Don’t let little things like facts get in the way (article about a poll showing a severe gap between Bush supporter’s perceptions and evidence to the contrary).

     I’m doing a little call-back to the point of an earlier entry. (where I tell a personal anecdote of seeing this cognitive dissonance in action)

     I linked to it, even though chances are if you don’t know me and you are reading this, that article is the reason you’re here in the first place.  J

     I’ve followed some of the links to other venues where this story has been repeated, and read the comments, and it seems that some people have missed my point…which is not surprising, as I had no idea that it would interest anybody who didn’t personally know me…and so I was somewhat careless and obtuse in the telling.

     The thing I took away from this experience, and the reason I told the story, is that people have filters through which they see the world.  Everyone has a filter.  You have to, or you would not be able to impose order on the event around you.  Your filter helps you interpret and react to input and events in useful ways.

     The filter screens out anomalous data…stuff that doesn’t fit…stuff that doesn’t make sense…or colors it, changes it so that it fits the scheme that works with your world view.  Only stuff that makes sense gets through.  If it doesn’t make sense, and can’t be made to make sense, it gets thrown out.

     The more ideological the person, the thicker and more distortive the filter is.  This does work for both the right and the left hand ideologues, but right now, since the right-hand ones are the problem at hand, I’m talking about them.

     So, you’ve got this filter and anything that doesn’t fit through it is either left out of your brain, or changed so that it can fit, and incorporated into your view of the world.  But every once in a while something that doesn’t fit gets through the filter.

     The result is discomfort, uncertainty, questions.  You find yourself having to try to make the anomalous information fit somehow, or you have to change your view of the world.

     You have a choice to make.  You can adjust your filter and allow more information of that sort in, and let it change how your see the world, and in some cases, your place and role in it, or you can reject the information and tighten down your filter to not let such information through in the future.  Or you can hold a book burning, pick up a club and start smashing, form a 521 group to lead a counter-attack, or some other form of destroying the source of the discomfort.  You can try to make the world conform to your idea of what it is and what it should be.

     Most people have the ability to make small adjustments, the greater the leap required, the fewer that are able to make it.

     Rationality requires the thinnest possible filter.  Ideally, none at all…but that way lies either perfection or madness…I’m not sure which...one is impossible, and the other undesirable. (yes, this is a paradox…where the absolute ideal of a thing results in it’s own antithesis…hurts, doesn’t it?)

     More possible and constructive, perhaps is the acknowledgement that you have a bias, and knowledge of what that bias is…so you can understand the effects that certain inputs have on you.

     My personal tactic has been to seek out discomfort…talk to people who think I’m an idiot and find out why.  I tend to not cover up my ignorance of certain topics just so that people can educate me (although I wish they would try to do it more gently, sometimes.  I’m looking for something equivalent to a poke in the ribs, and what I often get is a city bus moving at 50 MPH)  I don’t enjoy discomfort, but to me it is a signal that maybe I’m on a good path.  Growth hurts.

     But it is difficult to find input that causes discomfort without it feeling like a leap of faith into an abyss of unreason and eternal darkness.

     There are only two bitstreams allowed.  You can listen to people who agree with you on pretty much everything, or you can listen to people who think that everything that you think, believe and support is the work of the devil, Hitler, and a dark cabal of shadowy figures.

     If you would like, you can tune into Crossfire and listen to them scream at each other and trade pointed barbs.

     All this really does is drive us deeper and deeper into our shells.  We tighten down our filters and lock our world-view firmly over our eyes, and go into bunker mode mentality.

     It’s difficult to remain rational under these conditions, and sometimes you just have to let the inner partisan come out to play just to relieve the pressure…

     …but as Jon Stewart so eloquently put it…its hurting America.

     And he may have been looking at Tucker Carlson when he said it, but he was talking to both of them.  Liberal guy just pretty much sat there, lobbing in the occasional segue set-up to talking about the book…but he’s usually there, doing the same thing for the left that Carlson does for the right.

     It’s not Crossfire’s fault that we have biases and prejudices.  It’s not their fault that we can get into a head-space where we think we are the last bastions of rationality, and everyone else is some blend of Chaos and Satan.

     But they provide the theater that celebrates promotes and embraces it.

     Humanity is an inherently social species.  We seek out own kind and set up communities, and we enforce certain rules and roles and guidelines that work…until they don’t…then those communities break down and other ones that work form.

     I happen to think that we have reached a point where the current set-up no longer works.  We can no longer have a system that is just a battle of wits between two ideological factions trying to make the world fit a pattern that they invented out of their own heads.

     There is a reality check coming, and we can mitigate it if we stop now, and take the blinders off and start thinking.

     As any scholar of history and literature can tell you, when the fool takes off his motley and begins to speak plainly…something’s coming, and you’d better pay attention…and for those who are running things, who hold the reigns of power, and those who support them, it is more critical than ever.