We are born into this world completely clueless and helpless. Most other species have at least the ability to move about and seek food from the moment of birth, while all we have is a basic rooting reflex that causes us to try suckling anything that touches our lips. Our initial survival is pretty precarious, to say the least. We have to figure out our world and how it works relative to us in order to survive. We are born with a high-powered information absorbing and processing computer called our brain and we use it to the max to create what computer programmers call predictive algorithms. In simple terms what that means is that we try to predict the immediate future based on present available data. We use this to both test what behaviors we can execute to produce a desirable response from the environment (mom or dad) and to assess what clues the environment is giving us that predict what we will experience next. As you might expect, being right in our predictions is super important to us.
Does any of this sound familiar as adults? Is being right important to you or anyone you know? Does it upset you when things don’t work the way you think they should? How about when people don’t act in ways that make sense to you? On the flip side, are you pleased when things do work out as you expect and people do the right things as they should? All of these perspectives and feelings are the inner workings of our predictive algorithms. In reality, there is no such thing as right or wrong, merely things we like and don’t like. Should is merely a projection of our made-up beliefs onto others. And beliefs are simply statements of our conviction and confidence in the accuracy of our predictive algorithms. In short, everything we think and feel is a byproduct of our experiences in trying to figure out how things work so that we can successfully survive and hopefully thrive.
The big problem with this whole thing is that everyone has different sets of experiences in their lives, and consequently they come up with different sets of beliefs about what is right and what is not. Their predictions about how things should work are different than ours. Each of us is trapped inside our own worldview created by our own personal experiences. Because we are utterly convinced that our algorithms are accurate (since after all they are based on personal experience), belief in our ability to predict most everything around us provides us comfort. Anything outside our views feels innately uncomfortable. Outside views feel bad and chaotic simply because they are not part of our experience. We have not had the opportunity to test these different views through personal experience to see if they are true. We believe we know what is true based on our interpretation of our past experience (predictive algorithm).
I don’t know about you, but my personal experiences don’t come with explanations. Consequently, I have to invent stories to explain why my predictions work so that I can generalize my predictions to new circumstances. Clearly, my stories must have been right or how else would I have survived? So I end up believing my stories. This is an almost universal human trait, but it is also a logical fallacy. Basically, any explanation is better than no explanation. It produces what is known as superstitious behavior and beliefs. Here is a simple example – gee, I took a ton of vitamin C last week when everyone in the office was coming down with the flu and I didn’t get the flu. Therefore vitamin C must stop the flu! Your experience was true, that you did not get the flu while everyone else did, but your story as to why is completely made up. In truth, you have no idea why you did not get the flu. Maybe it was the vitamin C and maybe it was one of the hundreds of other reasons. But we want to believe our story because it now gives us a belief about how to protect ourselves from flu bugs in the future. That is what we are hyper-wired to do, to find out what to do in the future to produce the results we want. We are not wired to accept that we just don’t know why things turn out the way that they do.
Unfortunately, this failure of sanity produces some very corrupted consequences. Because we believe in our version of reality (the stories that support our predictive algorithms), we believe that in order to be safe everyone must see/believe in the same stories. The cumulative total of our stories is what we term “my way”, and we want everyone to see and do things our way so that we will be safe and comfortable. They can’t do that because they, just like you, believe that everyone, including you, need to see things their way so they can be safe and comfortable. Everyone wants the world to dance to their tune. I jokingly refer to this as wanting to be the center of the universe. We truly believe that we are right and others should align with this cosmic truth. We base this on the truth of our experiences but ignore all the stories we made up to explain why things turned out the way that they did. We insist on everything we experienced being an objective reality when in truth the parts we are trying to impose on others are the parts we made up; the explanation as to why things turned out the way they did.
What happens when our predictive algorithm fails? What do we do when the next flu bug comes around and we take another ton of vitamin C and this time we still get the flu? What do you do when things don’t work out the way you thought they would? Occasionally a few people will admit that their belief that the vitamin C would stop the flu was wrong, but nine times out of ten people will make up some excuse as to why their believed remedy did not work and will still try it again the next time the flu comes around. Why is this? Go back to the feelings of how imperative it was for that little baby to figure out how things work in order to survive. Those feelings are still just as alive in our subconscious mind, and they control most of our behavior. We can’t accept not knowing. We have to have something to believe in to give us control over the anticipated outcome. So given the choice between no clue and a wrong clue, we will choose the wrong clue.
A fun side note, the kids that are able to embrace what they don’t know but still want to know are the kids that grow up to become scientists. The true essence of the scientific method starts with observing something that happens and knowing that you have no idea why, but that you are curious and want to know why. You then make up conditional stories called hypotheses and then test them against reality to see how well the stories hold up. If the story seems to hold up, you postulate it as a theory and put it out there for other people with different biases and experiences to test to see if your story continues to hold up. A true scientist never knows anything for sure, not ever. You may have a thousand examples of your story/theory being shown right, but it only takes one example of it failing to predict the outcome for the theory to be tossed aside. This is why scientists are not normal. Most people can’t handle not knowing. Why? Because if you admit that you don’t have a clue, how do you decide upon a course of action? What do you do to stay safe? How do you get your needs met?
Hopefully at this point, I have communicated why it is so important for people to think that they are right and their way is the right way, (even when it clearly is not right since it is not my way – joke!) We are truly desperate to hold onto our belief that our way is the right and best way. The alternative is to embrace that we don’t have a clue as to what is right or best. The truth is our way is what we like because it is comfortable for us. It is what we know. If we actually embrace this truth then we could vastly reduce the hostility in the world. When the battle of right against wrong is reduced to my comfortable familiar stories versus your comfortable familiar stories, all the high-pressure juice behind the conflict is sucked away. Once you accept that it is impossible for another human being to see things your way without having lived your life (which they have not done) then the lie that everything would work out best if it were all your way evaporates. No one can possibly make the same choices that you would make in the future because their algorithms are different than yours. Nope, we are going to have to find a different way to create safety and harmony for us all. Sameness will never happen. It can’t.
So what can we do? This is not a new question. Philosophers have been arguing over this one for thousands of years. I will not pretend that I have the answer to this thorny issue, but when you look at what has worked and what has not within communities of humans we might get a clue. I observe that mutual respect is a good place to start. Having the humility to see that one person’s needs and wants are not any more important than another’s seems to work to a point, but it fails when this perspective becomes a rule of law. Basically, how do you proceed when two people need or want the same single thing. There has to be the element of personal responsibility for creating value and exchange for getting your needs and wants met. These fundamental elements are reflected in the creation of commerce, trade, and the invention of common laws to dictate what respectful behavior looks like. In brief, we are talking about civilized behavior. The battle of my way versus your way is the essence of uncivilized behavior. Negotiation and mutuality lead to civility. The demand for one way destroys civilizations.
Take care,
David