Posted on January 23, 2013 by Benjamin David Steele
Story. Culture. Knowledge.
These three are the Trinity of my mind, of my personal reality.
I always return to these, but not usually at the same time. They all connect, though.
Culture and knowledge are how we typically speak of story without realizing it. Story interests me the most, in some ways. It’s because story can so easily be dismissed as mere entertainment that it has so much power.
Knowledge and story are at the heart of culture. They give form and expression. Culture is an ephemeral thing by itself. It’s normally invisible, until we seek out our sense of identity. Maybe more than anything, culture encapsulates our reality tunnel.
Story and culture determine what we consider to be knowledge and how we go about looking for it. They frame our sense of truth and reality. As such, they mediate the complex relationship between belief and knowledge.
I love knowledge, or rather I love truth, more than anything. I always have. I don’t know why truth matters, but I just know it does, know in my heart more than in my mind. I want to know the truth of everything just because I do. It’s not so much the knowledge itself, but the sense of knowing; or else, when lacking, the ache to know, the intuition of something to be known.
I’ve come to realize, however, that story gets at truth like nothing else. Truth can feel impotent at times. Truth needs story in the way lungs need air. People are convinced by story, not truth. A story that expresses truth is a force to be reckoned with.
I’m less clear about culture. It’s such a strange thing. I don’t know that I care about culture in and of itself, but I’ve come to understand that culture is what makes it all happen on the collective level. We don’t have culture. We are culture. It’s the whole fish in water scenario. We live and breathe culture.
I feel like I can never fully explain why these three things are so compelling to my mind. I’m not sure why it is so difficult to speak about all of this. Story becomes mere entertainment or otherwise a personal interest. Culture is simplified to notions about race and nationality. Knowledge gets reduced to factoids and data points. The profound nature behind them gets lost.
I wish I could write about these in a way that conveyed the depth of my sense of them… but you either grok them or not, I suppose.
Posted on August 12, 2012 by Benjamin David Steele
Anyone who knows me knows that I value truth greatly. My respect for, even idealism of, truth has always been clear to me.
I’m not entirely sure why this is so.
I suspect my parents teaching me honesty is part of it and, of course, my dad having introduced me to the life of the intellect. But it seems to go beyond just those factors. There is something about my personality or my life experience that has caused me to value truth more than even my dad who spent much of his life in academia. As a conservative Christian, he would probably put before truth any other number of values: love, obedience, service, etc. Most people would put something or another before truth… which is to say that most people would rather assert their preferred values as truth than to value truth itself.
I don’t personally know any other person who puts as much emphasis on truth as I do (not to imply that I live up to my own ideal). Even my life-long best friend doesn’t think about truth in the way I do, although he comes closer than most people. My desire for truth at times can be a visceral impulse, something felt at the core of my being. I experience life and look out upon the world through the lense of truth-seeking. It truly bewilders me that others don’t share this inclination, this way of being in the world.
Truth as a value often seems out of fashion. We live in an age where righteous fundamentalism competes with skeptical relativism. It has become the norm for all sides to question truth as a value worthy of respect, especially in terms of the Enlightenment. We have collectively loss faith in truth, that it exists or can ever be known. Instead, doubt has become dominant and pervasive. Truth has become a mere personal issue. There are just claims of truth, but no shared sense of truth or even shared value of truth.
Yes, people argue over what is true. But such arguments have increasingly become battles of rhetoric. As a society, we’ve become cynical. Psychological insight has taught us how weak is the human mind. Simple reverence for truth is beyond most people these days. It sounds nice, if a bit naive. With propaganda and advertising, we are always looking for the angle, the spin, the manipulation. Claims of truth seem loaded, potentially dangerous even.
The Nazis knew their truth. The communists knew their truth. Islamic terrorists know their truth. And conservatives like Bush jr know truth in their gut. Or on the other end of the spectrum, New Agers know their own version of truth. People who claim truth are to be considered with suspicion or maybe just seen as simpleminded. Truth has become nearly synonymous with blind faith and dogmatic righteousness. In the media, truth is decided by whichever side wins.
There are so many competing claims of truth that we’ve forgotten how truth has a closer relationship to questions than answers. To question is to be weak. People who question don’t become powerful, wealthy or famous. Even in academia, it is the preson who proclaims a new theory or interpretation who gets attention from his or her peers. To question without offering an answer seems dissatisfying or boring. It is an argument between people declaring opposed truths that is exciting, that gets attention. Pick a side and fight for your team or else stand alone on the sideline as the valiant skeptic demolishing other people’s truths.
There is a new kind of lifestyle truthiness. You look for the truth that fits your life, rather than conform your life to truth. Claims of truth are how you know which group someone belongs to. There is Christian truth and Atheist truth, Republican truth and Democratic truth. Every group has their experts. Other experts are mercenaries who work for the highest bidder, usually think tanks.
I try not to fall into too much cynicism because the ensuing despair can be paralyzing. I have faith in truth, if faith can be used in this way, but I don’t have righteous certainty about any particular truth.
In my understanding and experience, the discussion of truth certainly isn’t about rhetoric or talking points or dogma. It isn’t even about philosophy and rationality, not ultimately at least. I see truth as a basic human experience. We may be confused about truth, change our minds, and be deluded more than we’f prefer. Still, the desire for truth is there and it can’t be denied.
Ever since the Axial Age, humans have become transfixed by the notion of ’truth’. Revolutionary thinkers showed up on the scene and told their fellow humans that wisdom and knowledge matter more than kinship tribalism, more than obedience to authority, more than rule of law and tradition. This was when the seeds of modern civilization were planted. These seeds eventually grew into the Enlightenment. And now we live in an era of science. Truth as a value has become the background of modern society. We take it for granted which is why it is so easy to be cynical about it.
It is strange how the value of truth has played such a major role in social development. There seems to be something in human nature that corresponds to the notion of truth. Even before the Axial Age, peopl had various views of what ‘truth’ meant, even if they don’t correpsond to anything that we now recognize as truth. The moment humans could speak and draw cave paintings, the human desire for truth was off and running, although rather blindly at first.
My own sense is that truth as an idea and ideal touches upon the archetypal. There is an experience of a truth, a desire of truth that precedes any particular claim of truth. Truth-seeking matters because it springs from an impulse deep within us.
I’ve come to a point of frustration. Let me explain.
A conclusion I’ve flirted with for many years is that humans are fundamentally NOT rational (which isn’t necessarily to say humans are irrational; a better word is ‘arational’). Humans have some minimal capacity for rationality, but I suspect most of what is considered ‘rational’ is too often largely just rationalization. This is no grand insight per se. Still, I’ve resisted it. I want to believe that humans can be persuaded by facts. I want to believe that truth matters. However, I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that people don’t change much once set in their ways (which tends to happen early in life). As such, people don’t usually change their minds even when confronted with new facts and new ways of interpreting the facts. It’s just that people die and new generations come along (with new biases). The best hope one has of changing another’s mind is to meet them when they are a small child. After that point, there is little hope left for any further change.
Debating most people is about as worthwhile as bashing your head against a brick wall. Even worse, the people most interested in ‘debate’ tend to be the very people who are least interested in truth. It’s rather ironic. People tend to seek out debate because they want to ‘prove’ themselves right, not to explore possibilities, not to learn something new. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. You might bash your skull to a bloody pulp before you find them.
And, no, I’m not excluding myself from my own criticisms. I know from my own experience how challenging it is to try to be ‘rational’ (objective, emotionally neutral, self-critical, aware of cognitive biases, being on guard for logical fallacies, genuinely trying to understand different viewpoints, being fair toward another’s argument, considering all the data instead of cherrypicking, and on and on). It’s hard enough for me to deal with all this within myself. It’s just too much to have to try to deal with it in other’s as well, especially when those others in most cases don’t want to (or don’t have the capacity to) deal with it in themselves. Spending so much time online, I end up interacting with many people who don’t bring out the best in me and who put me in a generally combative, irritable mood. And it’s my fault for being so easily effected. I’m the way I am. People are the way they are. There is nothing that can be done about that. In this post, I merely wish to explain my frustration.
– - –
I’ll give some examples.
I recently wrote about the differences between Southern and Northern cultures. There are two ways of treating these differences. The standard liberal view is that cultures are different with both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects. The standard conservative view is that some cultures are inherently or fundamentally superior. The problem with the conservative view is that conservative states and societies don’t rank well on many factors most people consider worthy (education, health, economic equality, etc). The conservative will often dismiss this data outright or rationalize it away. And, of course, a lot of (most?) conservatives have little interest in conceding to the liberal view of openminded and tolerant multiculturalism. As a liberal, how do I win or how do I find a win/win middle ground of understanding? I often can’t.
When I was writing about the Southern/Northern culture issue, I also brought up the related issue of race and IQ because it’s a favorite discussion of conservatives. As a liberal, I have a bias toward believing in egalitarianism. It bothers me on a fundamental level that conservatives are always seeking to prove others (usually those different than them) are inferior. Nonetheless, I’m inclined to defer to science on these kinds of issues. Facts are more important than my beliefs and preferences. I take it seriously when conservatives reference studies suggesting a correlation between race (i.e., racial genetics) and IQ. Because I take facts so seriously, I’ve researched the subject extensively by looking at all the studies I could find along with meta-analysis of the studies. It’s true there are some studies that suggest a possible correlation between race and IQ. But what these conservatives don’t wish to acknowledge is that there are also many studies showing no correlation between race and IQ and also many studies correlating IQ to many other factors. Simply put, the data is complex and the research is inconclusive. There is no scientific consensus, as far as I can tell.
I find odd this conservative attitude. These conservatives will cite research that supports their preconceived conclusions while ignoring all the research that contradicts their views. They completely ignore the issue of scientific consensus. I’ve found conservatives quite suspicious of scientific consensus. Conservatives like science when it agrees with them, but they realize scientific authority is a two-edged sword. Once you accept scientific consensus, you eliminate your ability to cherrypick the data. As a comparable example, most conservatives utterly despise the fact that most scientists in all fields and vast majority (98% as I recall) climatology experts who are active researchers agree that the data supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It took decades for conservatives to accept global warming was even happening, but seemingly most still don’t accept that humans contribute to global warming. So, despite the strong scientific evidence and strong scientific consensus, conservatives are wary about science when it disagrees with their beliefs. They’ll ignore what most scientists conclude about AGW and instead they’ll find the small minority of studies and scientists who agree with them.
Accordingly, science is just there to be referred to when convenient and ignored when inconvenient. I don’t understand this attitude. I just don’t get it. If the majority of experts agree about something, I won’t be so presumptuous as to claim that I know better nor will I simply cherrypick the data that agrees with me. Why would I do this? What is to be gained by such anti-intellectual tactics?
One last example. I was looking at reviews of some books by Jim Wallis. One reviewer (in reference to God’s Politics if I remember correctly) mentioned the abortion issue. The person was criticizing the ‘moderate’ position that Wallis was proposing. As I understand it, Wallis is against abortions except when they are absolutely necessary (such as to save the mother’s life) and so is against banning abortions entirely. This position is ‘moderate’ in two ways. First, it strikes a balance between the practical and the moral and seeks a middle ground between two extremes (of pro-life and pro-choice). Second, it is the view held by most Americans and so is the ‘center’ of public opinion. The critical reviewer was promoting the common conservative view that abortions are bad and so compromising principles is to let liberals win. In a sense this is true because compromise is a liberal principle but not a conservative principle. Polls show that liberals support and conservative don’t support compromise. Even independents, although more supportive than conservatives, don’t have a majority that supports compromise. So, when Wallis is promoting a ‘moderate’ position he is by default promoting the ‘liberal’ position. Also, on many issues, most Americans hold positions that are ‘liberal’ (even though Americans don’t like to label themselves as ‘liberals’).
It just seems like liberals in America always lose even when they win. The liberal can have facts and public opinion on their side… and, yet, liberals are treated like an elitist minority to be dismissed and distrusted. It’s understandable that conservatives are wary about science considering most scientists identify as ‘liberals’.
– - –
All of this has made me increasingly pessimistic. I grew up among idealistic liberals which rubbed off on me a bit, but I’ve over time become cynical in response. What is the point in bringing up facts and analyzing the data? Those who agree with me probably already know what I know or are at least open to learning. And those who disagree with me probably won’t accept the facts no matter what.
My frustration isn’t entirely limited to those on the right. I often find a simplemindedness in the idealism and egalitarianism on the left. Even so, I rarely find the same radical anti-intellectualism on the left as I described above. Plenty of liberals don’t understand science and misrepresent scientific research, but they tend to do so out of an admiration (albeit a confused admiration). There are, for example, the New Age type liberals who want to turn science into a pseudo-religion about the beauty of nature and the wonder of the universe. It’s well intentioned even if naive. From my view, this liberal simplemindedness is mostly harmless. Liberals generally aren’t interested in trying to use science against some race or culture. This isn’t to say I don’t feel frustrated by the liberal New Age woo, but it doesn’t usually make me angry and it won’t make me lose all hope in humanity. Even if a liberal dismisses out of hand scientific studies suggesting a possible correlation between race and IQ, they do so because of worthy ideals of egalitarianism. Liberals want to make the world better for everyone, not just better for one group. Liberals are correct that many conservatives will use any scientific research, with or without scientific consensus, against those they perceive as ‘other’. Yes, we should be wary of ulterior motives when scientific research is being cited.
It’s hard for me to grapple with my frustration or to fully understand it. It’s my own personal issue (which relates to the depression I’ve experienced for a couple of decades), but it’s obviously not just about me. I’m a liberal in a society that is dominated by a conservative ruling elite. I see the polls showing most Americans agree with liberals like me on many issues, but none of that seems to matter. Those with the most power and those who are loudest aren’t generally the liberals. It’s rare for the majority public opinion to become visible such as with the protests in Wisconsin. The liberal majority is largely a silent majority. Most ‘liberals’ (whether or not they identify themselves as such) are ‘moderates’ and so they aren’t radicals who want force their opinion onto others. Anyway, polls showing what most Americans believe or support is quite likely irrelevant to most conservatives. Either they just know most Americans agree with them (no matter what the polls may show) or else the general masses isn’t to be trusted (any more than the intellectual elite).
I’m just frustrated. I have many non-fiction books that interest me and many posts I’d like to write if I had the time… but what is the point? Time is a precious commodity. I could be spending it on activities less frustrating. Yes, I enjoy learning new things, but the process of learning can be less than enjoyable at times because of those I run into while doing research online. I think I just have to accept that what interests me isn’t what interests most others, including in many cases most other liberals. I can get obsessive when my curiosity is piqued. It’s not unusual for me to spend weeks or months doing research and thinking about some subject before writing about it and it can take equal amount of time to gather my thoughts into the form of a post. After all that, very few people typically will ever read what I write. I largely do it for my own reasons and so this shouldn’t matter, but it does matter. It just makes me feel isolated. Truth matters to me in the same way God matters to a religious believer. Truth is my religion. There I said it. I know it sounds silly. I know most people don’t idealize truth in this way and to this extent. It’s because truth matters to me that I want to communicate my own understanding of truth. I want truth to matter to other people. I want to live in a society that values truth above all else. But that isn’t the world I live in.
Honestly, does truth matter? Why should it matter? Why should anyone care about truth?
My frustration makes me feel cynical, but I don’t want to be a cynic. Still, I do understand the attraction of ‘giving up’. As Thomas Ligotti once wrote, in response to superficial optimists (which can apply to all the superficialities of human society): “Once you understand that, you can spare yourself from suffering excessively at the hands of ‘normal people’, a pestilent confederation of upstanding creatures who in concert keep the conspiracy going by rehashing their patented banalities and watchwords.” I can’t begin to explain how much I sympathize with Liotti’s words, but he presents a conclusion of radical pessimism that goes far beyond even my own frustration. What I like about his advice is that bashing one’s head against a brick wall becomes unnecessary and avoidable once one realizes the brick wall for what it is. The brick wall ain’t going to move, not easily anyway. Even the best of us can only bash our heads against a brick wall for so long. I can’t say I’ve given up on my ideal of truth. I just need to let my fractured skull to mend a bit for the time being. Maybe I should read some fiction.
David and Barbara Mikkelson are among those trying to clean the cesspool. The unassuming California couple run Snopes, one of the most popular fact-checking destinations on the Web.
[...] Snopes is one of a small handful of sites in the fact-checking business. Brooks Jackson, the director of one of the others, the politically oriented FactCheck.org, believes news organizations should be doing more of it.
“The ‘news’ that is not fit to print gets through to people anyway these days, through 24-hour cable gasbags, partisan talk radio hosts and chain e-mails, blogs and Web sites such as WorldNetDaily or Daily Kos,” he said in an e-mail message. “What readers need now, we find, are honest referees who can help ordinary readers sort out fact from fiction.”
Even the White House now cites fact-checking sites: it has circulated links and explanations by PolitiFact.com, a project of The St. Petersburg Times that won a Pulitzer Prize last year for national reporting.
Thoreau’s Walden was one of the books I read at a pivotal point in my life, and certain quotes have stuck with me.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
Truth and experience… two themes of my life. At least some credit has to go to Thoreau for my identifying myself as a truth-seeker. Be it mean or sublime, just give it to me straight. This quote is a bit melodramatic, but it spoke to me at a time of my life when everything seemed melodramatic. I felt like I understood what drove him to the woods.
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
This second quote is more close to my heart. I’ve had most of it memorized for many years now… starting with the “In proportion” part. I was attracted to the notion of simplifying my life and this relates to the first quote about truth. And the castles in the air had clear resonance for a dreamer like me.
How can anyone go wrong with truth and simplicity?
funny, Ben, actually I haven’t. I have read so many excerpts I feel like I have but it’s not the same as allowing his thoughts to wash over one, as being immersed from beginning to end in Walden or one of his other works.
Posted on January 3, 2010 by Benjamin David Steele
“If the first rule of a dysfunctional system is ‘Don’t talk about it,’ then our primary goal should be to tell the truth, to be as honest as we can manage to be. When I read something truthful, something real, I breathe a deep sigh and say, ‘Fantastic — I wasn’t mad or alone in thinking that, after all!’ So often we are left to our own devices, struggling in the dark with this eternal and internal propaganda system. At that point, for someone to tell us the truth is a gift. In a world where people all around us are lying and confusing us, to be honest is a great kindness.”
Derrick Jensen quoting David Edwards, The Culture of Make Believe, pp 141-142
Derrick Jensen is one of my favorite authors. Even though he is quoting someone else here, this basic message runs through all of his writing. There are few occupations more worthy than simply telling the truth, giving voice to the silence. Jensen explains this brilliantly in his earlier book, A Language Older Than Words. It was that book, more than any other, that helped me understand our culture.
It’s depressing to consider how few people speak up about the atrocities of our society, but it’s understandable. It’s easy to feel like a powerless victim when faced with such overwhelming suffering and destruction. Even most victimizers were once victims and still see themselves that way. We are a culture of victims. But to refuse the collective agreement to be silenced, even if only for a moment, is to step outside of the role of victim.
Posted on November 26, 2009 by Benjamin David Steele
I like diagrams. There just fun.
I love the scientific side of psychology, but my love of science is only equalled by my love of esoterica. I must admit that I became curious about MBTI through my studies of Tarot, and only later researched the science of it. I’ve always sought the connections of various areas of human knowledge such as through Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics. However, no amount of abstract theorizing can beat out an aesthetically pleasing diagram, a mandala of the intellect. A mandala doesn’t objectively prove anything in and of itself, but it does give insight into higher truths of the human mind and possibly of reality itself.
Satya: I’m just worn out. I debate with social conservatives and traditionalists, and provide the strongest peer reviewed evidence I can to back up my assertions and I provide reasoned arguments supported by age old philosophical propositions but it is not enough. I’m told it is all “biased”. It doesn’t matter how perfectly objective and analytical the study is or how well it follows the scientific method, it is biased unless it supports their viewpoint. If is it particularly damning to their worldview, then it is “PC” the sweet and short way to dismiss everything as politically correct, and thus somehow not true. I have yet to find anyone who can explain to me the reasoning behind this, but it seems sufficient to them.
Has thinking become a value? When I was a child, I never would have thought that there would exist a group of people who are proud that they don’t think. In fact, not only are they proud that they don’t think, but they are proud that others can’t make them think. Now I’m not trying to stereotype here, but it seems whenever I push anyone from these particular right wing groups on the facts that they take a position that reasoning and logic are inferior to their religious faith and internal moral compass. How on earth can they reduce thinking to a value?
I’m notorious for being a smartass, and occasionally just an ass, but nothing I can ever say or do could ever demean a person as much as them tossing their own ability to think and reason for themselves.
The more I study human beings, the more I realize humans like to follow a script. Religious beliefs and political ideologies simply serve as a way for human beings to mindlessly serve as actors in this world, fulfilling roles that were written for them by directors who may have lost touch with reality themselves.
Everyday, I find myself challenging every label that I have felt ascribed to myself. INFJ, gay, liberal, social worker, etc. it all seems like the labels have become more important than the being. I am who I am, too complex to be narrowed down and pidgeon holed into some convenient category for others to stereotype in some misguided attempt to control or pass judgment. It’s not like I don’t do the same. But I’m tired of it. Maybe I just need to view the world holistically. That seems to be the only thing that people on opposite sides of the religious and political spectrum agree on. Love your neighbor.
Comments:
Sithious: Calling you biased ain’t exactly a valid argument, but you have to remember when most people are cornered they will resort to personal attacks and logical fallacies rather than logic and reasoning. People don’t like it that you’re attacking their ego, which you are by questioning their beliefs and ideas.
Most people don’t have the knowledge nor mental capacity to refute well constructed arguments. [...]
Satya: Level of education and field of study is the only difference I have perceived within individuals that would lead them to challenge this aspect of human nature. Based on what I have seen, I estimate that maybe 10% of the general public has critical thinking ability, and of that 10% I estimate that only 1% of those make a concerted effort to shape their own metacognition by challenging their cognitive and emotional biases. The number of individuals who seem to have any degree of awareness of their own patterns of thinking is incredibly small. Even I have trouble considering myself a member of that group because I often give into my passion despite knowing it is a fruitless endeavor and usually the equivalant of ego masturbation.
Duty:
Originally Posted by Raccoon Love
You have your own views and opinions and if others are not willing to compromise that does not give you the right to change their ways of thinking
So we don’t have the right to try to educate a racist? We should just accept their way of thinking?
Originally Posted by Raccoon Love
Just because someone does not agree with you does not mean their wrong, we all have our different opinions and beliefs, and in reality truth is relative so there’s nothing absolute.
What makes people wrong is when they hold a belief that a) does not conform to reality. What makes people “unjustified” (or “thoughtless”) in their belief is when they don’t have enough evidence or knowledge to warrant believing it.
And as we’ve discussed in many many threads, there are things that are absolute: objectively true. If you say “there is nothing that is absolutely or objectively true” then you contradict yourself, because if that statement was true, it would be absolutely/universally/objectively true, and so contradict itself.
Because there is an objective truth, we try to find what facts fit into that truth. When someone holds a belief opposite of that, or in opposition to the most reliable and effective methods to determine objective truth, we say they are just plain wrong or thoughtless, respectively.
Knowing this, and combining it with a true desire to enlighten, educate, and help the minds of others develop, and it becomes a much more complicated issue then just, “You have no right to try to change others.” It almost becomes a duty to try.
I know where Satya is, I was just there not long ago. I still have much of that desire in me. The best solution I’ve found is to just abandon the thoughtless to their self-chosen fate, but be there for when they are ready. Surround yourself with those that are ready/have already traversed. That’s all you can really do.
Satya:
Originally Posted by myst
How do you prove that truth is objective? With facts? How do you prove they’re true? More facts? And so on to infinity. Is it possible to prove truth is objective? If not, how do you know it is?
This is what pisses me off. People have no idea what the scientific method does. They think the purpose of science is to prove things, but the reality is that science exists as a constant quest to disprove whatever the evidence indicates is likely to be true.
You don’t prove anything! Anyone who says they can prove anything is a liar. You present evidence that indicates that something is more likely true than it isn’t. Science is about probability, about disproving, not proving. In science, the law of gravity can be disproved, but it can never be conclusively proven. The probability that the law of gravity is true is astronomically high due to the huge amount of evidence that supports it, but it could easily be disproved with the addition of new evidence against it. Physicists don’t strive to prove the theory of relativity, they strive to disprove it. Biologists don’t strive to prove the theory of evolution, they strive to disprove it. That is why such theories have such high certainty. People have been gathering evidence in the pursuit to dispove them for so long, and have failed to do so, so the probability that they are true remains very high. It doesn’t mean that the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution have been proven, only that they have yet to be disproved and so they remain viable theories.
When I provide evidence to disprove something you say, and you can’t provide an alternative explaination, then you have failed to uphold your theory. It has been invalidated. I’m not trying to prove that anything is objectively true, I’m simply disproving whatever subjective belief you hold to be true. I could never prove that God does not exist, but I can disprove your version of God by coming up with evidence or reasoning which invalidates your explaination.
Posted on November 8, 2009 by Benjamin David Steele
I’ve been highly critical of Glenn Beck. I feel that this criticism is deserved, but it’s also exaggerated by my depressive nature which leads me to be cynical and easily irritated. Also, my depressive nature exaggerates my idealistic tendencies, and as I perceive Beck he stands in opposition to many things I deeply value.
There are many things I value. Some things I value simply because they make life bearable such as entertaining distractions and personal space. But other things I value because they give my life meaning and purpose, and without them I’d feel utterly lost.
One of my greatest values is my ideal of truth. My definition of truth is wide including intelligence, intellectual humility, curiosity, self-honesty, authenticity, etc. From my perspective, Beck doesn’t seem to live up to these values. And at times it seems to me that he holds certain values that entirely oppose my own. For example, when Beck is trying to convey what he considers to be the truth, he’ll often go in to conspiracy theory mode and he takes massive leaps of logic. His relationship to objectivity and facts is very loose. I don’t get the sense that he values truth above belief, and so his version of truth seems to be anything that serves his ideological agenda.
It’s not that Beck is the worse example that could be found, but his example is important as the media attention he gets in the US is only second to the president. I don’t feel Beck deserves the attention he gets and I think he has a negative influence on public debate. On the personal side, Beck simply depresses me. Just knowing he exists and is being listened to depresses me.
The irony is that some people perceive Beck as being authentic and sincere when he rants. I suppose I somewhat understand. At times, Beck does seem to lack the ability to self-censor. To some people, thinking before speaking is considered untrustworthy. Obama’s good speaking skills are a major reason why some don’t like him. The assumption is that if someone speaks well they’re not telling it like it is. In this equation, bluntness equals honesty and lack of tact equals authenticity. Related to this is anti-intellectualism. The idea is that book-smart people are more capable of being deceptive or else that they’re just being haughty elites who don’t care about normal Americans.
So, this was the appeal of Bush jr and Palin. Palin seems like the genuine article as she clearly represents the rural religious right “white culture” (which is a quickly shrinking demographic), but Bush jr’s simple country boy behavior and speech wasn’t really how he was raised. He didn’t grow up on a rural farm in Texas and I’m sure he didn’t talk that way in Ivy league college, but still it was a very convincing routine.
Similarly, I see Beck’s behavior as an act. He has been a professional entertainer his entire adult life. Acting isn’t inherently inauthentic, but Beck’s act feels inauthentic because he is using his acting ability to influence people in a way that to me feels manipulative. Some people take his theatrics as real and his emotional charisma does make his theatrics very convincing. Also, the fact that Beck believes his own act (and has become identified with his entertainer persona) makes it all the more reprehensible.
Am I being unfair? I will admit that Beck is authentic in at least two ways. First, it does seem that his emotions are sincere in that he expresses what he actually feels, but without self-awareness this leads to insincere projection of emotions. Too much of his populist anger seems like scapegoating. That relates to the second aspect of his authenticity. Many people are feeling afraid about where the world is heading and that is an honest response. Beck is connecting with something true in the experience of many people, but even so fear-mongering isn’t helpful and in fact can be dangerous.
I know that I’m being overly critical. Just as Beck projects his unhappiness onto Obama, I’m sure I’m projecting my unhappiness onto Beck. That is what people do. The difference, though, is that I don’t have great influence on the American public. Also, I’m self-aware enough to realize my criticisms are biased. I express my emotions, but then I look at them objectively and try to separate them from my arguments.
Glenn Beck isn’t evil. Beck may be an attention-whore and rabble-rouser, but in his own way he means well. Beck is the type of person who is able to connect well with the public and because of this we should hold him up to a higher moral standard. I think Beck is comparable to Bush or Palin in this sense. All of them mean well in their own way, but there is also a willing naivette about them that makes them easily used as pawns by people who are more conniving. Bush was manipulated by the likes of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Palin was used by McCain and the entire Republican party. And Beck has been one of the many puppets of Roger Aisles and Rupert Murdoch.
I can’t say that I’m morally superior to Glenn Beck as I have plenty of my own faults, but I do try to be fair. I don’t want to scapegoat Glenn Beck in the way that he has scapegoated others. It’s certain attitudes and beliefs that I’m against, and Beck just happens to be the most vocal spokesperson at the moment.
So, let me be clear. I don’t doubt that Beck has the potential for doing good. Everyone has all kinds of potential. I just wish Beck would be more clear about what he is for rather than what he is against. He strongly dislikes the government. I get it and I agree, but stopping at angry populism doesn’t do much for me.
A major part of my issue is that at the end of the day I don’t know what Beck is trying to accomplish and exactly what standpoint he is taking. Is he a libertarian or not? Is he a religious extremist or not? Is he a conspiracy theorist or not? Is he a tool of the Republican party or not? Beck has too many hats that can’t be worn at the same time. If he wants to be independent of all such labels, then he should start by immediately removing himself from any association to Fox. And if Beck wants to be taken seriously as pro-American patriot, then he should respect the multi-racial and inter-racial “non-white cultures” that are becoming the new majority culture. Don’t pretend to love America if you hate half of the people who live in America.
I’ll make one last point. Despite my dislike, some of Beck’s sentiment resonates with me. I don’t feel the government represents me. And I don’t feel the media represents me. But the problem with Beck as a critic is that he is one of the major voices both in the mainstream media and in public debate about politics. Beck is one of the major influences that has helped to create a very negative atmosphere in politics. And Beck’s popularity is representative of how tv news has lost focus on what is good journalism. Fr0m my perspective, Beck is part of the problem he complains about. What depresses me is that I don’t feel anyone in the “respectable” mainstream represents me including those like Beck complaining about it all. Comedy Central probably represents me better than all of the news networks combined.
Posted on November 6, 2009 by Benjamin David Steele
I’m often conflicted when it comes to conspiracy theories (or whatever you may prefer to call them). I have strong curiosity which causes me to always look at alternative views and there are many important issues that should be researched seriously, but I have limited time and energy. Depending on the subject, I might research more or less. I usually research any important issue at least enough to understand the relevant questions even if I don’t know the answers.
Let me provide examples. Two movements have formed around political issues. Even though they’ve gained mainstream support and interest, many in positions of authority dismiss them as conspiracy theorists.
The first example is the 2000 Florida recount. I’ve looked into this in fair detail in the past. I’ve thought of writing a detailed post about it, but there doesn’t seem to be much point. The information is out there for anyone who wants to think for themselves. The basic facts are:
(1) Bush didn’t win the popular vote.
(2) There were many suspicious activities going on in Florida which have been described in great detail in various articles and documentaries.
(3) A full recount was never done. Some claim that going by the data Bush wouldn’t have won if a full recount had been done.
(4) Bush was made president by a court decision and not by election.
(5) The mainstream news media in the US never did a thorough investigation of this incident, and politicians of both parties refused to state any major criticisms or strongly demand a full recount.
The only fact that some argue about is the issue of the recount itself. Depending on how you define a full recount, it may or may not have been done. If you define a full recount as being the act of counting all votes, then no full recount happened. If you define a full recount more narrowly which means dismissing certain votes either because they appear “suspicious” or otherwise are deemed officially unacceptable, then a full recount did happen. However, looking at the votes dismissed, it’s the fact that they’re dismissed that looks suspicious. The voters who had their votes dismissed were of a demographic that mostly voted for the Democratic party.
The second example is 9/11, but I want to point out one aspect. The WTC 7 building’s collapse is what caught my attention. The following excerpt is representative of the type of info I’ve come across in my research.
The official explanations of WTC 7′s collapse are problematic for several reasons:
Fire has never caused any steel-framed high-rise building to collapse in any manner, let alone with the vertical precision of Building 7′s destruction. 1 Other steel-framed skyscrapers have experienced far more serious fires than Building 7.
WTC 7 fell straight down, which necessitated that all of the load-bearing columns be broken at the same moment. Inflicting such damage with the precision required to prevent a building from toppling and damaging adjacent buildings is what the science of controlled demolition is all about. No random events, such as the debris damage and fires envisioned by the official reports, or explosions from fuel tanks proposed by some, could be expected to result in such a tidy and complete collapse.
WTC 7 fell precipitously, at a rate closely approaching the speed of gravitational free-fall. That necessitated the sudden removal of structure near ground level that would have impeded its descent.
Despite the inescapable logic of the above, the official theory for the collapse, as published in
At 9:59 AM (after the South Tower collapse), electrical power to the substations in WTC 7 was shut off.
Due to a design flaw, generators in WTC 7 started up by themselves.
Debris from the collapsing North Tower breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. (This means the debris had to travel across WTC 6 and Vesey Street — a distance of at least 355 feet — penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of the building, including a concrete masonry wall.)
This, and other debris (that also made the journey across Building 6 and Vesey Street), managed to start numerous fires in the building. (Unfortunately, this event did not prompt anyone to turn off the generators.)
The backup mechanism (that should have shut off the fuel oil pumps when a breach occurred) failed to work, and the fuel oil (diesel) was pumped from the tanks on the ground floor to the fifth floor where it ignited. The pumps emptied the tanks of all 12,000 gallons of fuel.
The extant fires raised the temperature of the spilled fuel oil to the 140 degrees F required for it to ignite.
The sprinkler system malfunctioned and failed to extinguish the fire.
The burning diesel fuel heated trusses to the point where they lost most of their strength, precipitating a total collapse of Building 7.
The last point is the greatest stretch, since it asks us to believe that an event that would be expected only to cause the sagging of a floor instead led not only to total collapse, but to such a tidy collapse that directly adjacent buildings were scarcely even damaged. This is surprising behavior for a steel-framed skyscraper designed to survive fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
After laying out this highly improbable scenario, the FEMA report authors conclude:
“The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.”
Unfortunately for investigators hoping to resolve this issue, nearly all of the evidence had already been destroyed by the time the FEMA report was published.
If you want to see an overview, check out the Wikipedia article on demolition theories. Steven E. Jones is a physicist who had a laboratory analyze material from the WTC site. He points out that there are chemicals detected which are what one would expect with thermite or superthermite. He also points out that video footage show that there was extreme heat which wouldn’t be found in a normal fire. The further argument is that the way the building collapsed is only ever seen in controlled demolitions.
I don’t know if this is true or not. That is the problem. For the most part, the media has ignored these theories (with CNN being a bit of an exception). A few people have claimed to debunk these theories, and others have claimed to debunk the debunkers. What the 9/11 truth movement wants is simply to have an investigation that actually looks at the all of the evidence. Is that too much to expect from one’s government and from the mainstream media?
This all brings a few questions to my mind. Why do people believe what they do? And why are certain topics acceptable and others not?
For example, Bush jr constantly claimed and hinted at Saddam Hussein being responsible for 9/11. Along with his claims about WMDs, this was blatantly false. Essentially, our president believed in an unfounded conspiracy theory. For the most part, the media didn’t initially challenge this false belief and so many Americans believed it to be true (and many still do). There was an interesting research paper on why people believe false information. The interesting part was the ability people have when it comes to doublethink.
The first surprise in our findings is that several interview respondents denied believing Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda, even though they had indicated such a belief on the survey. In the following example, a respondent denies thinking that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, despite answering that this was the case on his survey. In the interview, he first states that he did think Iraq was involved, but then corrects himself and says he had thought it was Afghanistan all along. When the interviewer shows him his survey response, he indicates that it was a mistake and he had never actually believed Iraq was involved with 9/11:RESPONDENT: So I went to watch it [coverage of 9/11 in immediate aftermath] and a little bit more on the news, watching ’em burn and all that. But I thought maybe we was gonna go to war over that.
INTERVIEWER: Who’d you think we’d go to war with?
RESPONDENT: Iraq?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. You thought it was Iraq that was behind it?
RESPONDENT: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: What made you . . .
RESPONDENT: Well, they’ve, they’ve kind of been hintin’ about that on the news and stuff
before that, so I just, right away I just kind of presumed it was Iraq and, or, not Iraq, Afghanistan.
INTERVIEWER: Oh right, right. Yeah.
RESPONDENT: Get things straightened up here then. But I, they’d been having a lot of trouble
over there and everything, especially the way they was treatin’ people and everything, so I
just, kind of thought we’d go to war with them right away. Well, we ended up sending off a
lot of troops over there right away. But that, for the next 2 or 3 days, that was about all that
was on the news.
INTERVIEWER: You said on your survey, if I can find it . . . You said on your survey that you
thought that Saddam Hussein had helped the terrorists.
RESPONDENT: Have what?
INTERVIEWER: You said on your survey that you thought Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein
of uh Iraq had helped . . .
RESPONDENT: No, what on that 9/11?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
RESPONDENT: No, no. If I said that, I probably did. Just like I did right there, I meant
Afghanistan.
INTERVIEWER: Oh oh oh, ok, ok.
RESPONDENT: No, I meant Afghanistan, not Iraq. I probably, I probably did say Iraq.
INTERVIEWER: Mmhmm. It says Saddam Hussein.
RESPONDENT: Yeah, well . . .
INTERVIEWER: Well, some people say . . .
RESPONDENT: You can change that or something if you want to . . .
INTERVIEWER: OK [laughs].
RESPONDENT: . . . but, yeah, no I meant Afghanistan, not Iraq.
INTERVIEWER: Mmhmm. Well, some people think he was behind it, Saddam Hussein, in
Iraq.
RESPONDENT: Well, I know they keep saying that and everything but they’ve never come
up with any kind of proof or something, so ’til they get some kind of proof or anything, I’m
not gonna say one way or the other. . . . But right now, the way things are right now, I think
Afghanistan was in on it all and just, just them.
This “denial” category provides one clue to the survey findings of high rates of belief in a link between Iraq and 9/11: some respondents may make a mistake on the survey because of a general unfamiliarity with the region, even if they do know the current state of the evidence. By engaging in a dialogue with the respondent, we were able to show that he had a clear sense of the state of evidence, but slipped in his more general knowledge and mental classification of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a finding that is not possible using simple survey methods. Seven interview participants out of 49 (14.3 percent) fell into this “denial” category. This suggests that polls asking about a link between Iraq and 9/11 may overstate the true level of belief in the link.
It’s hard to determine what people actually think and believe. There are so many reasons polls can be biased. Most people give contradictory responses because human nature isn’t essentially rational. For example, did Bush jr actually believe his own lies? I suspect he did to a degree. He seemed to have convinced himself. Sometimes a particular belief is just convenient.
Also, big lies can be more successful as propaganda than small lies. If a politician takes a bribe or has an affair, people are less likely to have their emotions strongly polarized. However, if one’s worldview becomes entangled with a large lie, people will go to great lengths to rationalize it. There is also a cognitive bias I forget the name of which causes people to believe something is a majority opinion simply because they see it repeated such as by the media and the government. But polls sometimes show extreme difference between public perception of majority opinion and actual majority opinion. Those in power don’t need to control the majority opinion if they control the majority preception. Basically, people want to believe those in positions of authority.
As Hitler said in the Mein Kampf:
“In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”
This may be why incorrect information (whether an intentional lie or not) can persist even when later it is disproved. Here is from the conclusion of “There Must Be a Reason”:
Our study was conducted in October 2004, after almost 2 years of debate and discussion on Iraq in the public sphere. Therefore, it is possible that we are only showing that interviewees wanted to believe in this link at this late date; their original reason for believing in the link may have been misinformation. If this is the case, then our study shows not theoriginsof the belief in the link, but the reasons for its resiliencethrough the 2004 presidential election, after the administration had admitted that there was no such link.
People just need a reason and often it may not even matter what particular reason gets accepted.
In this case, when presented with the fact of a president going to war, respondents do not begin from an open-ended position, determining their own belief from first principles and available data and then comparing it with the decision to go to war. Rather, some respondents simply assumed that there was a reason why the president wanted to conduct this war; and because many respondents were either not fully informed of or confused by the actual reasons the administration gave for waging war in Iraq, 9/11 seemed to them to be the most obvious justification. In essence, by invading Iraq the administration presented the public with the equivalent of a forced-choice survey question of whether or not Saddam was responsible for 9/11; in answering this “question,”
some respondents concluded that as we had invaded Iraq, it must mean that those in a position to know had concluded that Iraq was behind 9/11. The main theoretical implication of our research is that “knowledge” as measured on surveys is partly a by-product of the attempt to resolve the social psychological problem of cognitive dissonance. The practical implication of this is that, although scholars have shown a correlation between the perception of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda and support for the war in Iraq, we cannot conclude from this correlation that misinformation led to support for the war. Rather, for at least some respondents, the sequence was the other way around: support for the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led to the misperception of ties between Iraq and 9/11. This suggests a mechanism through which motivated reasoning may bestrongestwhen the stakes arehighest. It is precisely because the stakes of going to war are so high that some of our respondents were willing to believe that “there must be a reason.”
These biases in thinking apply to everyone. They apply just as much to politicians and news reporters. People become polarized and personally identified with specific beliefs and views. This can happen to whole sectors of society. Just look at the news. Most reporting isn’t original investigative journalism. Reporters tend to simply repeat what others have said which often means reporters talking reporters. Following the line of references back to a source can be difficult and so few reporters even go to the effort. Besides this, there are a million other ways a person becomes biased and filters out what they don’t want to see.
Self-deception and biased thinking is easy to do even when one is well informed and not emotionally polarized. Unfortunately, that is rarely the situation when it comes to important issues about morality and politics.
Worse still, various people in power are constantly trying to manipulate the public’s opinions and choices. Advertising, of course, is highly successful. It’s quite amazing how much research has gone into manipulating people simply for the sake of making a profit. Then there is the manipulation done by corporations for other purposes. Corporations create astro-turf front groups that appear to be grassroots organizations and this is an effective way of influencing public opinion. Also, media corporations have their agendas which leads them to bias their reporting and put messages into their entertainment. One example is that of Fox news where memos were given out everyday telling reporters what to report and how to report about it. Roger Ailes who is the president of Fox used to work for past Republican administrations. One propaganda technique he used was creating fake townhall meetings where the entire crowd and all of the questions were staged.
I suppose that is the type of thing we expect in our society. We assume that businesses will do anything make a profit and outmaneuver competition. Actually, we not only assume but we cynically expect that companies should be devious and amoral in their dealings. We see it as the role of the news media and the government to keep companies in check. However, news media is owned by megacorporations that have numerous interests and so we no longer can trust reporters. But can we still trust our government? Besides the example of Bush jr and his evil cronies, is the government overall capable of acting as a disinterested party to ensure the public good?
There is the obvious problem of the revolving door policy between big business and big government with Roger Ailes being a very clear example. But, ignoring that, is the government able to keep itself in check which is the purpose of having separation of powers. For example, are psychological operations truly for the good of the public or are they for the good of those in power?
In the 1990s it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR). The program was claimed by the Army to be an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its “Training with Industry” program. The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.
The U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press in February of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide. [23]
Arguably the most visible image of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad. While the event, at first glance, gave the impression that the act was a spontaneous action of the citizens of the city, it was actually an idea hatched by an Army psychological operations team.[27] Allegations surfaced that the group of people surrounding the statue and cheering was in fact smaller than it was made out to be in the official story, and that the group were by some accounts not local to the area but were instead brought in by the military for the specific purpose of watching and lending credence to the planned toppling.[28][29][30]
And these psychological operations dovetail with false flag operations with the most famous example in US history being the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
The term ‘doublethink’ originates in George Orwell’s 1984 and along with ‘newspeak’ (a constant process of slimming down language in order to limit peoples ability to communicate and ultimately think) is an essential part of the ‘Big Brother’ society. In the novel, doublethink is defined as “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
One of the main reasons doublethink is so necessary is that it allows the masses to accept being slaves to the system and under total surveillance, while considering themselves free and independent. Party slogans from the book such as “Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace” are typical examples of this, convincing the characters that in order to have the freedom of a civilized society they are required to be slaves to their dictatorial regime. It enables Winston (the protagonist of the book) to work at the ‘Ministry of Truth’, the governments propaganda machine, doctoring old newspaper stories to support whatever the government is claiming while still believing the claims to be true.
In Alex Jones’ documentary ‘Terrorstorm: A History of Government Sponsored Terrorism’ the film-makers interview random people on the streets of London about their views on recent terror attacks and the war on terror in general. The amount of people that respond instinctively with classic doublethink-style logic is positively alarming. The most extreme example was a woman who believed “we should give up our liberty for freedom”, seemingly unaware that they are both the same thing!
In conclusion, any given incident or theory isn’t in and of itself important. What is important is what all of this says about our society. I want to believe that truth matters, but few people seem to care about truth. Truth just becomes a euphemism for whatever is convenient to someone’s beliefs, someone’s particular agenda.
I often do immense research about certain issues, but what is the point? A few people will happen upon this blog post, and what then? If one of the few people who already values truth reads this blog post, then it will be just preaching to the choir. And if one of the majority of people who couldn’t care less about the truth reads this blog post, then my arguments will fall on deaf ears. Am I likely to actually inspire someone to do serious research for themselves and make up their own mind? Why should anyone care? Why should anyone waste their time? The government is going to cotinue to lie and obfuscate, and the media will continue to focus on meaningless stories and do superficial investigations.
Access: Public 
Nicole said
truth and simplicity are anathema to guilt and shame… sad
Marmalade said
Yep… sad.
Have you ever read Thoreau? Its been more than a decade since I read him. I was thinking about rereading Walden one of these days.
Nicole said
funny, Ben, actually I haven’t. I have read so many excerpts I feel like I have
but it’s not the same as allowing his thoughts to wash over one, as being immersed from beginning to end in Walden or one of his other works.
so many books, so little time, honey!