Certain Sides

We all take sides on current events or topics of social import. As Welsh singer Tom Jones so eloquently crooned, “It's not unusual.” I have often worried about my own tendency to land on one side or the other of a topic and have likewise wondered if this tendency is more sinister than it at first appears. As I look around in our culture, it seems that certain sides are really out of whack with any intelligent moral position, but also, the urge to take a side itself may be the real and most dangerous threat to human solidarity.

Right now if you polled your neighbors and depending on their age and economic security you might find that some of them have taken a ‘side’ on certain current events. They may be for Ukraine or for Russia; for Israel or Palestine; pro-life or pro reproductive rights; convinced there is an immigrant problem or claiming that this is not as serious as some would want it to seem; in support of protesters at colleges or flatly anti-protest, to name a few possible positions. Everyone seems to take a side, but it may not be that simple a position to defend once chosen.

Where any of our neighbors fall on these particular topics will depend greatly on their own experiences, whether or not they have been to college, how much money they make and where their political sensibilities fall on a fairly wide and deep spectrum. They may also be influenced by where they live, whether they are residents of rural or urban areas or how (or if) they worship. The first real shock of looking at the results of those polls would be to find that your neighbors don't think like you do or, more surprising, that they feel as passionately about these subjects as you do about your own.

It isn't strange to wish to have an opinion on one or all of these topics nor is it strange to feel strongly about them. It is another thing altogether to take a side merely because of a preexisting prejudice or because we’re led to believe that such a position is inherently the only correct one by outside sources. We all have strongly-held beliefs, prejudices and a host of other motivating factors that may make us wish to choose a side, but those factors do not need to be obeyed. Not choosing a side on a topic until enough information is gathered and evidence processed and sources verified is also an excellent option. We often want to seem to be partisan, as if we’ve done the work and are choosing a position that most reflects our own moral code, but this is an illusion in most cases. No side is ever black and white. The more complex a subject is, the more difficult it is to take a side because there are so many factors that we do not or cannot know. And yet, the motivation to take sides in an issue is ancient and part of our tribalistic human nature.

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As primates we tend to follow social pressures so that we are not marginalized in our natural social groups. I think many people adhere to their particular beliefs not because they actually believe them but because they think they have no choice. Their families or communities or adopted groups make them feel they have no real freedom in the matter. This is specifically true of political and religious belief. In one case that made the news a few years ago, a woman got national notice for her strong positions as a Republican in her local and state affairs, but later openly confessed that she had felt she had to adopt those ideals because her husband and parents were all of the same ideology and she felt she had no freedom to “come out” against the grain of their beliefs. Another example is someone who, after voting a certain way for their entire lives, cannot look at their party and its ideals objectively. They seem unable to choose to stop supporting that party or change party affiliation or abandon the illusion of a two party system entirely and vote as an independent simply because that's how they have always voted.

Likewise, anonymous studies done in larger Southern Baptist congregations during the first decade of this century have shown that of an entire church group, more than half admitted that they never believed the dogmas of their faith, but felt they could not safely express those doubts for fear of losing their communities or social standing within those groups.

This is true for all of us, of course, and though we are often too subjective to see it, we also hold beliefs that are influenced by the many scenarios sketched out above. All of us have taken a side on some subject and usually not because we’ve done the hard work necessary to make an intellectual or moral decision, but because we’re afraid of being on the wrong side or of losing our community or faith group or both. This, more than any other motivating factor, can explain why some people are so vocal about certain topics. It’s not because they haven’t been presented with good arguments against their own beliefs, but rather because they fear that admitting that they have been wrong means that they will lose face in their community or that they are stupid or deficient. To lose buy-in socially has way more serious consequences (or so we think) than just admitting we were wrong in the first place. Most of us actually need the comfort and safety provided by groups and organizations since we define who we are by the tenets of those groups rather than by sorting out what we actually think on our own.

A YouTube content provider who has tried to show that the earth is flat, when shown data that proves their position wrong, cannot just accept the new data and change sides with no consequences. People will unsubscribe from their channel and they will face backlash. To prevent this, while knowing that they are wrong, they will work even harder to maintain their former position. This isn’t just true on YouTube, but in the pulpits and podiums of political and religious platforms everywhere. I once watched a local county man get put into place by an expert who—in front of the news vans, county government officials and a large slice of the public—made it clear that the gentleman's position was utter nonsense and pulled up the data to prove it. A week later, that man was still writing letters to the editor and posting on social media his original theses despite having been proven wrong in a powerful and very public way. Perhaps the pain of changing one's position and having been proved wrong is sharper than the social consequences of losing an affiliation.

Part of the problem, too, is that we live in an age of propaganda and superfluous information. We are constantly flooded by “breaking news” and fed talking points that may not be correct or even American in origin but that are designed to confirm our inmost biases. In a startlingly eye-opening discussion before Congress just a few weeks ago, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder gave several verifiable examples of Russian propaganda that had been taken up by the Chinese (and filtered through social media and certain news agencies) which had been proclaimed on the floor of the House or Senate as fact by members of Congress. This demonstrated that some individuals who have been elected to office to make laws to protect us were actively parroting talking points that came directly from Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machines. As if to drive the point further into our national heart, one of the representatives—someone who has a long history of spouting conspiracy theories—mentioned a Russian talking point during that very discussion, further cementing Snyder’s thesis, which he neatly underlined in that moment.

I have previously read Snyder's books and was aware that at least one former elected official was well known for supporting and spewing Russian propaganda while in office. What surprised me was that, with such a clear example on display during Snyder's time before the House committee, the representative whose gaff proved his point didn't immediately lose their constituency and political relevance. But then, I'm forced to remember what I already know. This particular adherent to ridiculous beliefs is actually just a mouthpiece for the people who put them in office, almost all of whom are equally convinced by Russian and Chinese propaganda themselves. The representative isn't an exception, but the rule. 

I would have been impressed if this member of Congress had, faced with the folly of their own ludicrous ideology, checked their position and publicly admitted that they had been duped. It would have gone a long way to helping their constituents see that they, too, may have been hoodwinked. Such an act, though, is a pipe dream. It would never make their preferred news organizations anyway, because that kind of admission would undermine the entire strategy of those platforms, which is to prevent people who watch them or subscribe from thinking for themselves.  

Partisan extremists cannot be elected if they admit they have been wrong about a talking point their own constituency have been told to believe by those so-called news channels. Such an admission from a person in leadership will never happen, mainly because we live in the “double down” era, where people dig in harder even when they know they are wrong just to keep a false idea alive to maintain their own positions of power and influence. The representative cannot create chaos or spout Putin’s propaganda if they don't have a platform.

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To allow a cultural problem of this nature to continue without dealing with it is untenable. An entire population of willfully ignorant people pretending to be certain just to feel as though they are justified in holding ludicrous opinions is a recipe for collapse. The symptoms of that collapse are no longer invisible. At every stage and level of our national polity, there is a distinct stench of certainty without the evidence to back it up which is compounded by a stark refusal to change one’s opinions once proven wrong.

Though this is a terrible state of affairs, the solution to this problem is fairly simple: foster a culture where people's opinions are based on verifiable sources and evidence, but then teach them that even these are not enough to be certain. Teach the children in schools right now that they can no longer afford to be “certain” about anything and that to take strong sides in anything past sports affiliation is a danger to themselves and our nation. Teach the kids that to actually, factually know a thing is a very rare position that must be born up on evidence and the hard work to excavate that evidence. We must teach them to be less dedicated to taking a particular side and more dedicated to trying to understand, as much as we can, that things change and we must change with them. Finally, in order to truly convey this new way of thinking, we must model it ourselves, abandoning the rigors of stolid side-taking and giving up those things we hold onto for all the wrong reasons. 

Repeatedly, things I once strongly believed have been proven wrong. It is difficult to be in a position of having been mistaken, but as Plato pointed out, this merely gives us the ability to learn something new. If I am wrong and admit it, I can adopt a new position, which gives me the ability to expand my knowledge and my thinking. The tenth step of the twelve steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous program states: I continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong, promptly admitted it. I’m not saying we all need to go to some AA meetings, but the foundational principle of AA is rigorous honesty with ourselves. It’s really hard to delude oneself if you live by a principle of regular inventory of the things we think we know and of the sides we choose to take.

There will always be people who refuse to change their minds. Their excuses are myriad. They may be too old or too comfortable with how they imbibe information. They may be too solidly plugged into those news channels and other “spun” sources. They may be tainted with prejudices or other moral frailties that blind them from seeing the immorality or foolishness of the side they choose. They may just think that the other side of the discussion is far worse and there are no other options.

These may seem like excuses and they assuredly are barriers to being a freethinker, but in most cases all of these obstacles can be overcome in time.

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When the facts change, I try to change my position accordingly. So my sides will always change and I will never be certain about anything. Yes, there are things that I sometimes feel certain about and about which we can be relatively sure we are right, if only from a moral position but those positions are defensible for that reason. That can only be a rare thing, too. For this reason, I try not to take sides, because it creates the illusion of a stable or strong position which is really built on sand.

Taking a side requires more than just watching TV or reading the newspaper. It requires actual research and study. The talking heads on TV and the newspapers and radio hosts may repeat their talking points enough for us to, like parrots in a cage, repeat back what we have learned by rote, but that must not be thought to be actual knowledge or understanding. A person who relies solely on this position is doomed to be on the wrong side of history regardless of where they fall on topics in the modern era.

Nevertheless, taking on a new or different position or choosing not to take a side are costly social behaviors. Such audacity can sometimes be life-threatening.

The time when a person providing a new point of view or at least thinking for themselves was carried away to be burnt at the stake by an angry mob is not quite over. Galileo, Copernicus, Spinoza, Lamark, Descartes, Hume and many others faced not just criticism for their fearless willingness to not adhere to the certainty of the church or political beliefs. Just a few years ago, a vice president of the United States was pursued through the national Capitol building by bloodthirsty goons with a noose because he refused to accept their cockeyed belief that the election was stolen. The seriousness of that scenario cannot be overstated. In the modern era, in the democratic Capital of the world, a member of the executive branch of our government was pursued by individuals threatening to hang him up by his neck until dead.  

I don’t think of this man as a moral exemplar. It is likely that, tested on his religious beliefs, we would find him to be recalcitrant and unwilling to change his mind. And yet he did do the right thing in the long run, which counts for something. One wonders what may have played out had he been caught and executed. Would the people who supported and encouraged his death from positions of power now be held accountable or would they merely adjust just enough to avoid the stigma of having been very wrong. I know at least one TV channel where talking points are continuously adapted so that their hard position on the very wrong side of things can be maintained. And people gobble it up as though it was the gospel, but then, not even the gospels are certain or verifiable.

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The slowly dawning realization that just because we hold knowledge or choose a side does not mean that we are correct may be one of those flaws of human nature that we must endure for as long as we are not extinct. My hope has always been that we can prolong the date of that extinction by being less certain and more skeptical of the things we’re told to believe or that are unarguably true. It’s tempting to think that, despite what the talking heads in the news or on social media claim, we can think for ourselves and rather than choose sides, apply doubt and our critical faculties to try to find out as much as we can about every side. If we have to make a choice, hopefully we won't shirk the responsibility to do the intellectual equivalent of thinking hard and leading with skepticism in all things.

This is why there are always a few people out there who seem to not take sides. They are neither Republican nor Democrat, they do not attend either Protestant or Catholic (or other) worship, they are not pro Israel or Palestine, but prefer to think that there are bad people on both sides who are harming good people on both sides. We can, in most cases, assume that Putin is a bad man, but not all Russians are and that we are responsible for remembering that, at the end of the day, we’re all of the same species and deserving of the benefit of the doubt.

I would like to think that the era of certainty, especially of the vile political or religious kind, is coming to an end. That the flare-ups of political and religious extremism are symptoms of rage at their own irrelevance. That they are irrelevant isn't new, but that these positions no longer obtain even ethical stability is perhaps one of the oldest problems of civilization.

The individuals that seek to maintain their own power or revenue streams will try to undermine our thoughtful desire to be freethinkers with propaganda and lies. I would prefer to be a person who is unsure; only knowing, as Socrates said, that I know nothing for certain, rather than being a person who would risk their entire life, reputation and moral position to keep hold of an ideology just because that’s what I’ve always thought or worse, because some millionaire newsman told me to think that way. 

Now is not a time for “Certain Sides”, but rather a time to admit when we are wrong and change our position, no matter how long we have voted or worshiped a certain way. Our children and grandchildren will thank us.