July 30, 2018--The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

I continue struggle to understand more fully why so many Americans believe Donald Trump when so much of what he says is blatantly false. What causes them to suspend the ability to think clearly and instead simply believe.

One explanation put forth by some is that there is a belief gene, a wired human propensity to believe bold narratives and follow without questioning charismatic leaders and non-verifiable doctrines. This would be one reason all peoples through all of history appear to have powerful belief systems that they eagerly follow.

For early humans, some claim, this was essential to survival. Hominoids on their own would be easy prey in a survival-of-the-fittest environment so to increase their chances to thrive it was important for them to band together into hunting and gathering groups. And to coordinate their defenses against those other animals who saw them as potential sources of protein. 

In these kind of tribal realities, to assure working together rather than struggling on their own, various forms of coordinated activity were beneficial. Important to that was the ability to identify and follow capable leaders. To subsume aspects of oneself for the sake of our species living on. 

Tribes not only required strong leaders but also willing followers. Hierarchies emerged as a result and it was helpful if individuals found ways to fit comfortably within them. In contemporary terms this meant the willingness to "sacrifice" aspects of one's individuality and freedom of action. All presumably for the greater good.

It helped if proto-leaders were charismatic, shamanistic, and thus could appeal to the emerging consciousness of the human spirit and that proto-followers, over evolutional-time, would develop the capacity to feel secure when submitting to leaders' origin narratives, promulgated codes of behavior, and ultimately to tribal belief systems.

All aspects of this that added to the likelihood of survival and propagation, over millennia, likely led to natural selection with these survival adaptions entering the human gene pool.

To survive our distant ancestors needed to learn to believe.

Another way of thinking about how this works when most effective is from an insight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As a poet and aesthetic philosopher, in 1817 he of course was thinking about the force of artistic narrative--how we willingly suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment.

He suggested that if a writer could infuse "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, readers would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative.

There also is a potential dark side--"cognitive estrangement" can take advantage of a person's ignorance to promote the suspension of disbelief.

Either way, at the level of literature or in regard to human social behavior (including the propensity to believe things that are not based on truth or evidence) these capacities are pervasive and powerful. 

To bring this to today we can see the same mechanisms occurring in our politics; and though we no longer need to believe to survive, we may be seeing these residual instincts still operating. And if cognitive estrangement is in play, there are forces at work to manipulate and control our thinking and behavior.

February 26, 2014--Success

For some reason many people I know, of all ages, though mainly ones solidly middle-aged, have been talking about success--theirs--or lack thereof.

I've been thinking about it too and doing some reading, though, as a pretty-much retired person, in my case it is a retrospective look-back and conversation with myself.

Here's a little of what I've come up with. Some of it upsetting.

Since pretty much every society from global civilizations to isolated indigenous tribes, during all of recorded history, are organized in some sort of social hierarchy, success here, there, and everywhere, ancient and current, is linked to however distinctions are made within those tiered social structures.

Some value money and possessions more than others; some value wisdom more than youth and ambition; some reward spiritual vision more than physical prowess; while others select among those with the most of this kind of prowess when seeking, anointing, or following leaders.

Though what is valued varies this widely, and in even more ways, again in all instances and through all time, ultimately we find societies hierarchically structured with people in one way or another well aware of where they stand, where they are comparatively positioned, who is above them and, just as important, below.

Cultural anthropologists, especially those of an evolutionary bent, see the ways in which people are arranged in a society essential to survival and the very fact of universal hierarchies suggests that hierarchy itself is adaptive--essential to species survival. In other words, we have a better chance of surviving, thriving if we are arranged in social groups with clear distinctions among members. It makes us more formidable.

In most of the West it is thought, or necessary for our national narrative, that these social distinctions are not immutable (we do not, for example, believe in a caste system or see it to be "natural") and therefore there are opportunities for social mobility. Up and, alas, down. This, it is claimed, is in effect natural, based on natural social and cultural laws, perhaps socially constructed ones, but still having the force of "law."

Equally important in societies such as ours where there is the belief that the ultimate place one finds oneself in the social order is based more on merit than inheritance (though much economic theory sees heritability as a powerful predictor of one's ultimate status), in order for there to be social stability, people who do not achieve as much as they strive for, or feel qualified for, must come away reasonably reconciled to how well things turned out for them.

Here's where it gets complicated--the process of reconciliation.

If we live in a meritocracy and one does not "succeed," what is the explanation we tell ourselves when we wind up frustrated, with less than we hoped for, or felt we deserved? How do we reconcile ourselves to how things turned out for us when we are disappointed?

In conversations I have been having, I am finding a matrix of reconciliation behavior that troubles me.

Many tell me that they are less successful than they had hoped and (here's the disturbing part) are not doing as well as their talents, intelligence, hard work, ambition should in fairness have yielded. I am hearing a great deal about how unfair the process itself is--that if one did not go to the right schools, get the right advice, did not have the right parents, were not the right gender, ethnicity, age then things were rigged against them.

Further, even among people who I do know are not belief-driven, people who pride themselves, justifiably, in their ability to be rational and clear-thinking, I am hearing what sounds like a belief in destiny. I don't know what else to call it.

That, in a sense, things are not unfair or rigged but in many ways are predetermined. For some this takes a DNA path--geniuses are cited as examples to make the larger case. It is felt that DNA, not one's particular life circumstances, talents, efforts is destiny.

I see these merging explanations to be part of a reconciliation system in which one comes, often unhappily, to accept one's "lot in life" without having to take responsibility for one's ultimate "fate."

Things are either rigged or destined, the story goes, and since no matter what I do, no matter how worthy I am, there is no real chance that my ambitions can be realized or talents recognized. So, ultimately, why even try since these things are beyond my control and, here's the rub, responsibility.