A few thoughts on human nature

But seriously guys, let's get this started. TC has (finally) finished reading Nineteen Eighty-four, so I want to touch on a theme in the book and discuss how I see it relating to the real world. If you haven't read it, some of this might be lost on you, but I'll try to explain anything necessary.

The term doublethink in the book, taken to mean the act of holding two conflicting and mutually contradictory beliefs, is a powerful example of how lousy our perception of reality can be. I'd like to extend that definition slightly, instead taking it to refer to the act of holding a belief in the face of extraordinary evidence against it. In the book, many acts described as doublethink don't exactly fit the first definition, but I think the second one fits better and still manages to capture the same mental process that we go through. Throughout this post when I refer to doublethink, I will be referring to my slightly redefined version.

At this point in the blog I feel I should make a short note. It is very difficult for me to communicate some of the concepts I want because I haven't discussed much of the framework behind my thoughts on it. For example, in the next section I want to discuss belief and opinion formation, but it will be difficult to keep it brief because there's so much there.

So this doublethink stuff, does it have some basis in reality or is it just an artificial construct created to make the book seem more believable? Obviously, I think it has some basis in reality or I wouldn't be writing about it. Here's some polls: 13% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, 20% think the sun revolves around the earth, 48% think that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

Where do I think this stuff comes from? I think the source of this is at our big, wonderful, humanly flawed brains and how they function. We like to act like our brain is one big center for reasoning out things and storing data, but the truth is that is only a fraction of our brains. Much of our brain is used for other functions. Some quite useful, such as those parts that keep my heart beating and allow me to breathe without thinking about it. Others are only situationally useful, such as the areas dealing with emotional responses.

The emotional center of our brain can be very sneaky, stealing the spotlight from Reasoning without us even noticing it. Consider this study that found that when people try to reason through damaging information about their political candidate that the emotional areas are engaged, not Reasoning. The most amazing thing is that I'm sure that if you asked the participants, they would have sworn up and down that they were using pure reasoning to come to their conclusions. And there's no way they could have known because people aren't naturally equipped to determine how they come to conclusions.

So my argument is that people often use their emotions over reason without even knowing it, and because they don't know any better, assume that their conclusion is based entirely on fact. I think everyone can think of at least one person they know that is pretty intelligent, but strongly holds at least one truly bizarre opinion that they can't successfully defend if asked about.

I think another powerful ingredient, and one highlighted in the book is the power of peer pressure. Yes, your first grade teach was right, peer pressure is extremely powerful, and most of the time we don't even notice it. Human beings have this social behavior so deeply implanted that we take for granted all of the subtle things that we do to maintain our social structure. Open up a book on sociology and read about all of the truly bizarre things that we do when put in groups. Or psychology, read about how individuality turns off when you are part of a group mentality. These sort of subconscious reactions that we have to social situations are much too numerous to count, and many of them we would never be aware of unless pointed out.

We strive to be accepted in society. People will sacrifice bits and pieces of who they are to conform to society's expectations of them. Even you and me, we've both most certainly given up things and changed our opinions based on what our peer group thinks. The worst part is, the vast majority of things that have changed us, we'll never notice. It is such a powerfully subconscious behavior that unless we are watching very carefully, we'll never observe it in action.

In the book it is explicitly mentioned that Winston didn't feel any real inner desire to participate in the two minutes hate, at the beginning he would participate as a matter of form. As it got going though, he became more and more willing to join them and by the end he was truly a member of the mob, both in appearance, but also in his own feelings and thoughts.

So this concept of doublethink is what struck me as the most powerful from the book. Not only because it was so powerful in the book, but also because it strikes me as a very real thing, and something out of our control for the most part. I read news stories and opinion articles all of the time, and I see pieces of the world formed by "facts" that have absolutely no basis in reality.

And, of course, the scariest part of it all is that it begs the following question: What "facts" that I hold true have no basis in reality at all? How do I find out? Can I find out? And those three questions alone are probably material for a future entry.