Why Do People Believe Wrong Things? A Note on How We Explain Political Differences to Ourselves

Last week, a message arrived from someone I’ve known for nearly twenty-five years. An excerpt:

Hugo, you were my mentor. You became a friend. You have been there for me through some really hard times. I don’t know what my life would be like if I hadn’t taken your class. And so I want to preface what comes next by saying I will always be thankful for you.

I stood by you in 2013, even though I was disappointed, shocked, and hurt. You lied to me. I forgave that lie. I cannot stand by you now, as you continue to double down on supporting Israel’s genocide. You posted on your Facebook about donating to the Friends of the IDF. You have posted support for racist settlers in the West Bank. You said, “I support Israel and whatever Israel needs to do to win.” You have turned a blind eye to the horrible death toll, to the executions of civilians, the targeting of journalists.  You are cosigning another Holocaust. You are doing it without apology.

I am disappointed, shocked, and hurt once more. Israel is clearly a blind spot for you. We all have blind spots. I have blind spots. But my blind spots don’t involve raising money for mass murderers. I wish you well, I hope you change, but I am blocking you and ending our friendship.

(I can’t ask for permission to share this, but I have edited the message to remove anything identifying.)

In a post a few weeks ago, I quoted Bertrand Russell’s 1962 letter to Oswald Mosley. The great British philosopher wrote to the great British Fascist to turn down an invitation to debate:

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.

It's a great line. It’s also easy to say, as I’ve pointed out, to someone you know only by unpleasant reputation. Russell never imagined that Mosley was his friend, or that they shared the same “emotional universe.”  The two men despised each other, in a polite and civilized way. Neither felt betrayed, or disappointed, or shocked by the other. They had no pre-existing closeness to be destroyed. They operated with cheerful revulsion towards each other.  My mentee, whom I’ve known since they were a teen, could handle the betrayal occasioned by the revelation of my infidelities and hypocrisies.  They cannot handle the horror of discovering that, entirely sober and with deep conviction, I hold a position they find monstrous. 

It's one thing to know from the jump that you and another person do not share an emotional universe. It is another thing altogether to learn that the person you thought was so like you is, in fact, not. As any historian of internecine fights on the left or right can tell you, there is a long tradition of old friends becoming bitter enemies after finding themselves on opposite sides of a particular issue. Over and over again, partisans describe the falling out as a betrayal akin to the sudden revelation of marital infidelity.  How could this person I love sleep with someone else? How could this person I admire believe this loathsome thing?

When someone does not see the world as we do, and indeed violently opposes our view, we tend to attribute their stance to one of five causes. 

1. Malice. They hold this view because of some hatred in their heart. They want to cause suffering.

2. Ignorance. They hold this view because they are ill-informed, and tragically, despite your best efforts to enlighten them, they continue to persist in their error.

3. Privilege. They hold this view because they are blinded by their socio-economic status, their background, their race, and/or their sex.  They hold this view because they have not suffered in a way that would give them understanding. They wear an “epistemic blindfold.” (While you, of course, have epistemic 3D glasses.)

4. Trauma. They hold this view because they have suffered in a way that warps their compassion. They project their own unresolved issues onto this unrelated conflict, and that projection distorts their understanding and dulls their empathy.  Maybe if they did a lot of therapy, or ayahuasca, or EMDR, they would start to see clearly – as you do!

5. Demonic influence.  They hold this view because some malevolent spirit has entered into them and oppresses them.  You laugh, maybe, but lots of religious people believe in the malign influence of dark spiritual forces. (My favorite description of those forces is Paul’s in Ephesians: “the prince of the powers of the air.”)

Depending on your relationship with this person who has expressed the wretched and condemnable view, you will start with one of these five and work from there.  They can come in a cluster, of course; if you are “woke,” you will assume that Privilege and Ignorance often go hand in hand. If you are a charismatic Christian, you may believe that Trauma opens the door to Demons.  Or, perhaps, you just go with number one: they believe this because they are bad. Bad people hold bad views and bad views make bad people, and that’s all the energy I, in my great moral superiority, need to expend contemplating these idiots.

I don’t know if my former mentee attributes my views on Israel more to malice or ignorance or privilege.  They know I have a brain injury, so perhaps they are deciding, charitably, to think of my incomprehensible support for the IDF as a manifestation of a very significant blow to the head. (Must be those destroyed blood vessels in the anterior insular cortex.) I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out.

Losing friends over one’s objectively bad behavior is easy to explain. The people who cut ties with me in 2013 were clear that they were upset by what I had done, and that my behavior was so appalling it was ground for the ending of the relationship. That’s painful, but when you yourself accept your behavior was indefensible, it’s easy to understand the loss. Everyone agrees you screwed up and those screw-ups have consequences. You are still inhabiting the same emotional universe with the same rules, even if you aren’t talking anymore. Losing friends over a political difference is harder (if less humiliating), because you don’t have a shared moral understanding.

Here's the thing.  I accept that I know only a little.  That is not the same as an admission of error. I know only a little not because of privilege or brain injury or intellectual laziness or failure of imagination, I know only a little because it is the human condition to know only a little.  My mentee who has cut ties also knows only a little.  It turns out that the “littles” that we know are different littles.  That is not a bug, but a feature of the human condition.  If it hadn’t been Israel, it would have been something else that exposed the previously hidden gulf in our understandings.

My modest plea is this. Consider how you explain serious political and moral disagreements to yourself. To which of those five things I listed do you go first? How do you primarily account for the appalling views of otherwise delightful people? How do they, as far as you know, explain your dreadful positions to themselves?

Certainty is a useful servant, because without it, we are paralyzed and ineffectual. Certainty is a terrible master, because untempered by humility, curiosity, and doubt, it turns us into monsters. Or if not quite monsters, it turns us into those all too willing to cast aside old affections in the face of political disappointments and ideological surprises. We can do better.