“The true value of science is that it prevents us from believing that which we would really like to believe.” — O. Alfred Granum
Of all the ways there are to deceive, none is more effective than telling the truth. All that’s needed is to select only those facts which bolster one’s argument while carefully suppressing any information that supports the other side. Exhibit No. 1 is cable news. Perhaps that’s why in a court of law we swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” After so swearing, an intentional falsehood can become the crime of perjury. The truth and the whole truth can be very different things.
The late Steven Covey, author of “The Seven Basic Habits of Highly Effective People,” said “if you really want to believe a thing, you can find the data to support it.” For example, if you want to believe that pacifism is a key message of the Bible, you can find verses and passages to support that view. Or if you choose to reject that, you can easily point to precisely the opposite, including the conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua where God is described as having stopped the sun in the sky so that a battle could continue. In Ecclesiastes, there is “a time for war, and a time for peace.” In America’s colonial times, certain biblical passages were used to justify slavery and to decree that slaves should obey their masters.
Several years ago, while the American military was still trying to liberate the Afghan people from the Taliban, a local pacifist told me that the antiwar activism of his group was based on biblical teachings. But having once been a Sunday School teacher and taken Bible study classes, I challenged him with chapter and verse indicating the complete opposite. His answer was, “Well, we find those to be very unfortunate parts of the Bible.”
That demonstrates another important point made by Covey, a quote often attributed to the writer Anaïs Nin: “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”
We all tend to interpret facts and events through the filter of that which we wish to believe. None of us, to include this writer, is immune from that simple maxim, no matter how informed, educated and objective we consider ourselves to be. The only chance that any of us has to approach the truth is to expose ourselves to as many points of view as possible and with the singular intent of understanding, not arguing back or defending. We can’t be sure we’re right if we refuse to consider that we might be wrong.
All of this explains why we must never accept at face value what we hear from highly committed activists and advocates, conservative, liberal, progressive or otherwise. In fact, the most informed people that I have ever known are also the most calm and circumspect. They don’t use hyperbole or repeat stock phrases.
However, activists are not necessarily trying to deceive. It is simply that their commitment to their cause has become so intense and so one-sided that some of them become almost cult-like, all mouthing similar words and phrases. Talk with a committed Marxist, and you will likely hear the words “struggle” or “peoples” in the first few minutes. They become like that Upper East Side society matron who exclaimed, “How could George Bush have won the election? I don’t know anyone who voted for him!” Yes, I’m sure she didn’t. Inbreeding has never been a healthy thing for our minds or our species.
It is very difficult to bring overzealous people back from the edge and closer to the center. They believe that they already have the world figured out. While they are often outspoken advocates of “dialogue,” what they promote is not an open-minded attempt at mutual understanding, but rather an opportunity to bring the rest of us around to their point of view. We’re the ones who need to become enlightened, not them. That isn’t dialogue; it’s a reeducation camp.
To be fair, activists offer much that is admirable, and I have defended some of them as the “growing tips” in our society. To their credit, they are the people who have the courage of their convictions and who are willing to be on the receiving end of public scorn for being very public about their beliefs. As such they play a vital role in our democracy. They call attention to important issues and present us with perspectives that compel the rest of us to reexamine our long held and cherished beliefs. That is a growth opportunity for any society, just as long as we remember that everything that we are hearing has been processed through an ideological filter and is rarely reflective of the whole truth.
Joseph Filko has taught economics and American government, and lives in Williamsburg. He can be reached at jfilko1944@gmail.com.
