Truth Seeking in the Land of Ideology

 I have frequently (and rather pompously) declared myself to be a Seeker Of Truth.   I emphasize that title with capital letters because I regard seeking the truth to be every bit as noble as other appellations such as, Chaplain, Professor, Doctor, Senator or even Dump Manager. (I claim solidarity with all workers in the profession of Waste Management, as we suffer similar scorn by society: our work is vital, yet society does not regard it as nice. But, someone needs to do it.)

Truth Seeking is scorned by true-believers.  The pursuit of Truth requires an  objective evaluation of facts.  This is impossible for one who is invested deeply in an ideology, which by definition is a system of doctrines based on beliefs.    It seems many TB's feel the need to loudly proclaim their moral superiority.  I regard this impulse as equivalent to whistling in the dark.  TB's almost always express fear - fear of  eternal punishment, fear of dangerous slippery slopes,  Socialism, terrorism, strangers, change, loss of traditional values, etc.

   

Debating with someone under the sway of ideology is futile, especially if you are invested in a competing set of doctrines. This is one of the reasons that dinner parties are less interesting these days.  Conversation has devolved to an assertion of beliefs rather than an exchange of honest information.  Listening once meant trying to keep an open mind, but no one listens anymore, except to listen for opportunities to hijack the discussion. (When not talking, the ideologue suffers the lame and inaccurate assertions of others, waiting for the critical  pause and then launches a nuanced verbal attack.)  No one seems to change their minds about anything.

It seems that when you become a TB and you decide what you truly believe in – whether it is Global Warming, Illegal Immigration, Progressive Taxation or Abortion (just to name a few) – you unshakably  believe only those assertions of fact that agree with your baseline position.  All other “facts” are suspect.  You question their validity because of the alleged bias of person who utters them, or the junk science that discovered them, on and on.  Faced with incontrovertible evidence, you will still find a way to stick to your root beliefs.  The shrinks have a name for it they call it "Cognitive dissonance".

In conversations with others, I have often been scoffed at as a fuzzy thinking fence sitter, a flip-flopper and probably worse.  My interlocutors must have felt it is an intellectual defect not to have a bear-hug on  a firmly-held conviction.  To me, it seems nearly impossible to find the Truth in the haystack of factoids, rumors and disinformation.    

I have never claimed to be the smartest guy in the room (except when I am alone with the cats)  but I privately (perhaps pompously) considered myself intellectually superior to smarter guys who did not realize that no issue is completely black or white. There are at least two sides to every issue. There are no absolute truths. 

Right wingers will use the 5^th Commandment of the Christian Bible to argue that killing is wrong, but they only mean it in the context of abortion.  These same believers will giddily approve the use of tax money to subsidize the production of weapons of mass destruction because it creates jobs.  But, where is that fine print in the Bible that allows situational exceptions to the injunction against killing?

Left wingers would like to remove all vestiges of human tribal inclination.  We are the world, they claim.  All resources belong to all men equally.  They would demolish state boundaries and distribute the wealth to everyone.  Yet without the competitive spirit of Capitalism there would be no wealth to distribute. 

These contradictions do not bother the True Believer.

Things are getting worse for Truth Seekers.  Negative political ads are nothing new, but recently the tack seems to have taken the direction towards the "low road."   There was a time when a smear ad would exaggerate the opponent's position, or take a quote out of context.  But the recent Romney TV ad deceptively shows Obama quoting a statement from the McCain campaign, as if it had been Obama's statement.
I think this is beneath contempt and would not consider voting for Mitt Romney unless he apologizes and fires the staff member(s) responsible for the ad.  Romney is more susceptible to negative ads than most polititians, since he can be honestly quoted to reveal his changeable positions.  True Believing conservatives already consider Mitt to be a shape-shifting, flip-flopping RINO (Republican in name only).   Now, he has alienated
Seekers of Truth.  

The Problem With Diversity

Before I forget this, I wanted to mention and article I read a few weeks ago (March 8th) in the Ideas Section of the Boston Sunday Globe on the topic of bias and diversity. The article by Drake Bennett reported that recent research studies have been unable to demonstrate that the ubiquitous diversity training programs have resulted in significant positive changes. They measured headcount and promotions at major corporations where such programs have been de rigueur for the past decade or so, and the results were, well, unexpected. They were the same as in places that did not have such programs.

I think the reason for this is simple: No one can make a compelling argument that more diversity results in a more profitable company. Or a better basketball team.

In the same section a Globe editorial cited the staffing at Wheelock College in Boston for their high "participation" rates of black and Hispanic employees. One might gather from this emphasis that the definition of "diversity effectiveness" is hiring more minorities and women into "good" jobs and paying them the same as white males.

In other words, diversity training is perceived as having pretty much the same goals as affirmative action. Many managers see affirmative action as an artificial device to lower standards to allow less qualified applicants to have hiring preference. (If you have been in conversation with a customer service agent who can barely speak English, you can appreciate how ineffective some of these program can be.)

The discussion seems to revolve around race and gender. We don't hear so much about other aspects of true diversity - age, disability, nationality? Moreover there seems to be a widening gulf between economic classes. People - especially older people - seem to be most comfortable around people who are compatible educationally and economically. I think discrimination in 2010 may have less to do with skin color than it does with social values (at least in the Northeast). People who can afford it are choosing to live in communities where The Association dictates the color of your house and the credit score - not the skin color- of your neighbors. Racial intolerance like public smoking has become unacceptable.

Political polarization has become the dominant divisive force in our culture to an extent never seen before (at least by me). In the old days, you would invite people of different views to stimulate interesting dinner conversation. Nowadays, we segregate our dinner guests by their political beliefs to avoid shouting matches and other hostilities.

I mention it because this is an area where race clearly matters less than ideology. Many on the Left decry the Tea Party rank and file as ignorant racists, partially because the membership is predominantly white. But this does not accurately describe the motivation for Tea Party activists - which is principally economic.

The Diversity movement gained its broadest acceptance during the boom years. The crisis of double digit unemployment over the past two years has probably changed the landscape. It will be interesting to see if struggling companies meet their stated diversity objectives as they rebuild their decimated workforce.

I would not be surprised to see American businesses start to move away from "diversity" as a goal, since it has no real business value, other than to assuage the guilt of those who feel that they have been the fortunate beneficiaries of a good genetic dice roll. When the central purpose of a business is profit, talent will almost always trump bias. (Note the qualification "almost always" because the Hobbesean truth is - some people are just nasty, brutish and short. )

Facts Are Stubborn Things

If you do an Internet search on the phrase "Facts are stubborn things" you will find that the cyberworld is full of conflicting information. You get about 60,000 hits. Within the first dozen citations, the quote is attributed to John Adams, Mark Twain, Ronald Regan, Lawrence Peters, and several unknown French guys. So much for stubborn facts, eh?

This, in a nutshell, is the problem for seekers of Truth ever since Al Gore invented the Internets. There is too much conflicting data, misinformation and outright malicious fabrication. As Lincoln observed, "It is easy to fool most of the people most of the time. "

Guys like Rush Limbaugh and John Stewart make their living maliciously distorting the words and deeds of anyone of the other side of their political ideology. They may think they are doing it for entertainment, but too many of their fans miss the humor and believe anything they hear from the lips of their guru.

We do not know who we can trust to tell the truth. The stubborn facts are buried deep in the mine and we do not have time to go in and dig them out ourselves. Google and other search engines are constantly gamed by special interests and clever marketers to make their interest-friendly results appear near the top of the list of returned hits.

Like me, most seekers-of-truth are in a hurry for enlightenment. So, we usually abandon our online research after viewing a few pages of search results. We click on the one or two that seem to agree with our preconceived notions. If the writing is intelligible, and it supports our point-of-view, we hyper-link it to verify our source. We shamelessly ignore contradictory data.

The problem remains:

“Facts are ventriloquists dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.” Aldous Huxley. At least, I think he was the one who said it.