Choose your battleground: “right vs left” or “reality vs illusion”

fionacollins
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

I have always been confused about the antipathy between people who identify as “right” vs those on the “left” because I have seen all sides as completely misguided, whichever axis of political identity one chooses. Although, I have probably shared a little more in common with the “lefties” in that I am deeply offended and hurt — and have been personally damaged — by the injustice of a system set up to benefit the few. Even when I get annoyed by the left’s perpetual, simplistic and reductionist story of “oppressor vs oppressed” it’s obvious that there is a structure which is seemingly fixated on maintaining a status quo which perpetuates injustice through the denial and rejection of perceived ideological threats to it.

But I am starting to understand the underlying drives of “conservatives”, and some political acquaintances on Facebook have helped me with that for which I am grateful. One thing I have come to understand is that underlying some of the hostility is a misunderstanding about love. The conservatives are at heart, protectors, although they would like to think of themselves as entirely driven by “rationality”. But emotionally, “protectors” is how they see themselves and I must admit, this is a wonderful thing to be as an ideal and this should be acknowledged and not rejected. They feel a sense of love towards ideals of freedom, the best parts of tradition, shared ritual and the sense of community these bring, and the heights of cultural and technical achievement that Western societies have built. They want to defend all this against what they perceive as people who want to wreck it. Unfortunately, in order to maintain a belief about the sanctity of what they love, they reject information about how these ideals have been subverted — sometimes intentionally — and often used to support immoral purposes. They decide that the people who are angry about this are crazy, or wrong, or overstating harms.

For example, some conservatives who feel they are neutral about same sex marriage have recently discovered the extent of the irrational and violent hate from people on “their side” towards gay people through reading so many vile social media comments to do with the current debate in Australia. This seems to have saddened them, but has (hopefully) made them realize that what LGBTI/queer groups and individuals have been saying about the attacks on them have not been “strawman” arguments, but are coming from a genuine fear of being threatened with physical harm by people who share some of those conservative core beliefs. It’s taken me a while to be able to come up with an explanation about my mixed feeling towards this, because a lot of anger clouded my judgement. This anger came from frustration that fundamentally kind-hearted people like them have simply not been listening to those who had been harmed by people they have included in their camp and my reaction was “what has taken you so long, you idiots?” or some much stronger language.

Now, I am starting to accept that everyone, me included, is subject to very strong, human cognitive biases to do with group identity. Mine have been slightly weaker in effect to most, which may be why I can look at both camps (all camps) and say “you people are ALL nuts”, not that I am unique in this, or immune from this bias. I have always struggled with trying to find a political and/or spiritual tribe because I could never find one that seems consistent with the truth which didn’t fall prey to confirmation bias and relying on denial of evidence to maintain a coherent world-view. This could be “lefties” pretending that socialism with centralized control is a sustainable economic and political system. Or it could be my native tribes-people, Catholics, pretending that their beloved church was not actively perpetrating and covering up depraved crimes against children. I would often inadvertently invite attack for speaking about what I thought was obvious if one did the bare minimum of research, never understanding the hostility this produced. Not that I was always correct, but it was confusing to be rejected on the basis of identity rather than facts and argument. A perpetual outsider status has been a source of pain and confusion to me, because I could never give up my need for getting to the truth in favor of my desire to belong. I see the reverse in most people, where in-group/out-group biases squelch a sense of curiosity and openness to learning, especially the most important learning — that one has been mistaken about oneself.

I will say in conclusion, from my experience, that the loneliness of not feeling part of a tribe is easier to bear in the long run than the insanity of maintaining illusion, no matter how compelling the world-view of it seems and the protection it seems to enable. The thing about illusions is that they always eventually evaporate into the nothingness from which they came. It may take a long time, or a short time, but illusions are never sustainable. We can allow them to dissolve the easy way, by doing the work required to understand ourselves and letting go of cherished yet false beliefs; or it will happen the hard way, by the inevitable painful shattering of them through reality’s intervention.

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fionacollins

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