In a recent article, Spencer Critchley discussed the difficulties a number of “conservative” Republicans are having coping with the complexities of the modern world. The part of his essay that caught my attention is the following:
The truth, as usual, is complex. But complexity is what the right-wing historical revisionists don’t like. They prefer to reduce it to binary choices of right-wrong, good-evil. We see this on the extreme left, too, where some argue that because the founders did not extend full rights to slaves, women or Native-Americans, they were no better than any other white, male oppressors. For that matter, we see it among Islamic fundamentalists, who believe that because America does some things wrong, it does everything wrong.
In a previous blog, Arguing with Reality, I discussed the problems caused by focusing so intently on your mental maps that you fail to see the territory they are supposed to represent. Dividing the external environment into two categories—Good/Evil, Black/White, us/them, with us/against us, —fails to acknowledge the complexity of the territory. Failure to acknowledge complexity where it exists may be the single most common way of arguing with reality.
Politicians are not, of course, the only ones to do this. To some extent, we all do it. I don’t remember where or when he said it, but Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate columnist for the NY Times) said in reference to people’s understanding of the current debate about the state of the U.S. economy, that “most people do not understand macro economics.” As one who is among those who don’t, I at least recognize that the complexities of macro economics are not among my areas of expertise. Problems occur when people fail to recognize that some aspects of the territory are complex beyond their level of understanding.
One of the discoveries I made early in life was that individuals had to have a certain level of intelligence before they could recognize that other people had more of it. Those really low on the intelligence scale (however measured) can recognize that others are smarter. The character Forest Gump is an example. Those who are relatively bright (my guess is with IQs about 125 and above) have a good sense of who the really smart people are. The problem is that those in the mid-range (i.e., most people) can’t tell. They do pretty well at determining who isn’t as smart as they are, but they tend to rank themselves as higher on the scale than they deserve. Men in particular tend to do the same thing when it comes to athletic ability.
When the group in the middle (for both intelligence and athletic ability) are confronted with the fact that others have done better (higher scores, greater accomplishments), they rationalize their relative lack of success in one way or another: “I could have X if it hadn’t been for Y;” “So and So did better than I did because (he/she cheated, was born rich, had better connections/coaching, etc.).” Some of this kind of denial serves a useful purpose. It may help the individual retain sufficient self-esteem to focus more intently on achieving other objectives. The downside is that too much denial may lead to difficulties achieving a variety of other objectives.
Alfred Korzybski (one of my heroes), author of the landmark book Science and Sanity, was concerned about the degree to which individual’s mental maps deviated from the territory they attempted to describe. He noted that the principal problems were that human perception deletes, distorts, and generalizes as information from the territory is stored in the form of mental maps. Human communication also deletes, distorts, and generalizes. If Person A sees something and reports it to Person B, by the time B conveys the concept to Person C, it has already been through four rounds of deletion, distortion, and generalization.
The environment we live in is complex. To navigate much of our day-to-day life, we need to use deletion, distortion, and generalization to simplify our mental maps to make sense of the environment. The “rule of thumb” is that if you can perceive only two options (good/bad, right/wrong), you are probably oversimplifying. When that’s the case, it’s time to ask what you are overlooking. When you think that you are absolutely certain, it’s time to ask yourself one of Richard Bandler’s favorite questions: “Are you sure enough to be unsure?”
All of this is not to say that some things can’t be decided quickly and easily, but judgments about people (especially politicians) and about complex issues (such as the U.S. economy, health care, climate change, and the evolution of species and life on this planet) require more than either/or thinking.
