fortunately, in more recent years these exchanges end quickly, as I now have a policy of quickly seceding from such discourse, always allowing the deluded to have the last word. Younger me would have feared a perception of weakness, but I have liberated that instinct to the cosmos over the years; people with strange, entrenched ideas can think whatever they want, but I prefer to be gracious, while avoiding pointless escalation. Being human, I don’t always succeed, but this is always my goal.
Per my post, I have come to understand that it is neither my job nor calling — nor perhaps even my right — to convince people of their errors. At a pragmatic level, it is mostly a waste of time. At the level of ethics and empathy, it is best to respect humans’ right to believe what they want — and to maintain a relationship, so you can live to fight another day. People who fundamentally misunderstand some idea or concept can still offer important perspectives and occasional nuggets of peripheral wisdom. It is always good to listen. You can learn something from just about everyone.
As I wrote in the post, people rarely change their minds about big things. It does happen once in a while. My understanding of politics and the American economy has evolved quite a bit over the years. I’ve shed much of the simplistic mythology of populist conservative and libertarian dogma while learning to appreciate certain concerns on the left. And I have a couple friends who have seen the light on certain issues and have altered their outlook substantially. It can happen. But these epiphanies are mostly the exception rather than the rule. Humans typically need to experience their own moments of clarity, realizing that their chosen path on some subject is a dead end. No amount of yelling at them in the distance will shake their faith in their philosophical GPS. No bullet-proof logic will dent their synapses. They need to experience the brick wall for themselves.
To be sure, we do have ethical responsibilities when dealing with untruth, particularly untruth that mobs seem intent on evangelizing. We cannot spread the lies. We cannot live the lies. If required to do either, we must accept the unpleasant consequences of resisting. At various times in human history, the price of doing this was high, as high as one’s life. And we see it creeping into American culture and politics in recent years. We see moderate politicians willing to find necessary compromises, yet expelled from public service because they won’t repeat the lies of a certain ex-President… or average people losing jobs or promotions in corporations that require fealty to extreme DEI initiatives. Refusing to live lies can come at serious cost. But refuse we must. We can let the lie pass. We can choose to let people trade in them within their own lives. But we cannot become the vehicle by which they reproduce.
My Facebook post ends with “I have my own delusions to manage.” This is an unsettling thought. How are we to identify and manage our own delusions? The materialist response of many educated minds is “Science!” I talked about the limits of this kind of thinking in a recent post, arguing that science morphs into a kind of blind faith in areas where progress has all but ceased, and materialist explanations seem stranded at the base of impenetrable, self-refuting walls of impossibility. In those cases, science itself becomes delusional, as it reduces to acts of blind faith.
So the answer is not science. Science is a powerful tool, but it succumbs easily to ideological constraints, elite consensus, subsequent groupthink, and calcified paradigms — all partially fueled by human desires like self-preservation, professional development, social hierarchy and legacy management. Those things have no legitimate role in the search for truth.
As a first step, I think we can battle delusional thinking by asking ourselves (and honestly answering) certain questions, such as:
What ideas am I avoiding, and why?
What conclusion do I fear? Is it worth fearing?
What do I demonize? Has it truly earned that status?
What does my current brand of the truth assume? How solid are those assumptions?
Am I willing to accept the truth when I discover it, or will I brand it as untrue to placate my priors?
The Bible famously mentions a group of new Christians called the Bereans. The Bereans were truth detectors. They didn’t simply believe whatever the latest itinerant evangelist breezing through town told them. They checked out the claims. They “did their own research” in the real sense of the statement. But most importantly, they didn’t limit their inquiry to this or that ideological box, with its built-in constraints. They didn’t ask “Does this idea fit into this comfortable box of mine?” — and then reject the idea if the answer was no. They sought and considered the information on its own terms, interpreting it on those terms rather than on their terms.
Doing your own research requires the Berean mindset. Without that mindset, “research program” quickly reduces to “echo chamber”. The fool in Michael McDonald’s sad tale lives in his own echo chamber — a place that, presumably, offered comfort, emotional safety and hope. But it “never really was”. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t real. When it encountered reality, the best that reality could do is “muster a smile for a nostalgic tale”. And offer a weak, perfunctory apology for our misunderstanding.
Unfortunately, reality is often not so polite. The consequences of delusion can extend much farther than an uncomfortable cup of coffee. What seems to be is not better than nothing. It is better to start over from nothing than to live life in the comforting emotional shadows of feel-good delusions… elaborate sand castles that wash away in the next unexpected wave. But I have learned to appreciate that humans who are deeply embedded in modern, technological cultures must see this for themselves. If I want their friendship and human connection, I will need to put up with their delusions for as long as they choose to repair their fake castles along the shoreline. Those connections exist in a universe with its own calculus, its own rules, and its own deep rewards that transcend the cruel truths of Newtonian reality. And we reject them at our own peril, as fools so cavalierly reject the truth.