BELIEF: AN OWNER’S MANUAL
ARTICLE 19
AMBIGUITY-VIEWPOINT INTERACTIONS
IN REASSURING BELIEFS
As you may recall, in Article 17 we explored the implications of interactions between ambiguity and viewpoint in informative beliefs. We came to understand why
- higher-viewpoint informative beliefs are inherently more ambiguous than lower-viewpoint informative beliefs
- the ambiguity of lower-viewpoint informative beliefs limits the precision of the higher-viewpoint informative beliefs that those (lower-viewpoint) informative beliefs inspire
- higher-viewpoint informative beliefs that bias or otherwise alter the lower-viewpoint informative beliefs on which they’re based discredit themselves by doing so
- unfalsifiable (i.e., catalytic) informative beliefs aren’t about what they appear to be about; they’re about the believer’s existential choices.
Similar interactions between ambiguity and viewpoint also affect reassuring beliefs. However, the effects of those interactions differ.
VIEWPOINT-IMPOSED CONSTRAINTS ON THE PRECISION OF REASSURING BELIEFS
While viewpoint-imposed constraints on the precision of informative beliefs are straightforward, viewpoint-imposed constraints on the precision of reassuring beliefs are subtle. Of course, there are no precise beliefs that address reassuring Ethical Viewpoint concerns (i.e., judgments of goodness motivated by the desire to feel good about oneself). Similarly, there are neither precise nor imprecise beliefs that can satisfy our yearning for reassuring Visionary Viewpoint dreams of improvement or perfection. Nor can our reassuring Quest and Commitment Viewpoint longing for meaning and purpose be assuaged by any beliefs save reassuring catalytic narratives.
In light of these similarities, it would be reasonable to assume that
- like informative Realist Viewpoint beliefs, reassuring Realist Viewpoint beliefs may be precise, imprecise, rules of thumb, or catalytic narratives
- like informative Ethical Viewpoint beliefs, reassuring Ethical Viewpoint beliefs may be imprecise, rules of thumb, or catalytic narratives
- like informative Visionary Viewpoint beliefs, reassuring Visionary Viewpoint beliefs may be rules of thumb or catalytic narratives
- like informative Quest and Commitment and Existential Viewpoint beliefs, reassuring Quest and Commitment and Existential Viewpoint beliefs must be catalytic narratives.
However, the first three of those assumptions are mistaken. They are mistaken because all reassuring beliefs incorporate second-order precepts that discourage accuracy, precision, and rigor while encouraging the use of psychological defenses including selective recall, self-deception, expedient reasoning, blatant irrationality, and blinding bias. Wielding those second-order precepts transmutes reassuring beliefs – whatever their apparent viewpoint or precision – into catalytic Existential Viewpoint narratives that lead us to see ourselves as unrealistically knowledgeable, astute, ethical, competent, benevolent, caring, and connected to something greater. Those narratives also create the illusion that our virtues and the realities that sustain them are enduring.
Assumptions 1-3 are also mistaken because reassuring beliefs’ second-order traditions encourage believers to defend their beliefs by changing the ways they interpret them, making it impossible to determine if they wrong. Since the defining attribute of ambiguity is the ease with which believers can identify error, such protean beliefs are best viewed as catalytic narratives.
ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE PRECISION OF LOWER-VIEWPOINT AND APPARENTLY CONTINGENT HIGHER-VIEWPOINT REASSURING BELIEFS
Since all reassuring beliefs are best considered Existential Viewpoint catalytic narratives – and thus similarly ambiguous – concern over the relationship between the precision of lower-viewpoint beliefs and apparently contingent higher-viewpoint beliefs is pointless.
ON THE INNOCENCE OF REASSURING BELIEFS THAT ENGENDER BIAS IN THE BELIEFS ON WHICH THEY DEPEND
As noted above, reassuring beliefs (particularly those we’re passionate about) have the power to make related beliefs more supportive. While exercise of that power might be thought to compromise the utility of both modified beliefs and beliefs that benefit from such modification, it has the opposite effect. By reducing cognitive dissonance, such modifications produce beliefs that are more reassuring.
However, it is essential to remember that beliefs that benefit from violations of logic and objectivity are, to that extent, incapable of providing reliable guidance. If believers assume that the guidance of reassuring beliefs is substantive and trustworthy, they’re likely to use the wrong tool for the job.
For all of the reasons described in this article, cells in The Periodic Table of the Beliefs that are capable of hosting reassuring beliefs are all the same color (dark grey) regardless of their nominal viewpoints or ambiguities. The Periodic Table of the Beliefs also emphasizes the fact that informative catalytic narratives and reassuring beliefs are about self-constitution by placing informative catalytic narratives adjacent to reassuring beliefs.
ON AMBIGUITY AND LINGUISTIC LEGERDEMAIN
Reassuring beliefs resemble catalytic informative narratives in yet another way: like catalytic narratives, reassuring beliefs aren’t about the issues they appear to address. Just as the ambiguity of informative catalytic narratives renders them silent about the issues they seem to address, the ambiguity of reassuring beliefs renders them incapable of saying anything meaningful regarding what they appear to be about.
Reassuring beliefs, like informative catalytic narratives, tell us nothing about the world around us. However, they tell us a great deal about the kinds of persons we choose to be. Analysis of reassuring beliefs requires us to ask the same question we ask when analyzing informative catalytic narratives: “How does this belief change me?”
While one might think that the standards by which answers to such questions are properly judged would be the same whether asked of informative or reassuring beliefs, those standards differ radically.
DANCING WITH THE DEVIL: THE VIRTUES AND VICES OF REASSURING EXISTENTIAL VIEWPOINT BELIEFS
What, then, are the standards we should use when judging reassuring Existential Viewpoint beliefs should be judged? One such standard is self-evident. Just as the virtues of informative Existential Viewpoint beliefs are those that help believers fulfill their yearning for authentic experience, knowledge, mastery, and love; the virtues of reassuring Existential Viewpoint beliefs (i.e., all reassuring beliefs) are those that help believers fulfill their yearning for the illusion of experience, knowledge, mastery, and love.
Just as the most valuable informative beliefs are those that answer questions like, “What is?” “Is what is, good?” “What yet-to-be-observed realities might be better?” “What do my visions of improvement or perfection justify?” and “What to those visions demand of me?” the most valuable reassuring beliefs are those that help believers answer questions like, “What ‘facts,’ moral judgments, visions of perfection, or goals make me feel good about myself?” “What ‘facts’ support beliefs I find reassuring?” “What moral judgments most powerfully endorse my desire to see, do, and be whatever I might wish?” “What visions of perfection justify the most profoundly unbridled commitments?” and “What goals most compellingly justify anything that I might wish to do?”
Just as our most valuable informative Existential Viewpoint beliefs nurture attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility, our most valuable reassuring beliefs focus our attention on whatever we find reassuring. Such beliefs distort experiences to render them consistent with what we find reassuring, enhancing our capacities to reason speciously and communicate seductively, heightening our ability to generate subjectively righteous, objectively dubious passion and loosening ties between our actions and the visions, values, and verities that rationalize them.
Just as our most valuable informative Existential Viewpoint beliefs deepen our commitment to ways of relating and communicating that maximize the flow of information and perspectives, our most valuable reassuring beliefs help us suppress observations, lines of reasoning, perspectives, and opinions that might lead us to question our reassuring conclusions.
And just as our most valuable informative Existential Viewpoint beliefs help us build and sustain relationships, institutions, and social structures that manage the stresses and honor the triumphs of genuineness, our most valuable reassuring beliefs help us build and sustain relationships, institutions, and social structures that support our embrace of reassuring self-deceptions and communal illusions.
SOME IRONIES AND WRINKLES IN THE PRACTICE OF SELF-DECEPTION
The paragraphs above suggest that reassuring beliefs serve us best if they encase us in opaque bubbles, restricting relationships and information sources to those that reinforce what we crave to believe, blinding us to contrary arguments, deafening us to contrary realities, and suppressing doubts and uncertainties. However, that’s not entirely true.
Delusions lose much of their power to reassure when the harm of their misleading guidance becomes undeniable. It is a joy to dance with the Devil until, twirling you over an abyss, he lets you fall.
To accept the guidance of reassuring beliefs is to operate less effectively. The harm that reassuring beliefs do may touch only those whom believers view as unworthy of their concern, affect only those whose suffering falls beyond believers’ orbits, or, under the influence of such beliefs’ second-order precepts, be “explained away.” However, almost all such beliefs, if followed, have opportunity costs.
I am aware that some, like C.S. Lewis, trust that “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort nor truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” Still, I suspect that we function most effectively overall if we grant ourselves occasional relief from the contemplation of disturbing veracities we’re powerless to change. As T.S. Eliot said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” The trick is finding a serviceable balance.
Identifying that balance is a delicate and subtle matter for which I have yet to develop even a rough procedure. I can, none the less, offer a few ways of managing that balance.
The first is that, when we practice self-deception, we remain aware, in a small, dark corner of our minds, that we are deceiving ourselves. We already do this when, absorbed in fantastic narratives, we willingly suspend disbelief or when, immersed in a theatrical drama, we restrain the impulse to assail an imminently dangerous villain.
I’m also suggesting that when we delude ourselves, we occasionally consider what our beliefs and second-order precepts are shielding us from, what our ineffectiveness is costing us, and what damage we may be doing. If what we glimpse is disturbing, we may wish to evaluate such beliefs and precepts more methodically.
ADDICTIVE BELIEFS: SHORT-TERM REASSURANCE; LONG-TERM ANGUISH
Of course, denying unqualified credence to beliefs that reassure us weakens their power to reassure. But turning a blind eye to the destructive potential of such beliefs invites addiction.
A reassuring belief can be addictive if it does three things. First, it must make the believer’s life worse. Second, it must blind the believer to the part it plays in making his or her life worse. And third, it must lead the believer to adhere more closely to its guidance in a vain attempt to make his or her life better.
When under the influence of an addictive belief, the worse one’s life becomes, the more passionately one believes, and the more passionately one believes, the worse one’s life becomes. The influence of such a belief can quickly spiral out of control, pervading one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions and profoundly damaging one’s life.
EXERCISE 19
EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF REASSURING BELIEFS
- For a few days, do your best to identify apparently reassuring beliefs you look to –or are considering looking to — for guidance. Document those beliefs in writing.
- Confirm the reassuring nature of each belief by using “A Tool to Help You Identify the Desire(s) that Motivate Your Belief(s)” or by determining that the belief in question uses mechanisms described in this article to discourage objectivity.
- Choose 3-5 survivors of the process described above for evaluation.
- Print a copy of the tool below for each to-be-evaluated belief.
- Write each belief in the space containing the sentence stem, “I believe that . . .”.
- Keeping the pertinent belief in mind, answer each of the questions in “A Tool to Help You evaluate the Impact of Reassuring Beliefs,” below.
A TOOL TO HELP YOU EVALUATE THE IMPACT OF
YOUR REASSURING BELIEFS
I believe that . . .
Prepare to answer the following questions by doing one of the following:
- Place yourself being the “veil of ignorance” described in Article 18.
- Imagine you didn’t believe the to-be-evaluated belief.
- Imagine you ascribed to a conflicting belief.
- Imagine you are someone of impeccable integrity who has unrestricted access to your consciousness but doesn’t find the belief in question reassuring or worthy of credence.
Answer the following questions:
- Does this belief make me feel
- knowledgeable?
- astute?
- competent?
- virtuous?
- Does this belief encourage me to
- selectively attend to things that support it? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- selectively ignore things that challenge it? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- experience and/or interpret experiences and data in ways that support it? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- promulgate information that supports it? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- avoid saying things that challenge it? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- suppress information that challenges it? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- view contrary positions as evil? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- Does this belief allow me to justify otherwise questionable actions and attitudes? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- Does the belief inspire relationships that support self-deception? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- When defending or promoting this belief, do I feel free to employ
- self-contradiction? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- inconsistency? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- dishonesty? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- evasion? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- logically invalid arguments? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- biased data? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- In the interest of defending or promoting this belief, do I
- state my positions in ways that make them difficult to falsify? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- state my positions in ways that discourage or hinder meaningful discussion? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- use threats, force, or intimidation to win arguments? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- manipulate the terms or rules of discourse to render the desired conclusion inevitable? If so, to what effect? Is this what you bargained for?
- Is this belief addictive? Does it have the potential to become addictive? Is this what you bargained for?
- In light of the issues this tool has raised, what is my honest assessment of this belief’s overall impact? Is this belief worth believing?
What thoughts and feelings did you become aware of while doing this exercise?