There's an early scene in Battlestar Galactica where Gaius Baltar and Number Six are having a moment, and Number Six says something to the effect, "Your capacity for self-delusion is really exceptional. We should make a scan of your brain." (I could probably find the actual quote, but I want to get these thoughts down right now.)
We are not rational beings. That's perhaps the foundational delusion. We reason backward from our feelings. As embodied beings, our experience of "the world" generates "feelings." A kind of analog, biological heuristic network that our brain uses to orient its conscious experience.
Your "gut."
These feelings are accessible to the rational, cognitive part of our brain, but we seldom practice that sort of introspection or self-reflection.
Thinking is hard. It's energy-intensive, and most of the stuff going on in our heads is habituated anyway. It takes effort, and who really has the time?
My neighbor sent me a lengthy message he received from his pastor. Two excerpts:
This may be the reality described by political candidates and depicted by cable news, but it is not the reality we experience on a daily basis as we go about our lives. The people that live down our street, or that we stand in line with at the grocery store, or that we strike up a conversation with in a waiting room, or that we share a pew with in church are a far cry from the enemies that are demonized in our political discourse. Actually, Christians have a word for what these people are: neighbors.
This election is not a battle between good and evil; it is a contest among neighbors—neighbors who differ in their convictions but who are nevertheless united in their love for this country and their desire to see it thrive.
It's a marvelous sentiment, but it's wrong. It's self-flattery to believe that we have "convictions." We have reactions. Emotional ones.
"Neighbors" elected Nazis to the Reichstag. Hitler lost the only election he ran in, for president against Hindenburg in 1932. Yet German voters made his Nazi Party the largest party in the Reichstag, which ultimately led to Hindenburg appointing him Chancellor in 1933.
Self-delusion, rationalization, wishful thinking, whatever you want to call it, it's the mechanism we call on to resolve the tension between how we "feel" and what others seem to "think."
Trump voters, the "nice ones," most often say things like, "I don't like the things he says sometimes, but I like his policies."
"I like his policies."
Trump evokes an emotional response in them that is congruent with their own default interior state. One that seems to be aggrieved, fearful, or angry.
The pastor says the election "is not a battle between good and evil." Well, isn't it?
What does he think that looks like? WW II maybe? Concentration camps and carpet bombing? That's a battle between "good and evil"?
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.
I don't know what I should do. Love my neighbor? I can't talk to him. He has his feelings, he doesn't want to believe they're "wrong." He's not going to "do nothing," he's going to vote for evil. Why? Because of his "convictions"?
And they'll look the other way, and keep looking the other way, as people are "rounded up" and deported. Look the other way as political enemies are persecuted and jailed. Look the other way as the institutions that provide the foundation and structure of this civilization are systematically dismantled to give free reign to the wealthy and the hateful.
The Germans thought Hitler's rhetoric about the Jews was just that, rhetoric. Or, that's what they told themselves anyway.
It never ends well.
One of two results obtains today, though which result may not be clear for several days.
One will be imperfect, but better than the other.
The other will be a catastrophe.
Because my neighbors "liked his policies."
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:44 Tuesday, 5 November 2024