Troy Southgate

Dec 18, 2024

I READ an interesting article on psychology in which it was claimed that presenting people with a list of facts in order to demonstrate how their belief in something is wrong is a waste of time. The author, a former scientist, went on to say that the

“mind doesn’t follow the facts. Facts, as John Adams put it, are stubborn things, but our minds are even more stubborn. Doubt isn’t always resolved in the face of facts for even the most enlightened among us, however credible and convincing those facts might be.”

Furthermore, he argued, alternative facts only become acceptable if they support pre-existing beliefs and thus the only effective way to persuade either yourself or someone else to change their outlook on a particular matter is to trick the mind into thinking that a former viewpoint was based merely on the facts that were available at the time. Not in an “I told you so” fashion, which simply leads to deeper entrenchment on both sides, but by trying to detach the identity of yourself or your counterpart from the erroneous belief itself. This has the effect of transforming a personal view into a hypothesis, so when the notion in question is shown to be wrong the individual finds it easier to relinquish the argument and avoid looking stupid or unintelligent. As the writer explains,

“When your beliefs are entwined with your identity, changing your mind means changing your identity. That’s a really hard sell.”

Imagine if a football manager got his tactics wrong and the strategy resulted in his team’s defeat. He might not take kindly to a provocative sports journalist pointing out that he was wrong after the game, as a manager is expected to assume personal responsibility for handing three points to the other side, but if it was explained in a way that the same tactics might lead to victory in a subsequent match then he might be more willing to concede that such methods were inappropriate on the first occasion.

Perhaps somebody who believes in conserving European identity, for example, and yet who is a member of a group promoting racist or supremacist ideology would be offended if you told him that he was going about things the wrong way? By explaining that there is nothing wrong with conserving European identity but that it can be achieved in a more realistic and peaceful way through active support for non-coercive tribal communities, on the other hand, it might be possible to persuade him to change direction without having to continue rubbing shoulders with psychopathic morons or even give up on politics altogether.

People don’t like to admit they’re wrong and one of the worst examples of how this can lead to more problems is when people from different sides of the political spectrum rub each other’s noses in the fact. Indeed, having observed the post-electoral behaviour of American voters in the wake of their most recent election we see the ‘victors’ in this shameful affair wallowing in ‘liberal tears’ and deriving some kind of sadistic pleasure from the perceived ineptitude of their political opponents. This, I’m sad to say, is a logical consequence of what is discussed in the aforementioned essay on psychology and accounts for much of contemporary Left-Right intransigence.

If you truly wish to create a world in which it becomes possible to move away from the squabbles of the last century, then what we really need is honour, dignity, maturity and transcendence. For that, you must begin to look for solutions that do not divide people up into two rigidly opposed camps – as our mutual rulers prefer – but adopt a more eclectic approach that seeks to unite the best of both. As Richard Hunt once said: “We need to combine the loyalty of the Right with the compassion of the Left”. That will only happen once we agree to tear away the diseased edifice of ‘representative’ democracy and start thinking about who has an interest in keeping us at one another’s throats.