Consciencebound

Ok, I admit it, I like to argue.  I like to debate and discuss important issues and ideas.  But in my discussions with other people about important issues and ideas I have come upon an interesting psychological phenomenon.  Have you ever been talking to someone, debating maybe, and you had a realization that you weren’t truly as sure about what you were saying as you would like the other person to think?  Maybe it was over politics, religion, philosophy or why enchiladas ARE better than tacos.  You were steadfast in your position and felt that for some reason, you could not let on that you had doubts about your belief/position.  In your own mind you might have been thinking something like, “Hm, that is a good point and I really don’t have an answer for it but I am going to look into it more since I obviously and not as sure as i thought”.  But do you say this out loud?  No.  In the mean time, you argued and argued your position as if you were not swayed one bit.
Whats that you say?  You haven’t experienced this and have no idea what I am talking about?  Well, I have.  And it has happened more times than I care to admit.

As much as I pride myself as being a skeptical person and as being someone who is open to other points of view and wants to know the truth no matter where it may be found, I can’t believe how much I still do this.  Who do I really think I am fooling here?  Sure, maybe some people that I am talking to are fooled into thinking that I am confident and sure and knowledgeable,  but I often think I am actually fooling myself into believing that I AM in fact confident, sure and knowledgeable. I think that if I say something often enough and with enough conviction and if I can take apart most of the arguments of those who believe different than I do, that it proves that I am correct.  But it doesn’t…

I may in fact be correct about this or that, but if I am truly interested in what is ACTUALLY true rather than what I WISH were true or what I think OUGHT to be true, then I need to be able to admit my insecurity, PUBLICLY, to other people that I discuss these important issues with.  I have seen this phenomenon, many times in my life at many times when I believed very different things and I still do it to this day, although hopefully not as much.

The problem is that I WANT to be fooled.  I want to believe that I have thought it all through perfectly and that I don’t need to take a second look at my belief.  Even though I am well aware that I have been wrong about many important things in the past and that I may in fact be VERY wrong now, I still want to feel as if I am convinced and sure.  It makes me feel secure. I don’t want to admit my own fallibility and that I may be wrong.

When I was a very serious Christian, I remember sometimes seeing a point of view that had some merit (or so I thought at the time), yet because I had COMMITTED myself to my belief that was different, I couldn’t concede a good point when I saw one.  Most of the time this revolved around in house, theological disagreements with other Christians.  I would that my interpretation of the Bible was God’s truth and so in order to be true to God i had to be true to what I “thought” God was saying or teaching on a given subject.   Even though I also believed in the Christian doctrine of original sin and that I was seriously flawed, I still had this commitment to my points of view.  But it has now happened as I have stepped away from the faith.   I no longer have a need to feel like I have to defend God’s truth per se, and so it becomes obvious what I was doing all along.  It all comes down to this psychological need that we have, believer or unbeliever, with being right at all costs.  Disagreement often makes us very uncomfortable and we just want it to go away.  The easiest way to make it go away is to just pretend that we have arrived at the truth and have no need any longer of careful research and reasoning.

The most recent time that this happened to me in my post christian experience was when I was having a conversation with a friend about politics and economics.  He made some good points that I had never considered before and had never even heard of yet I felt the need to stand my ground and attack any weakness that I could see in his position.  Finally, I conceded a few major points that he was making and the whole tone of our conversation changed.  It was no longer tense (or at least not AS tense as it was) and it became a dialogue that I felt I could learn from.  It pushed me to ask myself how well I really knew what I was talking about in this area and how much of what I was saying was just regurgitated from others I have read or listened to.  The more I thought about that, the more ignorant I realized I was.  And the more ignorant I realized I was,  the more compassion and understanding I felt for my friend’s position that I had so often demonized in the past without a second thought.

It also made me think about how much of the public discourse that happens in this country is comprised of two people who are heavily fueled by this need to never concede a point in public.  Both sides dig their heals in and do not let up no matter what.  Even to their own public embarrassment (in my opinion) when they can’t see that their arguments have been beaten.  It is a like a breath of fresh air when you can witness two people talking about a given subject who have strong disagreements yet they can both calmly acknowledge the strong points of the other and weak points of their own view.

If you ever find yourself in a conversation with me and I look as if I am not even considering the possibility that I could  be wrong, kindly remind me of this post.

Jeff

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