The surest way to mislead yourself is to love and revere an individual or a group so much as to consider them infallible on any and all matters. ‘If such-and-such says so, it must necessarily be right, and ipso facto worth emulating’, or so this type of ‘reasoning’ goes.
Paradoxically, a close-second to this self-deception technique lies at the other extreme. That is, to hate a person or a group so much as to consider everything they ever say as automatically wrong and therefore unworthy of as much as a sympathetic hearing, let alone serious consideration. In many respects, the two approaches represent two sides of the same coin.
Both these recipes for self-deception are equally effective, although the first one is arguably somewhat more popular among the masses. Both methods owe their popularity to the fact that they allow their practitioners to bask in an ‘enlightened’ self-righteousness without necessitating their using their minds in the least. It would indeed be a tough ask to come up with a more desirable method for deceiving one’s self.
If the first recipe enjoys slightly more favour from the masses, it is the second approach that is the modus-operandi of choice when it comes to those who like to think of themselves as intellectuals. Probably the reason for it is that it is arguably easier than the first to pass off as honest, sound thinking. It is common observation that most people adopt a philosophy or a way of life based on pragmatic and emotional reasons. The logic or the rationale is searched later, and is often easily found. This is true of masses as well as the so-called intellectual-elite. But it is the more intellectual types who find this putting of the cart before the horse more problematic than their counterparts amongst the masses. They therefore need to invent ingenious ways to camouflage the trickery from others (and more importantly) from themselves. The formula of rejecting anything that is not quite up their alley merely by dismissing the group that it is (rightly or wrongly) associated with proves to be a godsend in such situations.
The formula is accompanied by all the delicious utilities of ad-hominem. Repudiating an individual or a group altogether is much easier than constructing or de-constructing an argument. Instead of the difficult task of analysing and responding to an argument on its own merits, all that it requires is labelling of a group or a person unfavourably followed by dismissing the argument out of hand. A mere slogan then is successfully passed off as argument. For it is an unfortunate fact about the universe we happen to live in that way too many people consider slogans to be legitimate substitutes for thinking; and this includes the very men raising those slogans.
When confronted with a point of view that is different from one’s own cherished opinions, a man has two options open to him: either to accept and adopt it based on its merits, or voice his objections on the reasoning that supports the conclusion. But this calls or hard work, and most people would rather die than submit to any of that. The other option is to (correctly or incorrectly) label the man or the group that has presented the idea as a liberal, a communist, a Wahhabi, or what have you, and consider the matter settled once for all – problem solved! The unsurpassed merit of this latter approach is that one can preserve one’s innocence for as long as one wants or till one dies, whichever comes later.
The man who dismisses something he is uncomfortable with based on the ‘grounds’ that it comes from (say) a Wahhabi fails to realize (or deliberately chooses to fail to realize) that he shares numerous beliefs – fundamental beliefs at that – with the Wahhabis: Oneness of God, the belief in the Hereafter, the nature of the test for man here on earth. The same goes for all such repudiations. It is hardly the smartest idea in the world to dismiss something on a ‘rationale’ that, were it applied consistently, would demolish the very foundation of one’s own belief system. But it is extremely convenient; hence the undying popularity of the approach.
There is this old idea that one of the core activities in any educational program must be to make the same pupil plead the case from both sides of the aisle even if only to make him realize that there could be two (or more) alternative views on an issue. Unfortunately, this is not put into practice nearly enough, with obvious results. Acknowledgment and appreciation of the valid portions of the opposing party’s arguments in any conflict, or at the very least an understanding of where the ‘enemy’ is coming from are capabilities that very few possess. For the rest, the world is divided into heroes who can do nothing wrong and villains who are devils incarnate, with nothing in between. This urgently needs to be addressed. And since man tends to become more rigid as he ages, the earlier this training starts the better.
Educators, whether parents or professional teachers, must make it their business to start teaching the young ones to think for themselves. And their focus must be on how to think, not what to think. That way, they can be expected to cite much better grounds for their opinions than having to rely on hero-worship on the one hand or ad-hominem on the other. The great difficulty in this project is that the idea is alien to most of the educators themselves, who have come to regard education as the activity to teach their students the ‘correct’ things instead of inculcating in them the ability to discover for themselves the sound stance on any given issue.
