There‘s no shortage of truly disheartening and scary events unfolding these days, at the behest of human beings.
There are few, if any, tidy solutions.
There are a million debates about which facts are correct. I therefore try, in my understanding and in my writing about human nature, to examine our underlying motivations—to provide insight especially into the emotional underpinnings that cause us to:
a) believe what we want to believe,
b) discredit and ignore what we want to, and
c) behave violently and carelessly.
Because it’s usually not about the facts, but what motivates us emotionally to believe the facts we want to, even in the face of mountains of evidence we choose to ignore.
I don’t have all the answers, or any, but I have watched myself, and others, grow and change my mind and perspective on many issues by questioning my own beliefs outright as well as my motivations for wanting to believe what I do.
As you know and can see on the internet and in person, people gonna believe what they want to, no matter how ludicrous and weak the evidence.
I find that the only way to change this pattern is for the person to want to wake up, to question their own beliefs, and to do the emotional work that would allow them to believe differently.
I’ve found that such people are far and few in between. Those who agree with this writing are likely those who do this tough work already; those who deny it are likely those who don’t do the work.
And there ain’t nothing that can be done about this . . . which is why healing at this level is an inside job attributed to each person alone, at their own decision to do so. All we can do is put it out there, and like the seed that sprouts with just the right amount of rain and, if ever, flowers when the time is right (and the soil and air not crowding us out!).
This is, in my opinion, a deep form of self-love and love for the world, since how we relate to ourselves often determines how we act to the world.
Ironically, what we need is a lot more humility than boldness. A lot more listening and *healthy* doubting of ourselves (while listening to all sides of stories and bearing the emotional suffering of being wrong if the facts say so) than blind trust in our “intuition” and feelings . . .
from which, if we are not really careful, we make that dangerous leap from raw feeling to unconscious interpretation of what the feeling means (emotional reasoning), which usually ain’t a good path to the most likely truth.
And what drives our emotional bias? I think a big factor is backlogged pain in our hearts that instills fear and bias to believe twisted and extreme versions of what is more likely accurate. Until we clear that pain, our biases and knee jerks will drive us to intellectual dishonesty, tunnel vision, and denial.
More peace in the parade of craziness can be ours. We just gotta have the uncommon strength to undo parts of our psyche for the virtue of honesty and compassion.
― Jack Adam Weber
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