BELIEF: AN OWNER’S MANUAL
ARTICLE 16
VIEWPOINT IN REASSURING BELIEFS
As we’ve learned, inattention to the viewpoints of informative beliefs can lead us to overlook the weaknesses of lower-viewpoint beliefs on which our higher-viewpoint beliefs depend. Disregarding such weaknesses can, in turn, lead believers to treat higher-viewpoint informative beliefs as more powerful and reliable than they are. This article will explain why the errors caused by neglecting the viewpoints of reassuring beliefs are even more consequential.
CONTRASTING ISSUES ADDRESSED BY INFORMATIVE AND REASSURING BELIEFS IN REALIST, ETHICAL, VISIONARY, AND QUEST AND COMMITMENT VIEWPOINTS
The issues reassuring beliefs address bear a superficial resemblance to those addressed by informative beliefs that share their viewpoints. However, while we look to informative beliefs to help us know, master, and love, we look to reassuring beliefs to help us feel safe, secure, competent, right, and righteous.
Informative Realist Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer the question, “What is?” By contrast, reassuring Realist Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer such questions as “What ‘facts’ would make me feel good about myself?” and “What ‘facts” would support moral judgments and other beliefs I find reassuring?”
Informative Ethical Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer the question, “Is ‘what is’ good?” By contrast, reassuring Ethical Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer such questions as “What moral and ethical judgments would make me feel good about myself?”, “What moral and ethical judgments support reassuring visions of perfection?” and “What moral and ethical judgments would most powerfully endorse my desire to see, do, and be whatever I wish?”
Informative Visionary Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer the question, “What would improvement or perfection look like?” By contrast, reassuring Visionary Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer such questions as “What visions of improvement or perfection would make me feel good about myself?” and “What visions of improvement or perfection would justify complete commitment and complete freedom to act as I wish?”
Informative Quest and Commitment Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer the question, “What do my visions of improvement or perfection call upon me to do?” By contrast, reassuring Quest and Commitment Viewpoint beliefs attempt to answer such questions as “What goals would make me feel good about myself?” and “What goals would justify anything I might wish to do or be?”
COMPLEMENTARY ISSUES ADDRESSED BY INFORMATIVE AND REASSURING BELIEFS IN THE EXISTENTIAL VIEWPOINT
The complementary functions of informative and reassuring beliefs are easiest to see in the Existential Viewpoint. Wholesome informative Existential Viewpoint beliefs help believers become accurate observers; thoughtful, caring judges of good and evil; inspired, creative and humble visionaries; and healers of the world who balance passion for what might be with reverence for what is. Such beliefs also help believers create and nurture relationships and forms of interaction that aid them in achieving those ends.
Reassuring Existential Viewpoint beliefs, on the other hand, help believers distort data, evidence, and reason with abandon. Such beliefs also help believers create and sustain relationships and patterns of communication that help them deceive themselves, justify whatever they might wish to do, and consecrate whatever they might wish to be.
BIASES, VIEWPOINTS, AND SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESIES
Biases are often reassuring. Many persons find it comforting to blame outsiders for frustrations and failings for which they themselves are responsible. Similarly, many find it easier to dismiss infidels, critics, and dissenters as morally or intellectually flawed than to subject their own religious, social, and political opinions to objective examination. Some prejudices also comfort believers by portraying hatred as a virtue – i.e., as an indicator that one is right and righteous – and as a basis on which to identify and unite with other believers.
Relationships between higher-viewpoint and lower-viewpoint beliefs we look to for reassurance differ from relationships between beliefs we look to for information. As you may recall, higher-viewpoint informative beliefs are grounded in – and depend on – relevant lower-viewpoint beliefs. You can’t know whether what is, is good unless you know what is. Your vision of what might be better can’t be worthwhile unless you have a thoroughgoing grasp of what’s good, and so on.
But when we seek reassurance, our higher-viewpoint beliefs are free of the constraints of that tidy hierarchy. If we value a reassuring belief that’s proper to a specific viewpoint, we’re likely to support it by modifying any and all related beliefs.
In the extreme, our biases may be so powerful that any set of data will lead us to the same reassuring conclusion. Take, for example, the way that those who embrace the reassuring Ethical Viewpoint belief of anti-Semitism interpret what appear, in their eyes, to be Informative Realist Viewpoint observations (i.e., facts). As Gustavo Perednik (2001, p. 26), (2017) observed, “The Jews were accused by the nationalists of being the creators of Communism; by the Communists of ruling Capitalism. If they live in non-Jewish countries, they are accused of double-loyalties; if they live in the Jewish country, of being racists. When they spend their money, they are reproached for being ostentatious; when they don’t spend their money, of being avaricious. They are called rootless cosmopolitans or hardened chauvinists. If they assimilate, they are accused of being fifth-columnists; if they don’t, of shutting themselves away.” In other words, motivated by their desire to see Jews negatively, anti-Semites interpret whatever Jews do as pernicious.
Similarly, as the pioneering American sociologist Robert Merton observed, individuals and groups may create circumstances that validate their prejudices while blinding themselves to their responsibility for doing so. In the groundbreaking article in which he described self-fulfilling prophesies, Merton noted that the view of African Americans as strikebreakers contributed to their exclusion from most labor unions – and the jobs those unions controlled – during the early 20th century. Such exclusion, he further noted, encouraged them to take advantage of strikes to obtain employment that was otherwise unavailable to them (Merton, 1948).
Conversely, as observers of the human condition from Sartre (1943) to Festinger and his intellectual descendants (e.g., Tavris & Aronson, 2007) have noted, we are all too likely to adopt beliefs that justify our decisions and actions, regardless how irrational or self-defeating. In the language of this website, the realities created by our lower-viewpoint beliefs and choices influence our choice of higher-viewpoint beliefs -particularly when we’re seeking reassurance.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE MUTABILITY OF “FACTS”
The freedom which those who embrace a reassuring belief can alter related beliefs – and the ease with which those alterations can prompt further alterations – make it hard to pin down what reassuring beliefs tell us about ourselves and our needs. Before we can attempt to identify what a reassuring belief tells us about ourselves, we need to ask whether it serves another belief, and, if so, which?
If a reassuring belief appears to serve its own purposes, those purposes are likely characteristic of its viewpoint. A critical examination of the process by which we arrived at that belief can also provide a partial answer to the question, “Which defense mechanisms, biases, oversights, and fallacies are capable of distortion our vision of reality?”
If the belief in question appears inspired and/or shaped by another belief’s need for support, its purposes likely include the viewpoint-specific needs of both the belief in question and the belief it serves. A critical examination of the processes by which we arrived at the belief in question and the belief or beliefs it supports can provide us with insight into the biases, fallacies, oversights, and defenses we employ when seeking reassurance.
Finally, as all informative beliefs – to the extent they are, in fact, informative – aid our attempts to be genuine, to create and sustain noetic relationships, and to facilitate open communication; all reassuring beliefs – to the extent they are reassuring – aid our attempts to distort data, evidence, and reason, and to create a sustain relationships and impose rules of communication that serve our needs for self-justification and self-deception.
IDENTIFYING ASSUMED VIEWPOINTS OF REASSURING BELIEFS
How can we determine the viewpoints we assume our reassuring beliefs to have? First, by identifying the decisions we’ve made based on those beliefs. If those decisions have real and meaningful consequences, we likely assume the belief to be informative. Once we know that, we need only determine whether the decisions those beliefs have influenced. If those decisions are relevant to who we wish to be and how we wish to function, the belief is proper to the Existential Viewpoint. If those decisions are relevant to the nature of reality, the belief is proper to the Realist Viewpoint. If those decisions are relevant to the goodness or shortcomings of reality, the belief is proper to the Ethical Viewpoint. If those decisions are relevant to what improvement or perfection might look like, the belief is proper to the Visionary Viewpoint. And if those decisions are relevant to the actions our our tantalizing visions justify or demand, the belief is proper to the Quest and Commitment Viewpoint.
If we’ve made those decisions to buoy ourselves, we assume those beliefs to be reassuring. But even if we recognize a belief as reassuring, we are unlikely to assume that we are motivated to believe it by our need to buttress other beliefs. As such, we can usually determine the viewpoint we assume the belief occupies by determining the nature of the reassurance it itself provides.
If you’re aware that, despite their questionable implications, you embrace beliefs or values that help you (a) casually cherry-pick facts, (b) misrepresent data, (c) view fallacy as reason, or (d) forge relationships and rules of discourse that support your illusions you likely assume those beliefs or values to be reassuring and proper to the Existential Viewpoint. If you’re aware that, despite their dubious accuracy, you embrace the “facts” that a belief provides because they feel good, you likely assume it to be a Realist Viewpoint reassuring belief. If you’re aware that, despite their dubious morality, you embrace the value judgments a belief inspires because you find them heartening, you likely assume the belief to be reassuring and proper to the Ethical Viewpoint. If you’re aware that, despite their fancy and improbability, you treat the visions of improvement or perfection a belief inspires as certain, you likely assume it to be a Visionary Viewpoint reassuring belief. And if, although you realize that pursuit of your idyllic visions may be not only ineffective but harmful, you rush ahead, willfully blind to the dangers of your path, you likely assume the belief that inspires you to be reassuring and proper to the Viewpoint of Quest and Commitment.
SUMMARY
Why is it worthwhile to attend to the viewpoints of reassuring beliefs? First, because absent that attention, we are likely to rely on reassuring beliefs for guidance they cannot provide. We are likely to assume that they can help us understand reality and achieve our goals, although they’re incapable of either. Attention to the viewpoints of our reassuring beliefs can render our expectations more realistic.
Second, because absent that attention, we are unlikely to recognize or reflect on the warped values and falsehoods they lead us to accept. Absent such attention and reflection, even our best-intended actions and decisions are likely to be ineffective or destructive. Attention to the viewpoints of our reassuring beliefs inevitably provokes critical examination of our standards and perceptions.
And finally, because absent attention to the ways that reassuring beliefs create factual and moral “truth,” the unwary believer is likely to be blind the fact that such “truths” are illusions. Such blindness can lead believers to act with implacable and unmerited confidence, boldly implementing ineffectual plans and righteously causing suffering. To attend to the viewpoints of our reassuring beliefs is to recognize their power to distort assumptions, data, and values and, by so doing, to liberate ourselves, if only partially, from their spell.
EXERCISE 16
INCREASING YOUR SENSITIVITY TO THE CONSEQUENCES
OF FAILING TO ATTEND
TO THE VIEWPOINTS OF REASSURING BELIEFS
1. Identify one or more beliefs that guide you in each of the areas below. Suggested areas from which to draw beliefs are:
• where you find joy
• where you find meaning and purpose
• your view of others – especially those whose views differ from your own
• your personal life
• your vocational/professional life
• advice/guidance you offer others
• political positions you advocate
2. Choose five or more reassuring beliefs you rely on for guidance and are interested in examining. At least one of these beliefs (and preferably at least two) should be proper to each viewpoint. If you have not already done so, use the questionnaire found in Exercise 7A to ensure that those beliefs are, in fact, reassuring.
3. Print the appropriate number of copies of the tool below.
4. Write each belief in the space containing the sentence stem, “I believe that . . .”.
5. Keeping the pertinent belief in mind, answer each of the questions in “A Tool to Help You Increase Your Sensitivity to the Consequences of Inattention to the Viewpoints of Reassuring Beliefs,” below.
A TOOL TO HELP YOU INCREASE YOUR SENSITIVITY
TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF
INATTENTION TO THE VIEWPOINTS OF REASSURING BELIEFS
I believe that . . .
1) If the belief above is proper to the Existential Viewpoint
a) How does the belief in question make you feel?
b) What does the belief in question free you to do or be?
c) Does the belief in question encourage you to
i) avoid “inconvenient” data. If so, how?
ii) alter data? If so, how?
iii) interpret data in a biased manner? If so, how?
iv) violate laws of logic? If so, how?
v) employ other defense mechanisms? If so, which?
d) Are you aware of other effects the above belief has on your functioning? If so, what are they?
2) If the above belief is proper to the Realist, Ethical, Visionary, or Quest and Commitment Viewpoint,
a. identify the actions you have taken or suspect you’d would be willing to take under the influence of that belief. Describe the confidence with which you’ve acted.
b. identify some lower-viewpoint beliefs that you suspect you’ve modified to provide support for – or render them consistent with – the belief in question. What questions do those modifications raise about the validity of the higher-viewpoint belief?
c. If the belief in question were wrong, what would some probable consequences of acting on it be?
d. Is the confidence you described when answering “2) a” above justifiable? If not, why not?
3) If you believed the opposite, how might your answers to the above questions differ?
4) What thoughts and feelings did you become aware of while doing this exercise?
REFERENCES
Merton, R. K. (1948). The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy. The Antioch Review, 198-210.
Perednik, G. (2001). La Judeofobia: Cómo y Cuándo Nace, Dónde y Por Qué Pervive), p. 26. Barcelona: Flor del Viento Ediciones.
Perednik, G. (2017, November 2). Judeophobia – Anti-Semitism, Jew-Hate and anti-“Zionism”. Retrieved from Zionism and Israel Information Center: http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/judeophobia.htm
Sartre, J.-P. (1943). Being and Nothingness. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Tavris, C., & Aronson, E. (2007). Mistakes Were Made (but not by me). New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.