Homework Check:
Team Activity:
Share some stories of people who got unfairly scapegoated or bullied in order to make the bullying group feel stronger with a shared purpose.
Next Homework:
Finish How to Think and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains that being a critical thinker can be dangerous.
Writing Assignment:
Final Draft on turnitin due 9-13-18
First Draft for Peer Edit due 9-11
Conditions That Foster Critical Thinking
Critical thinking requires the following:
- a moral point of view
- fairness to listen to people outside one's tribe
- willingness to listen to opposing views
- being open to changing one's opinion based on better information.
However, as we look at America today, we see the erosion of critical thinking caused by the following:
- People silo themselves in their social media bubbles.
- Social media algorithms tailor news and information to your personality profile to cater to your cognitive biases so you see only what you want to see and never have to see anything that challenges your beliefs and opinions.
- People are influenced by narcissistic trolls whose misinformation is weaponized over social media.
- People don't have critical reading skills to understand difference between an ignorant and informed opinion.
- People are not taking the moral position to arrive at shared understanding. Shared understanding is no longer a shared moral imperative. Rather, life is a ruthless competition. "I must win. I must destroy my enemy because my enemy is wrong, and I am right." There is no real persuasion behind this thinking, just tribalistic instinct and impulse. This Kill My Enemy approach has been weaponized by trolls and foreign agents who disseminate misinformation on social media. This misinformation is the Number One Role of social media. It is not bring people together and bringing peace to the world. The tech moguls who got rich on Facebook and Twitter and other venues have allowed the trolls to take over.
The Death of Critical Thinking
Social Media’s Primary Role Has Become a Weaponized Battlefield of Misinformation Resulting in the Death of Critical Thinking
Back in 2010 to 2012, I had the privilege of hiking with a half dozen United States Marines on the Palos Verdes trail every Sunday morning for a two-hour hike. Some of these Marines were my students, and they invited me to have a two-hour hike for strength, conditioning, and therapeutic conversation.
The Marines they liked me because I was their critical thinking professor. I was making critical thinking part of a better democracy, and by making a stronger democracy I was making a stronger America.
That was the narrative of 2010. And I needed to believe in this narrative because I had just had twin girls. My daughters were born into a world with an ever strengthening democracy. Thank you, very much.
The hike was grueling and exhausting, but nothing to the Marines, many who walked 14 hours a day through rugged terrain in Afghanistan and Iraq with with an 80-pound backpack.
Driving home to Torrance all sweaty and exhausted in my car, I’d listen to the “Tech Guy” Leo Laporte on KFI 640 radio praise the ascent of social media, like Twitter, as he saw social media as a force for positive social change in the context of Arab Spring.
Overthrowing dictators in favor of democratic rule such as Arab Spring was evidence that social media would bring peace, freedom, and democracy to the world.
I was listening to Leo Laporte sing Kumbaya over the airwaves, and I was hopeful that he was right: Democracy will blossom all over the world. I was thinking, “Oh, happy day! I’m a critical thinking teacher helping propel democracy in my own small way. I’m on the Winning Team.”
Eight Years Later
So here we are, eight years later: How are things going?
Now over half the world is on social media, all my students have smartphones, and is the world a better place?
Is democracy spreading throughout the planet?
Are Americans of different tribes coming to together for shared understanding?
Are politicians of different persuasions working together for a common goal to make America stronger?
Just the opposite is true. We’re in chaos, we’re divided, and we can’t even agree on what facts are anymore as political pundits speak of “alternative facts” and “alternative realities.”
Instead of peace and understanding, we live in the Age of Gaslighting, bullying people with a twisted version of reality to beat them down and tire them out so they’re too exhausted to question lies and distortions.
What happened?
I didn’t have a clear answer until recently I had the privilege of reading an advanced copy of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.
The singular takeaway from this book is that even though social media has many functions--showing cat videos, posting photos of your kids so grandma can see them, posting selfies of your six-pack torso shot at the gym on Instagram, promoting your brand--the dominant role of social media has become clear: Totalitarian and extremist trolls taken over social media and turned it into a cesspool of weaponized misinformation and authoritarian propaganda.
Totalitarians and extremists throughout the world are using social media to wage war against democracy, and right now they’re winning: That is the very persuasive thesis of LikeWar.
To present their thesis, the authors have done an excellent job of presenting five core principles:
One. The Internet has gone through its evolutionary process and is now in its adult stage to be the “preeminent medium of global communication; half the world is now on social media, so social media is the place where the most clever, ruthless trolls have decided to use misinformation to manipulate the masses. Let there be no mistake about it, more than anything else, social media is a vector for trolls.
Two. Social media is foremost a battlefield with no borders, and instant misinformation attack can happen without notice; faster than bombs, misinformation can affect political opinion, affecting elections and major foreign policy decisions.
Three. We have to think differently about information. Now social media is the dominant mode of information, and trolls use misinformation to wage war against democratic societies.
This misinformation has changed how wars are fought; why use bombs and other weaponry when it’s cheaper and more effective to use weaponized misinformation? A manufactured event or fake news can be more destructive than a torrent of bombs.
As a result, we must look at information differently. Information is no longer people sitting around reading books.
Information is short bursts of digital dissemination, often in the form of weaponized misinformation that sticks. Why does it stick? Because weaponized information is not based on truth; it’s based on simplicity & immediate emotional appeal. Pull people’s emotional heartstrings, and control the narrative, and you win the war.
Most social media information is false. Why? Because algorithmically tailored to people’s cognitive biases so that the information is manufactured, cherry-picked, curated, and patently false.
The American military is deeply concerned about these totalitarian trolls. For example, the United States Army has a Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk where they engage in Social Media Environment and Internet Replication, known as SMEIR; it simulates social media scenarios where misinformation is weaponized and unbridled chaos ensues.
You can cause more chaos with less retaliation and less expense through social media weaponization than you can through traditional warfare.
Four. Social media battles have changed what war means: Elections and battles on the actual field can be won or lost because by controlling the opinions and beliefs of the masses. War and politics have never been so entwined with each other, so say the authors of LikeWar. The number one weapon in this entwinement of war and politics is misinformation.
Five. Finally, there is no escaping this battlefield. We can’t turn back the clock, we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube; we can’t put the Genie back in the bottle.
Don’t count on the Tech Bros who are making billions of dollars off their social media platforms to protect us. They’ve proven inept in controlling the misinformation flow. In fact, their platforms are allies in this misinformation.
Meanwhile, they’re allowing authoritarian governments to take over social media for the purpose of dismantling democratic governments.
We have to know how this war works; otherwise, the trolls, terrorists, and foreign enemies will take us over. Look how divided our country is. The trolls are already winning. Think about that next time you distract yourself with a cat video.
The trolls have pushed us into Lobster Society.
We are no longer thinking like civil citizens but fighting each other like lobsters for territory at the bottom of the ocean.
We too often abandon morality when we live under the rule of the Zero-Sum Game.
When we live for Zero-Sum Game, we become lobsters, for better and worse.
Balance Your Inner Lobster with Your Moral Sense
Adapted from Jordan Peterson Uses Lobster Society to Give Us 5 Essential Life Lessons
Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back
Jordan Peterson's book 12 Rules for Life has a famous chapter comparing lobsters to humans. Peterson’s view of competition is dark and realistic, and it is the basis for his claim that we need to be self-reliant and abandon all naivete about our plight in this world.
Deeper Meaning
Peterson's analogy makes us realize what we’re up against in a world of competition, and he makes us identify negative feedback loops that make us prey to predators, and he helps us replace those negative feedback loops with positive ones in order to help us succeed in life.
Life Lesson #1: Our Territory Determines Our Quality of Life
Jordan Peterson observes that lobsters have survived for 350 million years, far longer than dinosaurs and humans, and that their survival instincts can give us some essential life lessons.
Competition for Territory
Like lobsters, we compete for territory because territory (zip code, if you will) determines our quality of life.
The rich live in premium locations and enjoy longest, healthy lives. The poor live in high-stress areas and live shorter, more sickly, more brutal lives.
I live in Torrance, about a mile and a half from the beach, and you can live 7 miles from here in the city of Wilmington, which is close to oil refineries known to produce spikes in asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
If you live a mile or closer to the freeway, you have increased risk for cancer, heart disease, and dementia.
Like lobsters, we compete for where we will live. We compete for territory.
Life Lesson #2: The world we live in a zero-sum game.
Zero-sum game means that if you win the game you will have wealth, resources, good health, and top-ranking social hierarchy.
If you lose in the zero-sum game, you will suffer poverty, deprivation, sickliness and low-ranking status for overwhelming majority. The crisis of being poor is the poor have the worst healthcare, but the poor get struck with the worst diseases.
This is a brutal principle. A winner in some category of life, reproductive success, the arts, business, home ownership in premium coastal locations comes with someone else paying the price.
Luxury Hotel
Someone enjoys staying in a luxury hotel in Hawaii that costs thousands of dollars a night.
Someone cleans the bathroom of that luxury hotel for minimum wage and lives in brutal conditions to make sure that hotel customer has the best and cleanest amenities.
If you get the bad end of the stick, the world doesn’t care because the world’s default setting is to ignore you and assign you zero worth. This brutal condition compels us to take responsibility for our own station in life. If we don’t fight for our territory, like the lobster fights for his, we are doomed.
Life Lesson #3: We exist in a pecking order that affects our serotonin levels.
We are in a constant competition for resources in a fight to win ranking on what Peterson calls a “pecking order” for quality of life and reproductive success.
Pecking order, largely based on income, for humans, determines neurochemistry, which elevates serotonin in lobster victory and elevates octopamine in defeat. These hormones affect body language, either bold and proud or cowering and ashamed.
This body language propels us into a perpetual feedback loop, leading us to Life Lesson #3.
Life Lesson #4: Our success or failure in life depends on what kind of constant feedback loop we set into motion.
Our social status ranking affects others’ perception of us, and how we see others perceive us affects our hormones, and our hormones, manifest in body language, affect how people perceive us, so that we exist in a constant feedback loop.
High serotonin levels make people attracted to us, which in turn elevate our serotonin levels even more, creating a positive feedback loop.
The converse is also true: Low serotonin levels make us repellent to others, which in turn lowers our serotonin levels even more, creating a negative feedback loop.
Bullied People
Peterson uses example of an adolescent who was bullied and who reacts to life’s challenges based on being a bullying victim. He becomes fragile, whiny, and helpless with low levels of serotonin, making him more vulnerable to further bullying, which reinforces his negative view of the world.
His groveling, defeatist body language, cowering before some catastrophe, sets him up as a victim for future bullies.
Unloved Depressed People
Depressed people feel useless. A lot of depressed people never received love as children. They grow up with low levels of serotonin. They give depressed vibes to others who turn away from the depressed who in turn feel unloved, a perception that makes them even more depressed, and so the negative feedback loop continues.
The can continue to lead a miserable life defined by this negative feedback loop, or they can do something about it by creating a positive feedback loop.
How is this achieved, and do you really want to achieve this? If you do, please listen:
Principle #5: You Are Responsible for Creating a Positive Feedback Loop
Taking care of yourself, your fitness, your nutrition, your sleep, your limited screen time on social media, your body posture, to name some examples, can create a positive feedback loop. Respecting yourself causes others to respect you, which in turn reinforces your self-respect.
“People, like lobsters, size each other up” (40), so you need to take care of yourself.
Self-care is the first step in the road to achieving a positive feedback loop.
The Obvious Isn’t the Commonly Practiced
Taking care of yourself may sound obvious, but most people don’t take care of themselves.
Here’s an example: Up to 30% of people never fill their doctors’ prescriptions for their illnesses. Another 50% who do fill their prescriptions don’t follow the instructions.
Most people follow prescription instructions for their pets more than they do themselves.
We can conclude that most people like their pets more than they like themselves.
They may not even be aware of how they abuse and neglect themselves in a sign of zero self-worth.
You have to want to value yourself and you have to show this through self-care.
Examples of Self-Care
Social Media Excess
By posting too much on social media, you’re advertising your loneliness and neediness. You’re making yourself appear like a weak lobster in the social media universe, and others will avoid you, causing you to feel rejected, ensuing more feelings of loneliness, neediness, and depression, which will create a negative feedback loop.
Defend your honor and your self-respect by cutting back on social media, achieving excellence in your fitness and studies, and creating a positive feedback loop through those pursuits.
Diet and Exercise
Defend your honor and your self-respect by no longer larding your diet with excessive sugars and processed foods and getting “punk fed, which will result in metabolic syndrome, dyspepsia, fatigue, and diabetes, having the cumulative effects of being a Weak Lobster. Instead, eat whole foods and find exercise that you enjoy doing consistently so that you show yourself and others that you care about yourself so that you can create a positive feedback loop.
College Studies
Defend your honor and your self-respect by “going all in” your college studies instead of approaching college with a sullen, half-hearted, slovenly cowardice that tells yourself and the world that you’re too scared and weak-hearted to be successful.
In the realm of social media, diet, exercise, and college studies, you need to cultivate Lobster Strength and Dignity to protect your territory.
Serotonin Affects Your Personality
Self-care increases your serotonin levels.
Jordan Peterson reminds us that physical and attitudinal changes mentioned in the above examples don’t just hormonally alter our body and change our body language; they change our spirit and psychology in a way that steers us toward success.
Respond to a Challenge; Don’t Brace Yourself for Catastrophe
Making the above changes is the first step in “responding to a challenge rather than bracing for a catastrophe” (40).
Your Posture Changes Your Psychology
Peterson calls his lobster chapter “Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back.”
To stand up straight with your shoulders back is not just a physical posture; it is a position you take with your mind to defend your honor and self-respect. Such a posture is the first responsibility: To take charge of how you react to a world rife with challenges, competition, and evil.
To stand up straight with your shoulders back makes you attentive to others so you can read social cues and respond appropriately.
To slouch like a sad sack sends your brain signals deep inside your head so you become oblivious to the outside world around you and clueless you become a victim.
Reject Victim Mentality by Taking Responsibility for Protecting Your Self Interests
Reject the victim mentality and replace the victim with a more heroic version of yourself. This is the essence of Peterson’s message in this chapter.
Review of Lobster Society in the Human World
One. Understand that the world’s default setting is to ignore you, so that you are responsible for carving out your own territory.
Two. Understand you can redirect your negative feedback loop through self-care and create positive feedback loop that will point you to success.
Three. Understand that you can only rely on yourself to create a positive feedback loop. There is no guarantee that you will find a mentor or benevolent human being to guide you.
I never had a mentor, and I had to find my own way, but I do two mentorships at my college.
I do Puente and Project Success. Recently, I’ve mentored a student who got into Berkeley law school, a student who got into Morehouse screen writing program, a student who got a civil engineering job, and a student who got an electrical engineering job.
I give myself zero credit for these students’ success. They saw the stakes that were before them, they rose to the occasion, they fought through adversity, poverty, unsupportive parents, moving from their native country, and even depression.
But they made it because, even though they didn’t know it, they followed the principles of lobster society.
The lobster has survived for 350 million years for a reason: Its instincts are correct because the lobster has a proven track record, so we’d be wise to learn from those instincts.
Living Like a Lobster Is Only Half the Answer
The lobster by itself is not a teacher of salvation. The lobster is only part of a healthy human being
Lobster competition in world of social media tribalism and structural inequality has resulted in a loss of balance.
Knowing that we compete against one another is a brutal reality that we should understand.
A Moral Sense
However, our Inner Lobster needs to be balanced by our Moral Sense, which consists of moral laws, empathy, cooperation, and universal humanitarian values.
When we fail to achieve a balance between our Lobster and our Moral Sense, we endanger ourselves.
Too much Inner Lobster makes us vulnerable to the barbarian throng: “every man for himself,” “dog eat dog,” “fight tooth and claw,” “only strong survive in the jungle,” and so on.
Living in a world ruled by the barbarian throng is a world gone to chaos.
Too Much Morality?
But living too much on the Moral Sense side of the equation makes us weak, passive, and naive to external invaders, predators, and clever enemies. We must have some of the Alpha Lobster’s defensive instincts and swagger to protect ourselves.
So a balance must be achieved for our self-preservation.
In America, the balance is out of whack:
One. Rapid globalization scares the hell out of us.
Two. Rapid automation scares the hell out of us.
Three. Structural inequality making it more and more impossible for regular folks to afford housing, healthcare, and education scare the hell out of us.
Four. White people, especially of an older generation, are scared that America doesn’t look as white as it did when they were young so that racist political demagogues appeal to these white people’s worst instincts. Racism, including racist hate crimes, are on the rise.
Five. Social media generates news algorithms based on their personality profiles that silo social media users into isolating political bubbles so that they hear only what they want to hear based on cognitive biases.
Six. Americans are more and more divided along political lines to the point that a recent poll shows that more parents fear their children will marry someone of the “wrong political persuasion” over a different religious faith.
Seven. Americans no longer see their fellow Americans as sharing a common goal but as enemies who must be destroyed through trolls on social media or even worse methods resulting in what some are calling a “soft civil war.”
Eight. A lot of social media trolls are connected to Alt-Right racist and nationalist movements, and these trolls, which would be laughed at as a fringe movement just 10 years ago, feel empowered as they see mainstream politicians pushing for their cause.
Nine. National unity and shared purpose has taken a back seat to Zero-Sum Game: winners and losers.
Ten. Critical thinking, civil discussions in the marketplace of ideas, is no longer the priority: It’s now blood sport: Kill your enemy because their loss is your gain.
Lobster society has taken over critical thinking and our Moral Sense.
With the loss of critical thinking, with the loss of national unity, with tooth-and-claw Zero-Sum Game being the top priority, America exists in a state of huge chaos and instability. Hate crimes are on the rise. Racism is more flagrant and outspoken to the degree that one of my African-American students recently had “KKK” spray painted on his car in the parking lot of this college.
We are in trouble.
The Lobster without moral balance is an ugly creature hellbent on destruction.
We need our Inner Lobster, but we need it to be balanced.
Sample Thesis Statements for Essay #1
Option A
In a 1,000-word essay, develop a thesis that explains how Megan Phelps-Roper, as featured in Adrian Chen’s essay “Unfollow,” unshackled herself from the anti-thinking biases and demonstrated the principles of critical thinking laid forth in Alan Jacobs’ How to Think. Use “Unfollow” and How to Think as your two sources for your Works Cited page.
Sample Thesis for Option A
Megan Phelps-Roper frees herself from the immorality and warped thinking bubble of a hateful religious cult evidencing some of the liberating thinking principles contained in Alan Jacobs' How to Think evidenced by ________________, _________________, __________________, and ________________________.
Option B
In a 1,000-word essay, develop a thesis that defends, refutes, or complicates the argument that Megan Phelps-Roper, featured in Adrian Chen’s “Unfollow,” is a salient illustration of Alan Jacobs’ thesis that critical thinking is dependent on moral character. Use “Unfollow” and How to Think as your two sources for your Works Cited page.
Sample Thesis (followed by clarifying thesis ) for Option B
The moral rot and vile instincts that kill critical thinking in the hateful religious cult that once imprisoned Megan Phelps-Roper can be explained by Alan Jacobs' main ideas in his masterful work How to Think. These main ideas include ____________, _______________, ________________, and _____________
Megan Phelps-Roper's evolution from hateful cult tribalist to cosmopolitan humanist illustrates the dangers of ingroup tribalism, which include dehumanization of "Los Otros," cognitive bias, _________________, and __________________.
Having read Alan Jacobs' How to Think, I am incurably depressed because I've learned that even if I try with all my heart, soul, and guts, I may never be a critical thinker, and even if I do improve my critical thinking, I've learned that the majority of mankind chooses to be a bunch of ignorant, mindless, prejudiced, biased slobs wreaking havoc on the planet and making me see the futility of existence. McMahon, your reading material has made me a nihilist. Thanks for nothing.
For every one Megan Phelps-Roper who learns her way to think out of tribalistic garbage, there are millions of people who succumb to the critical thinking breakdown and overall mental dysfunction brought upon by weaponized misinformation, which is the number one feature of the social media takeover of the world.
Option C
In the context of How to Think, write a 1,000-word essay that compares the moral courage of Megan Phelps-Roper to the people who leave Utopia in Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
Sample Thesis for Option C
Retreating into a false paradise of a hateful religious cult or a utilitarian utopia that sacrifices the innocent is an exercise in surrendering our core moral values and critical thinking skills in the service of convenient willed ignorance, selfish pleasure seeking, and comfort, which in the end become a deal with the Devil.
Real Thinking
Having the ability to use ethos (credibility), logos (logic and reasoning), and pathos (strong emotion) to present an argument is a sign of intelligence, craftiness, and commitment to one’s ideas.
To cause someone to “break the floor,” to change their mind in the middle of a debate was considered one of life’s highest achievements.
This is significant because when you change your mind, “you yield a different you.”
Changing your mind, in other words, radically redefines the essence of yourself.
Jacobs makes another important point about a culture that embraces the possibility of “breaking the floor”: Only in a culture where people who disagree aren’t trying to hurt each other but share values can such a changing of the mind take place. A certain trust must be present for people to be in a position to change their mind.
This kind of trust is difficult when everyone is in their own social media silo, absorbed by their smartphone chat groups and ignoring the people who surround them in the physical world.
Two. What makes our thoughts almost secondary to the point of being irrelevant?
Jacobs quotes Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, who observes that we experience instantaneous moral intuitions and judgments followed by our explanation of those intuitions. Our “post hoc constructions,” after-the-fact thoughts, rationalize our emotional dispositions.
A variation of the post hoc construction is the sour grapes fallacy. We do something stupid, and then we justify our stupidity by saying that doing the smart thing would not have mattered since life sucks anyway.
Example of such an argument:
"Yes, you went to college and you make good money as an engineer, and I dropped out of college, and I'm working at the coffee shop. But look at all those taxes you have to pay. And that summer vacation to Maui cost you over five thousand dollars. Bummer, man. And look how complicated your life is. And look at all those hours you have to work a week. And for what? You're always tired. Look at me. I've got energy and lots of free time during the day."
"Yeah, but, dude, I live in a house. You live in a cardboard box."
The speaker never had sound arguments for dropping out of college, but he is hellbent on justifying his semi-poverty while working in a coffee shop.
Bind and Blind
These “moral intuitions” both “bind and blind.” We are both binded to our political and religious teams, but we are at the same time blinded by reasonable opposition to our strongly-held views.
Critical Thinking Requirement
To think critically, we must fairly evaluate opposing views, but few people do because narcissism is the default setting that says, "I'm right. Nothing will change my way of thinking. That's it." Jacobs calls this default setting "neophobic": fear of new ideas.
In a critical thinking class, students need a counterargument-rebuttal section to show they've explored opposing views.
Neophobic and Neophilic Dispositions Inform Our Moral Matrix
Our moral intuitions, or “moral matrix,” are directed by our genetic predisposition.
We are either hard-wired to be neophilic (love new things, love change) or neophobic (hate new things, hate change), and this hard-wiring influences our moral intuitions.
The Inner Ring
To explain our “moral matrix” and the way we make emotional decisions followed by rationalizations for our positions, Jacobs prefers the C.S. Lewis metaphor of The Inner Ring.
According to C.S. Lewis, our greatest desire is to be inside The Inner Ring; our greatest fear is to be outside The Inner Ring.
Our desire to belong to the ingroup is so strong, we will be open to corruption in order to conform to its ways.
We all have our own standards for what makes an Inner Ring appealing, but once we’re allowed in we make “post hoc rationalizations” to defend its positions because our desire to belong is greater than our desire to satisfy our inquisitive mind and our demands for integrity.
Other names for Inner Ring:
Tight circle
Clique
The Cool Crowd
The Club
The Tribe
The Banquet (opposite is the Outer Darkness)
Our desire to belong to Inner Ring makes us protect its interests. Our loyalty compromises our morality and our critical thinking.
Three. Why is “some form of genuine membership necessary for thinking”?
What we need is a group whom we trust and respect. They can disagree with us, but we must trust and respect their decency and honesty. Only in this environment can we have real thinking.
If your Twitter account is infected with “haters” and liars, then you can’t engage in real thinking on Twitter, as Jacobs learned the hard way.
Connections with groups we trust give us power to resist evil and stupidity.
Four. What is “unscrupulous optimism” and why is it dangerous?
Referring to a term coined by Roger Scruton, Jacobs is writing about the foolishness of taking deeply-rooted complex human problems and finding easy solutions to these problems. These solutions become a new system, the “Clearly Right” path, and all who stand in the way become enemies.
Ingroup members are not allowed to question the Clearly Right Path.
This path is “I-based,” that is to say, it is “good for me and people like me.”
Take for example a heralded writer like Ta-Nehisi Coates who wrote a famous essay, “The Case for Reparations.” Coates wrote convincing diagnosis of America’s kleptocracy (system of stealing) and how this kleptocracy stole from the bodies, minds and souls of African-Americans. But Jacobs points out that while he agreed with the essay’s diagnosis, he did not see an adequate prescription for the injustices described, and his friends criticized him for not drinking all of Coates’ Kool-Aid.
Take other programs that need a critical examination before made into official solutions:
- Free college education
- Getting rid of grades
- Universal Basic Income
- Universal Health Care
- Driverless Cars
- Creating civilizations on other planets because Planet Earth is not big enough for the growing population
- Calvinism: A predestination religion that says some people, the Elect, were chosen to go to heaven before Creation and a larger group of people, the Damned, are predestined to go to hell. Predestination is a simplified way of explaining who gets to heaven and who doesn’t.
- Universalism: A religion that says everyone, eventually, gets to heaven. Perhaps such an approach is too optimistic?
But membership into the Inner Ring requires you keep your mouth shut if you have any doubts or critical questions.
Arguing against unscrupulous optimism, Jacobs observes we must assert prudence and healthy skepticism against simple solutions for our problems.
Chapter 3 Repulsions: Why you’re not as tolerant of others as you think
Five. What is suspicious ingroup behavior?
Blogger Scott Adams notes that a group of people expressed disgust at the glee some people showed for the death of Osama Bin Laden. But this same group of people were gleeful when Margaret Thatcher died. Their political correctness code compelled them to condemn happiness over Bin Laden’s death while celebrating Thatcher’s. They are blind to their inconsistency because they are tribalists shackled by ingroup behavior.
There is a hatred of the blue and red tribe that is growing so powerful we could find ourselves in a Civil War with physical violence.
We live in a society where it’s socially acceptable to unleash raw hate on people who don’t share our party affiliation.
Ingroup Behavior and Cognitive Bias Makes Us Blind to Our Prejudice
Personal Anecdote
In the early 1980s, I was working in a wine store in Berkeley. At that the time, I was reading Albert Camus’ Notebooks, and I read that Camus dismissed the music of Peter Tchaikovsky as “mediocre,” and wanting to be a faithful Albert Camus disciple I decided that I shared Camus’ disdain for Tchaikovsky’s music.
One afternoon in the wine store, with the classical music station on, there was this riveting piano concerto playing. I didn’t know who the composer was, so I was standing by the speaker with a notebook and pen, so I could write down the composer’s name. All my co-workers were staring at me in amusement because I had become obviously full of so much intense pleasure as I listened to the concerto. When the music ended, the announcer stated that it was the First Piano Concerto by Peter Tchaikovsky, upon which I threw the notepad and pen on the floor and screamed: “Tchaikovsky? I hate Tchaikovsky!” All my co-workers laughed at me.
Ingroup Hate
In the religious realm, Martin Luther and Thomas More, who disagreed on Catholicism and Protestantism, demonized the other as “complete crap.” And their followers used the same language to define each other.
Even those these factions had a lot in common, they hated each other to the bone.
The same is true in communism. There are Marxists and there are Trotskyists and they hate each more than they hate non-communists.
Six. Is there such thing as “life in Rationalia”?
In other words, can we live in a community that is strictly rational, that makes its decisions purely on scientific evidence?
But analysis by itself, harkening back to John Stuart Mill, tires our emotions. We need the nourishment of feeling to balance rational thinking.Why? In part because we don’t learn anything unless there is an emotional context. Learning evidence to stop smoking is one thing. But to see children who lost their parents to lung cancer is more powerful and makes the point that “hits home.”
Further, we need biases and emotional predispositions to survive. When we see dogs baring their teeth and growling, we don’t need to stick around and think about the dog before finding a way to escape the dog. We quickly use biases and cues to “reduce the decision load on the brain.”
There are true prejudices that lead us to safety and false prejudices that create misunderstandings and fog the brain.
Example of Megan Phelps-Roper
Indeed, Roper used rational thinking to leave her hateful religious cult. But the rational thinking happened AFTER she experienced the emotional response of revulsion from her church’s hateful behavior.
Chapter 4: The Money of Fools and The Power of Myth
Seven. What is myth and how does myth affect our thinking?
Referring to Mary Midgley, Jacobs defines myth as powerful symbols that help us interpret the world. “They shape its meaning.”
Without knowing it, we use myths, based on metaphors, that build narratives that describe our life, our identity, and our self.
We choose or inherit our myths.
“The brain is like a computer.”
“Animals are food, not sentient creatures.”
“The Confederate flag represents our family’s noble heritage.”
“The Confederate flag represents a false religion of white supremacy that makes people behave in ways that can only be described as a moral abomination.”
“God chose my particular religious denomination to find the true interpretation of the Bible and we’re going to heaven while the false religions and their people are all going to hell.”
Imposing the Dominant Myth on Culture Is Act of War
When we argue, we should try to arrive at mutual understanding, but too often when we represent our tribe we rely on a myth and we propagate this myth to triumph. Our version of events rules.
Conclusion: The Pleasures and Dangers of Thinking
Eight. What are the dangers of thinking critically?
Sometimes you will change your mind, which can upset your identity and core values and beliefs. This can be a scary, disorienting experience.
Your critical thinking may result in you being exiled from the tribe or ingroup from which you wish to belong.
A lot of students lose bonds with family and friends when they go to college because they begin to engage in critical thinking, which is in conflict with the way they used to be.
I hear countless stories of students who feel alienated from high school friends, even family members, have they have a "woke" experience that forces them to think critically.
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